I've scrolled back through my WhatsApp messages to friends and had a startling revelation about what they may REALLY think of me. This is why I urge every woman in a 'group chat' to do the same...
When my friend posted on our WhatsApp group recently that her husband had come down with a sickness bug, most people responded in the usual way: virtual hugs; a crying face emoji; messages of sympathy.
Me? No. I immediately started telling the group about my own anxiety around vomiting and asking them if they had any tips for me on how to manage it.
Sure, I paused briefly before sending the message, wondering how helpful it would be to a friend currently mopping up after her own husband, but I still sent it. After all, group chats are made for oversharing, for offloading, for dumping our trauma – aren’t they?
Because ‘trauma dumping’ – sharing something intense or distressing about your life with someone without checking whether they’re in a place to comfort you – is something I’ve noticed myself doing more and more recently.
At first, I thought I was just sharing my own trials as a way of connecting with my loved ones; if they shared a difficult experience, I’d chip in with mine. I thought it was a means of making them feel less alone.
I’m an inherently anxious person, in need of reassurance and recognition. And since having my two young children, and so desperately craving more adult connection, this need has come to the fore.
Soon, I realised that there’s a certain relief that comes from offloading to friends.
I was just sharing as a way of connecting with my loved ones, says Chloë Hamilton. Now she is worried that 'trauma dumping' is impacting her friendships
Now, I fear, I have simply become addicted to sharing, to responding to someone’s issues with bigger, better, more brutal ones of my own. My personal experience of birth, intrusive thoughts and grief are all stories I’ve shared in response to someone else’s tale of woe. Sometimes, too, I initiate my own trauma dump, offloading my fears on everything from whether my children are having too much screen time to insomnia to anyone who will listen.
In the moment of sharing I feel exhilarated. The rush of the connection is intoxicating.
To the ‘dumpee’, however, trauma dumping can feel like being held hostage – being talked at rather than talked to.
I’d like to say this behaviour hasn’t impacted friendships, but I’m not sure I’ll ever know; maybe everyone rolls their eyes when they see that ‘Chloe is typing’ bubble pop up on WhatsApp.
Certainly, when I look back at some of the messages I’ve sent my friends, or the stories I’ve uploaded to Instagram, it’s relatively one-way. I suspect this approach has bled into my in-person communication, too, as I wait for someone to finish their story so I can tell mine.
Therapist Anita Guru, founder of The Mind Coach, says that humans are wired for connection, which could be why we trauma dump.
‘It can be a way of sharing our challenges so that others can witness our hurt or harm,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes it can be a way of getting validation for our part in an event or conversation, especially if we feel we may have done wrong.’
This makes sense. Whenever I share my health anxiety, for example, with friends (a new lump, mole or twinge) I’m really just screaming into the void: ‘Please tell me I’ll be OK.’ But I know I struggle with boundaries – just like many people of my generation (I’m 35) who have grown up sharing everything online.
'Maybe everyone rolls their eyes when they see that ‘Chloe is typing’ bubble pop up on WhatsApp'
Dr Carolina Are, a social media researcher at the London School of Economics, says the way we share online may have made us more open: ‘If we become used to broadcasting our lives into a void – the app, the platform, the algorithm – maybe we forget that our offline friends and partners want a two-way conversation.’
Certainly, I am scared that my trauma dumping is impacting my friendships. I have no evidence of this yet – perhaps I just have very patient friends, like the one who responded to my vomiting fears with helpful advice – but the fear is real.
So what can I – can all us trauma dumpers – do? Guru suggests we consider more carefully what we share.
‘How might you feel hearing about it from someone else? This can be a clue about whether it’s suitable to share, without consent,’ she says.
Whether or not I start adding trigger warnings to my trauma dumps remains to be seen, but I have started to be more mindful about what I share, and how it may make a friend feel. My finger has now hovered, more than once, over the send button... before retreating and deleting.
