After having walked away from a verbal exchange with someone, do you ever feel more conflicted and confused than before you started? Then you might have just experienced emotional dumping.
Emotional dumping is used as a way for people to escape from taking any responsibility for their actions, circumstances or state of the relationship. It is also a way to deflect the real issues at hand, as a way to protect themselves from coming into and embracing a vulnerable state. Emotional dumping includes:
- the need to be right or feel justified trumps the ability to compromise or look for a solution.
- victim type behaviours and language.
- defensive with the need to blame you/others.
- the conversation is overwhelming – either with a ‘dumpload’ of issues, or a constant repeat of the same issue.
- the conversation happens on their agenda and your time is not considered.
There are times when emotional dumping will be directed at you or you become the emotional dumping ground – in either case, the person in front of you isn’t really wanting your input, advice or perspective. Knowing this can be helpful in allowing yourself to make decisions about how you want to handle this type of behaviour in the future, by taking your space, shutting it down, or politely explaining that you can no longer participate in a conversation that goes nowhere. 🙂
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@gary_at_unsplash