Ever since the first time I heard the term ‘trauma dumping’, I have felt an unease about it. ‘Trauma dumping’ is a term that is used to describe when someone shares intense, personal and distressing emotional experiences with another person without warning, consent or consideration for their capacity to handle it.
While not a formal psychological concept, it is increasingly popular online and has begun creeping into the counselling room. While ‘trauma dumping’ itself is more pop psychology than material, the psychological concepts behind it such as emotional dysregulation, boundary issues, co-rumination and inappropriate self-disclosures are real. If we find ourselves experiencing any of the above, there are benefits in considering why they may be happening on an individual level. However, each of these concepts feel like a knife to me when used against rather than with and can do more harm than good to relationships when internalised. The accusation of ‘trauma dumping’ can be a way of shutting someone struggling down and shaming them for not coping in an approved fashion. Within my practice, I am seeing this become a form of self-censorship. Clients are containing themselves, not by choice or desire, but due to feeling as though expressing their ‘trauma’ in their close relationships would be a transgression against the other, burdening those closest in their lives. They do not get to the stage of giving warning or asking for consent, as they already feel their emotions and experiences are too much.
This is the crux of why I am writing this. The concept of ‘trauma dumping’ can send the message that you are too much, that it is important to shrink yourself, seek and pay a professional if you need to process or regulate your emotions, as your emotions are work and someone should be paid. There is an underlying message that if you have experienced trauma, it is a burden on others to support you and you need to be conscious of the impact your feelings have on others to the point of withholding parts of yourself that feel ‘too much’. This not only introduces a secondary burden on people experiencing things such as trauma, bereavement or loss to contain themselves sufficiently in their darkest moments of dysregulation from people who love them, but additionally shames them if they are unable and ‘trauma dump’.
All this said, this is not to say that there are not times and circumstances where it is not important to consider if the person you are speaking to, or would like to speak to, is able to handle what is on your mind. My perspective is more that if you are finding there is no room for your thoughts and feelings in your close personal relationships, if you need to manage significant aspects of your life for those who love you, either you are consciously or unconsciously holding people at a distance or you may not be around enough of the right people. My message is, talking to your partner, your family, your friends about difficult, unprocessed, unedited experiences and feelings is not ‘trauma dumping’, as you are not too much, you are not a burden and while therapy is a unique space, it is not to say that it should be the only space for processing and making meaning from difficult feelings or events.
Mental and emotional wellbeing should be rooted in having a meaningful understanding of yourself and your life, aiming to surround yourself with people that treat you with respect, people who value you for who you are as a whole, not just the polished, regulated parts of you. To love someone, is to love them as a whole person. To care about them, is to care about the entirety of them. Experiencing and processing trauma openly does not make you too much, if anything, it creates room for others to feel safe to be open about their own.
