It’s Not That Deep
(Why ‘Trauma Dumping’ Is Just Another Way to Silence Women)
There I was, mid-sip of an overpriced hot chocolate, when it happened. A simple, offhand comment—“God, I barely slept last night”—slipped from my lips. I wasn’t angling for sympathy, just stating a fact. But before I could even elaborate, before I could explain that barely slept actually meant three hours of doom-scrolling existential dread, my friend sighed and said it: “Ugh, let’s not trauma dump today.” The conversation jolted, like a car stalling mid-gear. My brain scrambled to backpedal… was I oversharing? Was I too much? Meanwhile, her story about John her boyfriend (“such a weirdo”) continued, uninterrupted.
And that’s when it hit me: women’s feelings are only valid when they’re digestible. Keep it light, keep it funny, keep it polished—lest we risk the dreaded label of oversharing (read: existing in emotional high definition). But this isn’t new. Society has spent centuries treating women’s emotions like a malfunction to be fixed, pathologised, or straight-up ignored.
Back in the 19th century, doctors waved away women’s distress as hysteria, a catch-all diagnosis that covered everything from grief to ambition. (Spoiler: They “treated” it with vibrators, institutionalisation, and gaslighting.) Fast forward to Freud, who dismissed women’s trauma as fantasy, blaming their distress on subconscious daddy issues rather than, say, actual abuse. The message? Your pain is not real. Your feelings are an inconvenience. Shut up.
And now, in the era of self-care soundbites and “good vibes only” wellness culture, we’ve rebranded emotional suppression as an aesthetic. “Trauma dumping” is just the new “hysteria”—a way to silence women when their emotions are too much for polite conversation. Of course, there’s a difference between healthy venting and an unfiltered therapy session in the Sainsbury’s snack aisle. But let’s be real… men overshare all the time (“You wouldn’t believe how much I benched today, bro”), and yet, somehow, it’s only women’s emotions that get the red tape treatment.
So, the next time someone tells you “It’s not that deep”, just remember: it is. And it always has been.
“Calm Down, Dear” 2.0: The Weaponisation of Therapy-Speak
There was a time when women’s emotions were treated as medical conditions. Hysteria, they called it. The all-encompassing diagnosis for everything from grief to ambition to, God forbid, dissatisfaction with one’s husband. The cure? Institutionalisation, vibrators (yes, really), and in extreme cases, surgical removal of the uterus—because, obviously, the problem was never the men around them, just their pesky reproductive organs.
Fast forward a century or so, and we like to think we’ve evolved past this. We don’t lock women up for crying anymore. We don’t perform lobotomies for feeling overwhelmed. But we do have a slick, modern-day equivalent: we call it trauma dumping.
It’s the same old dismissal, just wrapped in pseudo-psychological jargon. Where women were once accused of being “over-emotional,” they’re now told they’re “oversharing.” Instead of being scolded for making a fuss, they’re accused of making others “hold space” for them inappropriately.
And instead of being called hysterical, they’re now labelled “draining”—as if expressing emotions is some kind of parasitic act, leeching off the “good vibes” of the room. The only difference? This time, the silencing doesn’t come from Victorian doctors in white coats—it comes from other women, reposting Instagram infographics about emotional boundaries while simultaneously ghosting their friends for going through a hard time.
This isn’t to say that boundaries don’t matter. Of course they do. But there’s a difference between setting a boundary and shutting someone down. The problem isn’t that people want space to process their own emotions. It’s that women, specifically, are being held to an impossible emotional standard: don’t be too closed off (cold), but don’t be too expressive (overwhelming). Keep your trauma vague and poetic (“I’ve just been struggling a bit”), not messy and real (“I’m actually really scared I’ll never feel okay again”). Package your pain in a way that makes it digestible, or better yet, keep it to yourself.
And the irony of it all? The very men who once told women to “calm down” are now suddenly allowed to have feelings. Male vulnerability is finally being recognised (good!), but the reaction to it is telling: when men open up, it’s seen as brave, but when women do, it’s seen as excessive. A man talking about his mental health struggles gets applause and “thank you for sharing, bro.” A woman doing the same gets an eye roll and a “you should probably talk to a therapist instead.” The imbalance is glaring, but because it’s cloaked in therapy-speak rather than outright sexism, it flies under the radar.
And let’s be very honest, trauma dumping isn’t the only label being weaponised. Gaslighting, narcissism, emotional labour, energy vampires—all of these once-useful psychological concepts have been watered down and repurposed to make women feel like expressing themselves is an act of emotional violence. You’re not venting, you’re dumping. You’re not upset, you’re dysregulated. You’re not sad, you’re spiralling. What started as a helpful language for understanding emotions has morphed into a high-tech muzzle, one that convinces women their emotions are not just inconvenient but actually harmful to those around them.
So I’ve had a radical thought… maybe the problem isn’t women talking about their emotions—maybe it’s a society that still doesn’t know what to do with female pain unless it’s silent, sexy, or repurposed for men’s character development. Maybe the real issue isn’t that we’re trauma dumping—maybe it’s that too many people would rather keep things surface-level than sit with the discomfort of reality. Because if women stopped filtering their pain, the world might actually have to listen.
The Audacity of Having Feelings (While Female)
If trauma dumping were a universal crime, someone needs to arrest ire true crime podcast industry immediately. Because let’s be very real… people will happily listen to three-hour deep dives on Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood snack preferences, but the second a woman mentions workplace harassment, it’s “ugh, let’s keep it light.” Make it make sense. Entire Netflix docu-series exist to dissect the trauma of male criminals, but when a woman dares to discuss the structural horrors of existing in the world? Too much, babe. No one wants to hear it. (Unless, of course, it’s rebranded into a prestige drama starring a sad man with a five o’clock shadow—then it’s “important commentary.”)
But let’s discuss who gets shut down the most for “trauma dumping.” It’s not the middle-class white woman earnestly dissecting her complicated relationship with her mum in a way that’s poetic but ultimately unthreatening. It’s the loud, the angry, the inconvenient—the ones pointing out that misogyny, racism, homophobia, and classism aren’t just vibes but active, systemic nightmares. It’s Meghan Markle, whose entirely factual discussion of racism in the royal family was met with “God, why is she making it about race?” (Because it was about race, Susan.) It’s Britney Spears, who spent years being mocked for “oversharing” about her conservatorship, only for the world to finally realise she wasn’t dumping—she was warning us. It’s women of colour, disabled women, working-class women, constantly told their struggles are a personal issue rather than a structural one. (Can’t afford rent? Just stop buying coffee. Experiencing medical neglect? Have you tried yoga?)
And let’s be open and honest: if trauma dumping had existed as a term in the past, we’d have called the suffragettes attention-seekers. We’d have told the women of #MeToo they were oversharing. (“God, another man accused of harassment? Can we talk about something fun?”) The problem has never been that women talk too much. The problem is that when women tell the truth, people have to either listen or admit they don’t care. And it turns out, a lot of people would rather call you exhausting than face the fact that the world is built to exhaust you.
So let’s speak facts… if discussing oppression makes you uncomfortable, that’s not trauma dumping—that’s your own privilege talking. If listening to someone’s struggles for five minutes makes you feel drained, imagine living through it. And if your response to systemic injustice is “Have you tried manifesting a better reality?”, then congratulations—you’ve officially become the human equivalent of a Live, Laugh, Love sign in a failing marriage.
The Cost of Being “Too Much”
There’s a reason women second-guess themselves before speaking. A reason why so many of us preface our stories with “I know this sounds dramatic, but—” or “Sorry if this is too much, but—” before saying anything remotely real. It’s not just insecurity; it’s conditioning. Because when women express emotion—whether it’s grief, frustration, fear, or god forbid, anger—the response isn’t empathy. It’s “calm down,” “you’re overreacting,” or the classic “stop making everything about you.” Women learn early that their emotions need to be edited for public consumption, that trauma should be packaged neatly, and that if their feelings make others uncomfortable, they’re the problem.
And this isn’t just some abstract social trend: it’s statistically backed psychological warfare. In a 2022 study, 72% of women reported being told they were “overreacting” when speaking about harassment or discrimination. Meanwhile, only 14% of men said the same. Another report from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that women who express negative emotions in professional settings are seen as less competent, while men expressing the same emotions are perceived as strong leaders. The result? Women, especially those in male-dominated spaces, become masters of emotional PR, constantly calculating the acceptable amount of frustration, sadness, or confidence they can show before being labelled unprofessional. (Men get to have emotions. Women get performance reviews.)
But this emotional policing goes beyond the workplace. It follows us women everywhere, affecting how their trauma is processed in relationships, healthcare, and even the legal system. A study published in Violence Against Women found that women who show visible distress when recounting sexual assault are less likely to be believed, while those who remain composed are dismissed as emotionless and unreliable. This creates the ultimate lose-lose scenario: react too much, and you’re hysterical. React too little, and you’re probably lying. (The justice system is somehow both allergic to feelings and deeply invested in how convincingly you perform them.)
And this emotional invalidation doesn’t just happen in crisis moments; it’s embedded in everyday life. If a woman brings up misogyny in a group conversation, she’s “too sensitive.” If she talks about workplace discrimination, she’s “playing the victim.” If she expresses frustration about how exhausting it is to constantly navigate these social minefields, she’s “angry” or, worse, one of those feminists. Meanwhile, men can monologue about how much they “deserve” a promotion, how awful their ex was, or how their football team lost a match they weren’t even playing in, and somehow, no one accuses them of being too much. (How fascinating.)
This isn’t just irritating… it’s psychologically damaging. Women who are constantly dismissed, interrupted, or told to “chill” when expressing valid emotions are more likely to develop chronic stress, anxiety, and self-doubt. Studies on emotional suppression show that repeated invalidation leads to heightened cortisol levels, depression, and even physical symptoms like migraines and chronic pain. In other words, the world gaslights women into shutting up about their emotions—then has the audacity to ask why they have so many unresolved ones. (Maybe because every time we bring them up, someone tells us to just “breathe through it” like an inspirational yoga instructor.)
And what makes this even worse? This isn’t just something men do to women—women do it to each other too. We’ve been so conditioned to see our own emotions as inconvenient that we instinctively minimise the emotions of others. It’s why so many women have heard their struggles met with “Yeah, but it could be worse,” “At least you’re not starving,” or “Other people have it harder.” (Because clearly, the only way to earn compassion is through extreme suffering, preferably with an Oscar-worthy performance.) This isn’t solidarity. This is scarcity mindset, emotional edition—as if only a limited amount of empathy exists, and if we take too much, we’re stealing from someone who “needs it more.”
At the root of all this is one grim reality: the world simply does not take women’s pain seriously. Studies show that women’s medical symptoms are less likely to be believed in hospitals, with doctors routinely dismissing their pain as anxiety or stress. Women’s mental health issues are more likely to be trivialised, with mood disorders in women often being misdiagnosed as “emotional instability” rather than legitimate neurochemical imbalances. And when women finally demand to be taken seriously, the world doesn’t just ignore them—it mocks them. (Because apparently, it’s easier to make fun of someone for being “dramatic” than to actually address what made them that way.)
So where does that leave us? Exhausted. Tired of fighting for the right to be taken seriously in our own experiences. Tired of being called sensitive for reacting to things that are actually awful. Tired of needing scientific studies, cultural essays, and pop culture references just to prove that, yes, women’s emotions are real. Because the truth is, we shouldn’t have to justify our feelings to begin with. We should be allowed to exist—fully, loudly, and unapologetically—without constantly being told to tone it down. Maybe it’s not that we’re “too emotional.” Maybe the world just isn’t emotional enough.
Men Solve Problems; Us Women Just Whine
I once had a conversation with a male friend—let’s call him Alex because, statistically, he probably is—who confidently informed me that women use trauma to manipulate, while men just “solve problems.” This was delivered with the kind of certainty usually reserved for investment bros explaining crypto to uninterested women at house parties. He leaned back, smug, clearly under the impression that he’d just dropped some life-altering wisdom. I, unfortunately, was still chewing on the sheer absurdity of what had just left his mouth.
Alex’s logic went like this: when men face struggles, they get on with it. They fix things. They don’t “trauma dump” on their mates because they have self-respect (his words, not mine). Meanwhile, women, being the delicate emotional creatures that we are, apparently offload our problems onto unwilling listeners as some kind of tactical power play, using vulnerability as a social weapon instead of, I don’t know, having real human emotions. Ah yes, the Machiavellian art of simply existing while sad. The scandal!
But the truth is, men absolutely trauma dump—they just don’t call it that.
Sitting in the pub for three hours while your mate complains about his ex, his boss, or the VAR decision that ruined his weekend? That’s trauma dumping. Unloading his entire relationship history onto the nearest woman the second she makes polite eye contact? Trauma dumping. (Sorry, but how many times have you sat next to a man on public transport and left knowing his entire financial history?) The difference is, when men ‘vent’, it’s seen as valid frustration; when women vent, it’s oversharing. Alex and his brethren don’t avoid trauma dumping because they’re superior problem-solvers—they avoid it because society only lets them express emotions in two acceptable forms: rage or silence.
And therein lies the real kicker… when men express anger, it’s called passion. When women express pain, it’s called hysteria. Look at how often we celebrate men for being “tortured geniuses,” from Kanye West to Steve Jobs to literally any male filmmaker who’s ever yelled at an assistant. Their emotional volatility is reframed as brilliance. Meanwhile, when women dare to express actual distress, they’re labelled unstable, dramatic, or “attention-seeking.” We tell men their emotions make them complex while telling women their emotions make them liabilities.
The most ironic part? As this conversation with Alex ended, he sighed dramatically and went on a ten-minute rant about how his boss never appreciates his ideas—completely unaware that, by his own logic, he had just emotionally manipulated me into pretending to care. Amazing.
“Babe, Just Manifest a Better Reality” (And Other Ways Society Silences Women of Colour)
And honestly? I really do feel sorry for Black women and other women of colour because if women, in general, are getting told to shut up about their trauma, then women of colour are basically getting hit with a legal cease and desist. Every time I scroll through social media, I see it—Black women being accused of aggression for speaking firmly, women in hijabs being told they’re “oppressed” for talking about their lived experiences, Asian women’s struggles being dismissed because “you’re meant to be the smart ones, though.” Society already treats female emotion as an inconvenience—add race into the mix, and suddenly, it’s a threat.
It’s not even subtle. The “angry Black woman” stereotype alone has done more damage to public discourse than any “trauma dumper” ever could. It doesn’t matter if a Black woman is calmly explaining workplace discrimination or giving a masterclass in patience while a stranger touches her hair (“It’s just so exotic!”); the second she asserts herself, she’s too much. Meanwhile, white women, particularly the rich ones with pastel Instagram aesthetics, are allowed to cry on camera about being gluten-intolerant and misunderstood and get nothing but “You’re so brave, queen” in response. It’s a very selective kind of tolerance.
And that’s because trauma dumping accusations are just respectability politics in a therapist’s chair. Society doesn’t actually mind when women talk about their struggles—it just wants them to do it in a way that makes everyone else comfortable. White women, for example, are often given space to be sad but not angry. Black women, on the other hand, aren’t even afforded sadness. If they cry, they’re weak. If they’re angry, they’re aggressive. If they stay quiet, they lack resilience. (At this point, the only “acceptable” Black woman is an AI-generated one with no emotions.)
And now, Gen Z—the generation that was meant to do better—has started weaponising therapy-speak to avoid accountability. I see it every day on TikTok. A woman shares a story about being treated like dirt in a relationship, and instead of getting support, the comments are filled with “Babe, this sounds like a YOU problem” and “This isn’t trauma dumping—it’s just trauma projecting.” This is the generation that prides itself on mental health awareness, yet half of them would rather psychoanalyse a stranger’s pain than acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, women deserve space to vent.
The wildest part of it all? The exact same people who accuse women of trauma dumping will happily sit through ten-minute TikToks of men dramatically recounting the time their ex wore the wrong outfit to dinner. Because apparently, talking about the emotional devastation of a woman ordering the wrong sauce is fine, but discussing actual harassment is negative energy. Make it make sense.
So this isn’t about boundaries. It’s about control. It’s about who’s allowed to feel things publicly and who’s expected to bottle it up. It’s about how society frames male emotions as passionate, white women’s emotions as delicate, and Black women’s emotions as dangerous. If women, all women, stopped filtering their pain, the world might actually have to start taking it seriously. And that, apparently, is the real issue.
When Did Feeling Become Littering?
It’s safe to say that the phrase "trauma dumping" sounds like something out of a waste management manual, as if women’s emotions are hazardous materials that need to be disposed of properly. It doesn’t frame emotional expression as connection or healing—it frames it as pollution, something gross and inconsiderate that people have to “clean up” after. If a woman talks about her struggles, she isn’t seen as someone reaching out for help. She’s seen as the emotional equivalent of someone chucking a plastic bottle into the ocean.
But this language is more than just cruel, it’s completely detached from how human beings actually function. People don’t share their pain because they want to ruin someone’s day. They do it because that’s how humans process things—through words, through connection, through not being alone in it. Telling someone they’re “dumping” their trauma instead of expressing it is like calling a drowning person ‘needy’ for gasping for air. They don’t need to be shamed; they need to be helped.
And here’s where it gets even uglier: this language doesn’t just minimise pain—it shifts blame. Instead of asking why someone is suffering, it asks why they won’t just shut up about it. Instead of questioning the people who caused harm, it questions the people still struggling with it. And nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to survivors of abuse, assault, and harassment.
There is already a mountain of obstacles in the way of survivors coming forward. According to recent studies, 60% of assault survivors delay reporting because they’re afraid of being seen as "dramatic." Not because they aren’t sure what happened to them, not because they don’t want justice, but because they know exactly how the world will react.They know that instead of asking “Who hurt you?” the world will ask “Why are you still talking about it?”
And when survivors do speak? They’re treated like a problem to be managed rather than a person in need of support. This is what happens when phrases like "trauma dumping" gain traction. It creates a culture where the person sharing their pain is seen as the real issue, not the person who caused it. It tells victims that the worst thing they can do is make other people uncomfortable—as if their comfort is somehow more important than the pain they’ve been forced to carry.
Words shape how we see the world. If trauma is framed as something women “dump,” then no one has to take responsibility for the fact that they’re suffering in the first place. Instead of looking at a system that enables harm, we look at the women trying to process it and tell them they’re making a mess. That is not accountability. That is victim-blaming with a vocabulary update.
Take Up Space. Dump Louder.
If society insists on calling our emotions trash, then fine… let’s dump louder. Let’s pile our truths so high they block out the skyline. If men get to scream about football losses and HR departments get to send “We Care About Mental Health” emails while firing women for reporting harassment, then women should get to speak without apology. If my trauma is a dumpster fire, maybe society should stop throwing gasoline. Because the real issue isn’t that women have too many feelings—it’s that the world keeps giving us reasons to have them.
And if vulnerability is “dumping,” then patriarchy is the landfill—a bloated, rotting mass of silenced pain, ignored injustices, and corporate wellness schemes designed to keep women quiet while selling us lavender-scented coping mechanisms. Camille Paglia once argued that modern feminism encourages victimhood, but let’s flip that on its head: what’s more “victim culture” than telling women to shut up instead of fixing the world that keeps hurting them? Vulnerability isn’t the problem. The problem is a society that keeps burying women’s voices under mountains of respectability, shame, and gaslighting disguised as self-care.
Wow! This is SO good…and I’m feeling more empowered just from reading it. Love your writing so much (just reposted in fact) Not sure my ‘ouvre’ overlaps too much with yours…but would love you to take a look at my posts. They’re all about being authentic about my trauma 🙌
I won’t lie, I came for the unicorn picture, but the post was excellent and was the reason I stayed!