Trauma dumping. What is it? What's wrong with it?

When we were tasked with listening to the stories of our classmates one-on-one, both myself and David shared a similar opinion.

"Isn't this trauma dumping?!"

For those who don't know, trauma dumping is, as the name implies, sharing your traumas with another person(s), but there is a bit more specificity to the definition. It comes from the "dumping" part, implying that you are releasing all of your burdens, with or without warning, to someone else that is unproductive, or even detrimental, to both parties.

It can be a slippery slope into codependency and forming relationships held together by the trauma itself. Yes, slippery slope is real. That warrants another conversation entirely.

My initial concern is that it would enable such action within the whole class. That's not to invalidate anyone's specific trauma (hell, my story was about when I almost died at 17 years old), but rather what I could see come up as someone who has "been there, done that". However, I was shocked that it seemed to give the opposite effect. Let me explain.

I shared a story I am extremely comfortable with sharing. I am at the point in the healing process that I do not need any sort of outside help in navigating through that dark point in my life. Quite the opposite, actually. I am extremely proud of where I have gone since then. When hearing everyone else's stories, I got a similar feeling that people shared what they were comfortable with, and that most (if not all) writers were as comfortable as possible with the handling of the monologues.

That's how it should be in this scenario. This is gradual, intentional exposure as part of the healing process, and people in the class are mature enough to navigate it. It teaches that we should not be ashamed of our traumas, but that "dumping" is best suited for those that deserve to hear our stories, those who have been consistent, positive forces within our lives for some time.