97. Why Trauma Dumping Happens And How To Stop It When You Really Like Someone

Have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking… why did I say all of that?
In this episode we talk about why trauma dumping happens, why insecure attachment makes us overshare too fast, and what you can do to slow it down so you feel more grounded, confident, and connected in your relationships.

You might want to listen if:
 • You overshare when you feel anxious or want someone to like you
 • You crash into a shame spiral after being vulnerable
 • You mistake urgency for intimacy
 • You struggle to regulate before you communicate
 • You want to understand the real attachment based reason trauma dumping happens

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DISCLAIMER: Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from ...

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Topic Reveal
• 0:55 Membership Invitation And Assessment CTA
• 2:02 Oversharing As Attachment Response
• 3:10 Client Story And Nervous System Insight
• 5:02 Regulation Before Communication
• 6:33 The Shame Spiral After Oversharing
• 8:06 Three Practical Shifts To Slow Down
• 12:00 Community Support And Final CTAs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now, let's dive in. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship and author of best-selling book, Dance of Attachment. And on today's episode, we are going to be talking about a topic that I know so many of you, especially inside of the membership, are asking me about right now. And I really want to talk about trauma dumping. All right. And specifically, why, as insecurely attached women, are we trauma dumping, right? Why are we oversharing too fast? Why do we leave every conversation overthinking? Why on earth did I say all of that? So if you've ever had a vulnerability hangover, or if you've ever felt that shame spiral that comes up when you are just dumping all of your thoughts onto someone, then I want you to listen to this. But before we dive in, I do want to let you know that everything that we're talking about today is what we work on inside of the Speak Honest membership. That's where we build emotional regulation. We learn how to set boundaries without guilt, and we learn how to communicate with confidence. And if you've been thinking about joining, now is the perfect time to come and chat with me about it. I have a free attachment assessment that you can schedule with me, and you and I'll talk for 30 minutes and we'll talk about what the membership would do for you. You can scroll on down to the show notes and click on that, or you can go to danceofattachment.com slash assessment. All right, now let's dive in to trauma dumping. One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that oversharing means you want attention, or that you're too dramatic, or that you're too much. Nope. Oversharing is just an attachment response. It's your nervous system trying to create safety as fast as possible. I want you to imagine your attachment system like a smoke alarm. Anxious and avoidant women both have alarms that go off faster than the average person. Not because you're broken, but because your body learned very early on that connection could disappear at any moment. So when you meet someone new or when you feel even a hint of uncertainty, your system starts scanning. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Are you safe? Will you leave? Will he leave? Can I trust you? Do I matter? And you're constantly scanning for this. And the fastest way your body knows to answer that is to share something vulnerable. It's literally trying to secure the connection before anything bad can happen. So the trauma dump, it's not really a character flaw, it's a survival strategy. Let me tell you about one of my clients. And this is one of my favorite teaching moments, and she gave me permission to share this story. So she went on a date recently with someone she really liked. Like the kind of date, you know, that feels like electricity. And they sat down, and within 30 minutes, she had told him about her whole childhood, her last breakup, her anxious spiral, the time she texted someone 12 times in a row, and the entire saga of her relationship with her dad. Right? And halfway through, she could feel herself thinking, oh my gosh, you need to shut up. But she couldn't. She said it felt like her mouth was on autopilot, like her brain was somewhere else watching the chaos literally unfold. And after the date, she scheduled a session with me and she was talking to me and she said, Jen, I just, I feel sick. I don't know what happened. I thought I was past this. That phrasing right there. I thought I was past this. If that's something you've ever said, I want you to keep listening. Because what I told her is exactly what I'm telling you. Trauma dumping is not an intellectual problem, it's a nervous system regulation. Her body was just trying to secure him, basically. She liked him so much that her alarm and her chest went wild. And oversharing was just her way of trying to feel safe. And when we worked on her regulation, see when she learned how to slow down, how to breathe, and tolerate those unfamiliar moments of space, that's when her oversharing eventually could stop. Not because she forced herself, not because, you know, she thought she was already past this, but because her body finally learned that she didn't need to do that anymore. And this is why regulation always comes before communication and anything that it is that we do. And that's why oftentimes you hear me start with my raise method that we talk about inside of my program. Now, if you're unfamiliar with what the raise method is and you're new here, you can just go back a couple episodes and I talk about it. But you can also join our speak honest membership and learn what it is there, where we remove ourselves, we anchor ourselves, we inquire, and then we check in with our stories, and then we equilibrate. See, your words change when your nervous system feels safe. So let's talk about the part that no one likes to talk about, right? No one likes to admit this part, but the morning after, what happens after you trauma dump? The overthinking, the pit in your stomach, the whole, why did I just say that? Oh no, he's going to think I'm too much. He's gonna think I'm a psycho. Great, I ruined everything, right? That phrasing right there, I ruined everything. And the shame spiral happens because your attachment system was driving the bus this entire time. Your attachment system is your subconscious. We've talked about this before, where your subconscious is responsible for 95% of everything that it is that you do. So in that moment, your attachment system, your subconscious, was driving the bus. And once the panic calms down, your thinking brain comes back up online, right? So your prefrontal cortex kind of pops back online and all of a sudden it's like, oh shit. And it starts judging everything that happened from the way you drank your coffee with him to the way you giggled at the words that he said. But I want you to remember that this shame that you feel inside of your body, it's not truth. Shame is just your old conditioning. Shame is the story you were told about being too emotional or too expressive or just being human. And when I say trauma dumping is an attachment response, I mean it. This is not something broken in you. This is something learned in you, and anything learned can be unlearned. So let's talk about what to do. How do you stop trauma dumping? Because I get it. You don't want to, you know, be on a first date and tell your new person who's sitting in front of you just trying to drink their hot chocolate, you know, why your dad is such an asshole. I get it. We do want to be able to control when we release the information. So how do we stop this? How do we stop trauma dumping? How do we slow down when our chest basically feels like it's on fire? So I want to give you three practical shifts. One, regulate before you communicate. You can't speak honestly if your body feels unsafe. So if you're sitting there across from someone and you're starting to feel your heart racing or your hands are shaking, then we need to work on your nervous system regulation. Pausing, breathing, put a hand on your heart, put a hand on your belly, drop your shoulders. Why don't you try it with me right now? Take a nice big deep breath in and then out. Let your shoulders drop. Let your jaw unclench. Try doing this before a first date. If you're all excited and you're all nervous and you're about to walk into the coffee shop, just take a moment in your car before you do. Put your hands, one on your chest, one on your stomach, and breathe. Tell yourself I am safe. And it's okay if you do trauma dump. It's okay if you quote unquote mess up. But it's about getting your body to feel safe in the moment. It's letting your nervous system catch up to the present moment. The second shift I want you to try is sharing in layers. Because again, if we go back to the beginning that I was explaining where we're just sharing everything because we want the connection to stay, I want you to remind yourself that this connection is healthy and that you have time. So healthy connection is built through pacing. It's completely okay to say, hey, I want to share more with you, but I want to take it slow. That's secure energy. So if you're talking about something, you're like, oh yeah, whew, my relationship with my dad is a tough one. But maybe we'll talk about that on our second date. And you can even be playful with this because you want them wanting more, right? You want them getting to learn more about you over time. If you give them all of that information right now, it actually can sometimes hinder your connection. Because what else is there to talk about on date two, three, four, or five if you've given them everything in the first one? So just remember to share in layers. And then the last one. I want you to notice your urge to overshare. The urge itself is just information, it's your attachment system lighting up. You can feel the urge and choose a different response. That is healing in real time. Right? We have our reaction and then we have our pause, and then we have a response. That's the power. The power is in the pause. I'm sure you guys have heard this before, but if you haven't, great. You're gonna be completely enlightened by this quote right here. The power is in the pause. So in this moment, you want to share something. You want to talk about the trauma in your life. You want to talk about the boyfriend, what you were a teenager who cheated on you with your best friend. But I want you to pause and I want you to say, okay, is this first date information? Maybe I can wait till the second date. That urge to share it, just check in on it. Notice it. Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? What's going on for you there? And if you don't want to share it, then maybe you could put it in a pocket somewhere and you can share it for later. Remember, not sharing it today doesn't mean you're not going to share it later. It's just about pacing yourself. And so I want you to notice when you have this urge to want to overshare. And through that noticing, through that observation, you'll slowly shift it over time. This isn't going to be a one-time thing. You change tomorrow. This is going to be every single time you meet with someone and you tend to overshare, you will check in with yourself and you'll be able to slowly shift it. So if you see yourself in this at all, if you see yourself trauma dumping, if you crash into shame after doing this, if you feel like you lose your voice when what you really want is connection, I just want you to know you're not alone. And this is absolutely something you can heal. I teach women how to do this every single week inside of our Speak Honest membership. We do regulation, communication, boundaries, and confidence. It's all there. And it's a small, supportive space full of women just like you who get it, who just want to feel connected, who just want a safe space to heal, to mess up, to be themselves. If you've been thinking about joining or you're just curious, then come chat with me. Book your free attachment assessment with me right now. You can scroll down to the show notes, or you can go to dance of attachment.com slash assessment. This is where we figure out whether this is the right next step for you, or maybe there's somewhere else you need to go. You'll hear me say this all the time, but not everyone is for everyone. But why don't you jump on a call with me, see if we would be a good fit. What is it that you want out of life? What kind of relationship do you want to be in? Do you want to be the type of person that feels in control and secure when they show up on their next date? Or do you want to be someone who's anxious and shaking and not sure what's gonna happen and they wake up the next morning with a vulnerability hangover because they said everything they wanted to not say? That's what I want you to think about. So if that feels like it's right for you, go ahead and schedule in with me. I know that we are coming up on the holidays right now, so times are busy. But if you and I talk now, then we'll get you ready to go by January inside of the membership. And I'm so excited, because a little side tangent here, but we are actually going to be mixing up the Speak Honest membership soon, and we are shifting over to a brand new platform, and I'm just so excited about it, so I can't wait to have you be a part of it. But with all of that said, I just want you to know that I'm here for you and I'm thinking about you, and it is okay if every once in a while you have to dump out your trauma. Just remember that it is a part of your attachment pattern. It doesn't have to be with you forever. And listen, send this episode to a friend who overexplains everything also, and you guys can connect together about that, and you can laugh and you can giggle and you can see that you're not alone. But I will talk with you all next week. Take care. As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination. And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we cover today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.