"trauma dumping" is a capitalist concept

listening to my friends parse through their feelings is the greatest privilege of my life.

In the last few months, at least three friends have shared challenging and unpleasant emotions and life experience with me and then rounded out this display of admirable vulnerability with an apology. They’re sorry for trauma dumping. Let’s go back to drinking our beers.

Fuck that.

The idea of “trauma dumping” originated from a genuine concern about unequal relationships under racial capitalism and patriarchy. It is not fair to have friendships in which one person exclusively bears the burden of listening to others and offering support and care and gentleness. There are patterns of men expecting this of women and white women expecting this from people of color. It’s right to call out that men might ask this of women and expect nothing in return. It’s right to question if you take up unequal space in a relationship, and to adjust if that’s the case. But the takeaway cannot be that our community doesn’t care if we’re suffering or struggling. The remedy is to share more, not less. You deserve to be heard. Your friends listening to you deserve to be heard, too.

American culture has emphasized the nuclear family above platonic love and community over and over again because doing so is critical for capitalism to function. If your whole world is your job and the very limited outlets provided by heteronormative notions of family, you will work harder. You may believe the xenophobic ideas necessary for racial capitalism. It’s easier to convince people that others are subhuman where human emotions are not shared.

Shahem Mclaurin (@5hahem) posted a video about therapy a few months ago where he explained that therapy is a training ground. Therapy isn’t meant to be the only time where you talk about your emotions; it exists to train you to express them healthily. You cannot only express deep feelings for an hour every week or two, and frankly, your therapist cannot understand you as well as those who see you in the real world can. The goal of a therapy practice is to give you the skills to express difficult emotions healthily. The goal is not that you will magically only need to express those emotions for a set chunk of time to someone you are paying. We live in hell. To be mentally well, you’re going to need to talk about it.

Our society is one built on separation and differentiation and the rejection of shared humanity. Now more than ever, listening to each other without judgment or agenda is a radical act. Sharing hard things, as long as there is reciprocity, is a radical act. The greatest privilege of my life is listening to my friends parse through their emotions.

The concept of emotional labor is real and important, but it exists to remind those of us who are not good at it that emotional labor is, in fact, time consuming and real. It’s as much of a contribution as paying for drinks and dinner, but it’s not the only way to show care. A male friend of mine recently expressed that he was unsure if sharing his emotions was burdensome. Of course it is. But the same friend would pick me up from the airport, talks through concepts that he has expertise in, answers the phone in the middle of the night. It is a joy to have people who need me to show up in ways that feel intuitive. The issue is where they don’t show up in return, not where we show up for each other in ways that make sense. To each according to their ability, from each according to his need, you know?

Fascism only works if we are divorced from each other. It only works when we cannot share our full selves with the people who love us. When emotions go unheard, at best, we suffer in silence. At worst, we are convinced that the hardest parts of life are experienced in a vacuum and that others do not understand the complexity of our own lives.

Vulnerability and honesty—both shared and listened to—are the only true antidote to the terrifying and terrible impulses that our culture tells us are correct.