Emotions are the threads which weave our relationships together.
When someone expresses sadness or grief, it triggers our empathy and reminds us of the times we experienced loss and disappointment.
There is nothing more satisfying than belly-laughing with someone over a particular thing they or you said or did. You might look back on such incidents of shared joy, and in doing so, use these echoes of great times to feel closer to and more positive about your loved one.
Even anger can reinforce relationships by allowing us to break down the obstacles to connection. If someone is bothering or hurting us, our anger sends a clear message that their behaviour is impacting our capacity to trust and feel close to them. That release after successful conflict resolution is the cherry on top, and ties off the positive feedback loop which reinforces the relationship.
Emotions help create shared human experiences which imbue our relationships with meaning. However, the keyword here is shared. Both parties must be equal and willing participants in the emotional sharing. Above all, any person expressing an emotion, especially a negative one, must take responsibility for it. Others can empathise and support them in creating space for their negative emotions, but only in a way that respects the boundaries and limits of the other. Failure to do so results in emotional dumping.
When Emotions Go Underground
Negative emotions can be difficult to acknowledge and feel in their entirety, especially if you grew up in a dysfunctional household. Managing our emotions is a skill we develop over a lifetime, with the crucial phase being during childhood.
Healthy parents who are not threatened by anger allow their child to throw tantrums, but also guide them toward calmly asking for what they need, hence avoiding having to throw a tantrum in the first place. Over time, the child learns that anger is allowed, and also learns the right way to express and use that anger which respects the rights of others.
Healthy parents allow their children to make mistakes, and so create healthy shame in them. Children can be sad, frustrated, even apathetic. They are able to atone for their misdeeds and so develop healthy guilt.
Dysfunctional parents, especially narcissistic ones, forbid the expression or acknowledgement of negative emotions. They shame their children to keep them in line, suppress all expressions of anger, and control their children’s behaviour. The dysfunctional parent neglects the child’s needs, never sees them for who they are, and instrumentalises them for their own ends. This results in the child becoming cut off from their emotions, which then go underground, rarely ever acknowledged by their conscious mind.
How Does Emotional Dumping Work?
Emotional dumpers are cut off from their emotions. However, the emotions do not disappear. They remain in the body. The pressure of these repressed emotions takes a toll, and so those emotions must be syphoned off to others without being acknowledged. This is the essence of emotional dumping.
The emotional dumper transmits their repressed negative emotions above all in conversation. The more connected they begin to feel with someone, the more likely they are to drag that person in and force their feelings into them via subtext.
A parent can tell you a ‘funny’ story about their child, but in that story, describe in painful detail how uncooperative and naughty that child was. In truth, the storyteller is possibly irritated and frustrated by their child, or feels like they have no control over them. Yet they laugh as they describe the events, and you feel forced to laugh along. Meanwhile, you take on the feeling of frustration, unaware that the subtext of the story is having an effect on you.
If someone is feeling sad and shameful, they can speak to you with anguish in their face and a monotone voice, which creates that shame and sadness in you. If you ask them how they are doing, however, they will tell you that they are doing great.
Anger is often expressed covertly during a civilised discussion. The conversation begins calmly and respectfully, but the emotional dumper’s tone of voice shifts, their facial expression sharpens, and the intensity and loudness of their speech gradually rises, until the person speaking with them feels under siege, and ultimately gets angry as well.
Emotional dumpers do not act consciously. They are alienated from themselves, and because of this, they unwittingly alienate the people around them. The people in the emotional dumper’s life have no idea what is going on, they simply realise over time that they feel bad whenever they spend time with the emotional dumper.
Highly sensitive people, or ‘empaths’, are especially affected by emotional dumping. When an emotional dumper speaks to an empath and connection is achieved (as it easily is with an empath), they unconsciously sense a wide-open path to get their painful emotions out, and they take it without hesitation.
From Dumping To Sharing, Alienation To Growth
An emotional dumper often goes off on a rant or a monologue and gives you no space to influence their point of view. They wish to ‘vomit out’ their emotions, yet do not want to pause to reflect or even acknowledge the impact they are having on you. An emotional dumper experiences no growth because they are not present when they express their emotions.
Sharing entails responsibility; dumping does not. An emotional sharer is clear about what they are feeling and what they need. If someone feels sad, they will state that they feel low, and will own that sadness. In doing so, they create an opportunity for their loved one to empathise and acknowledge the emotion without taking it on. In that way, the loved one’s boundaries are respected, and best of all, the emotion has a chance to finally be expressed, released and put to rest.
Often we feel better just by acknowledging and expressing our emotions while being seen and mirrored by another. This is how we create the threads which strengthen our relationships. By honouring our loved one’s boundaries while successfully sharing our emotion, we create closeness and growth rather than resentment and alienation.
People are not stupid. They sense when they have been objectified and used. Most tragic of all: Emotional dumpers hurt the people in their lives without achieving the relief and healing that they so desperately need.
To transition from emotional dumping to sharing, you need to first acknowledge your negative emotions. You need the courage to look inside and to feel, and the humility to throw your hands up and ask for help. In doing so, you invite the people who love you to play a supporting role on their own terms. Above all, you avoid being manipulative.
The emotional sharer communicates: “I have something inside me which I need to release and process, could you give me a hand working out what to do with it?”
The emotional dumper communicates: “I have something I need to release. Here, take it and shut up.”
Sharing is conscious and mature; dumping is unconscious and immature. Sharing creates opportunities to strengthen our relationships and elevate our mutual growth. What could be more crucial and beneficial for our mental, physical and spiritual health?
