Stop trauma dumping on me! How to know if you're trauma dumping vs. trauma reprocessing

Have you heard of trauma dumping? It’s become a new way to attack victims for talking about their narcissistic abuse experiences.

Rossana Faye joins me as this week’s special guest to explore the importance of sharing your trauma and the role it plays in helping you heal from abuse.

And you don’t want to miss this week’s Podcast Extra where Ro and I discuss the differences between trauma reprocessing and trauma dumping. For this exclusive interview, subscribe here: substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse

Reference:
Betrayal Blindness by Jennifer Freyd: https://amzn.to/3VIEvFU

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., a mental health specialist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships, deconstructing narcissism, and understanding various other mental health-related issues. Her memoir, Love You More: The Harrowing Tale of Lies, Sex Addiction, & Double Cross, gives an uncensored glimpse into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse.

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Transcript

Kerry: Is it trauma dumping to revisit the same memories after a traumatic experience or abusive relationship? Today, Rosanna Faye joined me to talk about why victims recount the same stories after leaving a toxic relationship and why it's gotten such a bad rap.

I met a woman this week who was so excited to find a community where she felt like she could talk about what's been going on because she feels like she's been doing nothing but what she called "trauma dumping." I have such a strong reaction to that word. I hate that word. But I remember that place where I just couldn't stop talking about what happened to me.

And I knew I was wearing everybody else out. Did you have that kind of experience? 

Ro: too? I did. And I think it came from never really being able to share ever in the relationship. Like I know you've mentioned this to me before, Kerry, about how you noticed when I was [00:01:00]explaining my stories and my experience how I wasn't heard, I was silenced, I didn't have a voice.

That's one thing that like really resonated with me was, and I didn't even realize it in the relationship, is that I lost my voice. So the second you start to get it back and you start to share, it's like it just verbal diarrhea, like it just all starts coming out. And you can't help it. 

Kerry: Yeah. In fact, if you and I survived an airplane crash, do you think that we would shut up about that? We would be talking about it everywhere. 

Ro: Every day. 

Kerry: I know. We would say, I was on that flight, and I can't believe this is what happened. And then people would say, Oh, tell me about it. Like, what was that like?

And when you first realized it was going down, what did you, I mean, right? There would be dialogue back and forth. So, what do you think happens around these abusive relationships that make this dynamic feel different? 

Ro: I think there's a level of, you know when people say you chose him, you chose 

them, 

you know, like the relatability of your inner relationship that you chose, that you chose to stay in [00:02:00] versus a tragic accident that you had no choice in the matter of a plane crash.

So it's more entertaining. It's more exciting. You know you see it in the movies. Nobody really talks about the emotional abuse, that side of it, that's not very movie-like, that's not very interesting. No one wants to hear about it, and because maybe some people feel like they wouldn't do that for them.

Like I've heard, well, if that ever happened to me, I wouldn't stick in that relationship. I don't know how you stuck around, like, they just don't understand it. Whereas, a plane crash is more interesting than the plane crash of a relationship. You know, that is tragic, but it's not as interesting to people, I guess.

Kerry: Yeah, you're right. There's a novel piece to it. I agree. But I, I also think there's a piece of it that we apply to victims of relationship trauma that we don't apply to other types of trauma. I met somebody that survived like a 50-car pile-up on one of those super highways. And that's pretty dramatic.

And in fact, this person barely made it out with their life and certainly barely made it out being able to walk. We don't look [00:03:00] at that person and say, what did you do wrong? I mean, did you swerve, or how could you not see the person in front of you? Right? They would say, well, in fact, that I remember specifically about this incident was foggy.

They couldn't see. They heard the crashing, but they didn't see what was happening ahead of them until too late. And then they piled right into everybody else. And then they heard the crashing behind them. It is a terrible, horrifying experience, but surviving one of these toxic relationships is equally terrifying and horrifying. It feels like to me, we apply a different rule to victims of relationships than we apply to victims who survive something that's a tragedy like that.

Ro: What would that rule be? Like, I think we, the exception? 

Kerry: Well, I think that we view that relationships are always equally autonomous, and their power is equal between both partners. But we say, what red flags did you miss? I mean, that's one of the common questions that victims get asked. So we assume there's this ability to anticipate danger and that when you go in that you have the same kind of shared power, shared [00:04:00] control between the two of you.

And yet you and I, who've survived a toxic relationship, know that that is not the case. There's not shared power, there's not equal control. We assume it, and in fact, I know that if I'm not careful, I have that natural bias as well. 

Ro: Yes. Yeah, I see that, too, as where you say there's an equal power of force here like somebody has more power than the other.

When you see that in a relationship, I think sometimes when we share this with people, they might identify those behaviors as well and go well, I'm not a narcissist, or I'm not toxic, I do stuff like that, I check your phone if I don't trust you, and when you're thinking of a plane crash or like a car pileup, it's, there's no relation to that, there's no, I could potentially harm you in that way, whereas when you share it with other people, they might think, well, are you saying that I could do that to you?

I would never do that to somebody. You know, and so they, they take that on. Sometimes when I used to share stories, especially with men, they would say, well, I mean, I've done things like that. I would never do that to my partner. [00:05:00] And they take it on and internalize it as if we're pointing the finger at them when we're not.

We're just sharing our stories. 

Kerry: You're right. There is over-identification that we often do with the perpetrator or with the abusive person. I also think that we, I'm going to just say it right out loud. I don't think we like victims. I just think we disrespect them. I think we think they're pitiful and idiotic.

That they are gullible. You 

Ro: just said it, people are thinking it, and you said it because I know people think that, and it's hard to say. I wouldn't say it. And you said it, that's a hard thing to say because we are victims and it sucks to hear that it's true. People don't like us. People don't like victims. 

Kerry: No, they have a hidden contempt.

And that bleeds out in these comments, and we don't then give them the space to heal that we would give any other ordinary trauma survivor. I mean, if someone came up and said, somebody just killed a family member of mine, or I know I went through several, a husband dying of cancer and the son having leukemia, people were [00:06:00] very, very sympathetic.

People had no sympathy for me, what was going on in that relationship. I knew once I discovered that he was cheating, I stopped talking to people because I knew that the minute I said he's cheating, they're going to look at me and be like, and you're still here? Why are you still in a relationship? Why have you not left?

That immediately they're going to assign responsibility to me. And then I was going to have to take on shame for my behavior, my lack of action, my indecisiveness. I was going to also own his bad behavior. They're going to assign something defective to me because of his acting out. So I just could feel the weight of that.

Here's the thing that like breaks my heart. That I know that if I could have shared more of what was going on the inside of that relationship sooner, faster. I wouldn't have stayed as long. Yeah. I would have gotten the support I needed, the validation I needed, I would have gotten the energy, even just the positive energy that I needed for me to say, I'm worth more than that, what the hell, why am I here?

I need to get out of this. This is ridiculous. But because I felt so shut down that I couldn't go. I did share, I had two terrible, [00:07:00] terrible experiences. One was right dead center of the relationship when I had left him, and I was talking to some people that I had gone through a really horrific experience of, with my, my late husband surviving a very serious surgery as part of the effort to save him from the cancer.

I shared with this group of women whose husbands had all gone through the same thing. We had been so there for each other and I shared them about the cheating and the indecisiveness and that I had separated and the amount of attack that I got, it was a Facebook group. I dropped out of the group. I disappeared for a month.

And then when I came back, things were never the same. I could tell that I had permanently destroyed those relationships by sharing, by doing nothing more than sharing. And then when I got out of the whole thing and I was writing about it, and of course you're, when you first get out, you can do nothing but talk, talk, talk, talk about what happened.

And plus I'm writing about it. I actually had somebody call me up and tell me that I was wearing my community out, that I was the joke, the laughing joke behind my back, and that she was calling me out of an [00:08:00] effort to save me from myself. Everybody has suffered like that. There's nothing unusual about your experience.

Ro: Oh, wow. Yes. 

Kerry: And by the way, that diatribe went on for an hour and a half, an hour and a half of reaming me out, like talking at me. She called me up the next day and did it again, and that time I hung up and I blocked her. But I learned really quickly that no one wants to hear about this, which you can tell I'm really passionate about it.

It makes me angry because I think this, I think we harm victims when we do this, really harm them. 

Ro: Yeah. And then how quiet we get afterwards, right? And then what you said too, it's really important to note that the amount of sharing that we express, the more we talk about it, the more it becomes more real.

And we get out of the delusion of that it wasn't so bad and into the reality of how bad it really was. But when we're talking to people and they're, they're minimizing it and almost gaslighting us to believe that, well, everyone has it bad. People go through trauma all the time. This isn't unique. You're [00:09:00] not unique and special.

As if your time and your sharing isn't enough just for the regular population, like everybody goes through it. 

Kerry: Yeah, it's like you have to defend yourself, you have to like say, but let me tell you, let me describe. Do you know what gaslighting is? Let me describe gaslighting. And do you know the fact that this person, there was covert abuse, like ambient abuse.

Do you know that I had no control over my daily schedule? I lost control every day. Most of the time they just look at you, yeah, but you let it. But I didn't know. 

Ro: How would I know?

Kerry: How would I know? It's like, it's like breathing carbon monoxide, it's odorless, tasteless, you're not aware that it's there, and yet it's poisoning you.

I just thought, oh, today was a unique day, and then we had another unique day, and then we had another, you know, I didn't know that this was. The staying up to 3 a. m. in the morning watching YouTube crash videos was his effort to exhaust me and that he set the alarm on purpose two hours early just to, again, wear out lack of sleep.

I didn't realize that he was running me all day without food on purpose to wear me out and give me a big headache and that he made sure that his work was done but I [00:10:00] had to do another shift when we got home because he kept me too busy to do my half of the work. I mean, I never realized any of that. I just thought, well, that's just, what life looks like and how the day unfolded.

I didn't realize this was a deliberate effort to undermine me, to hurt me, leave me powerless. And yeah, I didn't know that. So I think the other thing we really underestimate, and I know enough of your story, and I certainly know it's true for you, is that we don't realize we met somebody deceptive. I mean, they really present beautifully, like this is an amazing person.

You really fall in love with who you think that they are, and it's only when there's something that captures you, like, like a commitment of some kind, or a big thing, a big transition, that suddenly you see for the first time that glimpse of the real person. And at that point, we, we write it off. We think, well, people get hungry, people have bad days, we, you know, we didn't realize that this, again, was a set up.

Ro: Yeah. 

Kerry: Yeah. 

Ro: The thing too is, for me, I shared a lot, not with communities and with, with people [00:11:00] that didn't know us, but with people who knew us. With my family, with my friends, with people who are in our circle. We were together 14 years, so we developed like quite a close friendship. And the deception didn't just stop at me.

It was all the friends and family. It was my loved ones. It was the friends we met together. It was the people we worked with and so sharing with my close people, which were also his close people, he had won them over. So they were already deceived by him and didn't know it. So I'm living in this house with this man who's doing these things and I'm explaining how it's doesn't feel right.

It's a little bit off. I still don't even understand how bad it really is. And then explaining this, you know, this is a reason why I might want to leave. This is a reason why I might want to divorce. And they would, they would go, what, like, we, we love him. You guys are great together. Like they wouldn't understand it because one, I didn't really understand it and way I'm explaining it is coming from this blind place, but he had already won them over.

He had already charmed them too. So the [00:12:00] thought of him being deceptive, the thought of him harming me in any way, staying up late at night, screaming at me, pulling covers off of the bed while I'm trying to sleep after a 30 hour shift. These types of things they just don't they don't see it. They go. Oh, you know, everybody who's married has fights. Like they don't understand how bad it is and it's hard to explain it.

So that was my issue. It was trying to explain to the people who are already charmed by him and deceived by him How do they understand that I'm being deceived? They don't get it. 

Kerry: In fact, I think the smear campaign starts from the moment you met them. 

Ro: Yeah. 

Kerry: I don't think it starts near the end or when this person catches wind that you're maybe not all in anymore.

I think they set it up knowing that I have this persona. I want everybody to believe this. I'm going to quietly betray you by undermining people's perception of you. Gonna quietly like make little digs about you or act like I'm the long suffering partner of this person who has quirky habits. They're going to, in little [00:13:00] subtle ways, betray you and betray your confidences and betray your personality and who you are and that trust that you have in them by undermining people's perception of you so that by the time that the whole thing is blown up, they've already set the stage to, you know, I told you that she's really sensitive or I told you she's super particular or did I not say she was a control freak ?

They've already 

like, 

Ro: Oh yeah, you just, you saying that he's done that. The second I went on antidepressants, he told everyone in our group just to protect me. Just so you know, Rosanna, she's on medication because she's in a really deep emotional state. She's suffering postpartum.

There's a lot of things going through. So she's not thinking clearly. She's not, she's not as, you know, sharp as she was before. And she's getting quite emotional over things and we're taking care of it with medication. Just so you know, when she says things and she does things, it's coming from a place of her mental health crisis.

That's what he used to call it, my mental health crisis. He's the crisis, I'm the one who's 

suffering him. 

Kerry: Yeah, and I know, I know, and mine was even the same. I was chronically sick. [00:14:00] And now I suspect I was being quite, you know, subtly poisoned over time. So, of course, I would be sick, because, you know, I'm ingesting something that I shouldn't.

I'd had at least one hospitalization. So he was telling people that I was struggling. He went to my adult sons to share with them that he said to me, he was going to tell them that he broke up with me and that he's getting his act together and he's really going to make a big commitment to me.

I never thought to go and ask what version of the story they got. Until just recently they said, well, he said you guys are having problems, but you're working it out. That's all. That's all it was ever said. Yeah. No. I mean, nothing, no, no bigger story than that, but it made it look like, you know, he's carrying this great burden and he's making things right with my family.

No, not, not at all. Just listening to us, all this deception and this subterfuge and all this chaos and confusion that's happening. Is it any surprise that victims get out and we need to talk about it? Because we're not even for sure ourselves what exactly happened here.

We only know a little tip of the iceberg. We continue to discover more and more and more awful stuff about it. And of course we need to talk about it. I just [00:15:00] finished a book by Jennifer Freyd called Betrayal Blindness. She kept saying, and I deeply appreciate this part about the book, the importance of having a safe space to talk about it, and that processing, verbal processing, is an important part of the healing, and that the victims need that because it is part of our consolidation of what we experience, it's a way for us to work through our feelings.

When you've been so deceived, it's a way for you to validate what's real and sort of sort that out from the truth, from the fiction, all of this that goes into this. And here, what the community does is that it shuts us down. Like I said, part of it is we don't like victims, part of it is we have this weird idea that all relationships are equitable in power and control when they're not.

I think another reason that we shut it down is because we don't know what to say. We end up feeling really stupid or helpless or it just makes us feel inept and we don't like that feeling. So we project and then say to the person, just get over it. Like that, somebody told me that something really bad happened in their life and three months later, [00:16:00] Actually, their father asked them, aren't they over that yet?

I mean, like, it was like three months. 

Ro: Three months.

Kerry: I think this was a death. I think this person lost their spouse, and they're like, and you're not over that yet? 

Ro: Wow, I'm going on five years, and I'm still working on things. 

Kerry: I know. 

I know. And you know what? In three months, you probably don't even have the final death certificate yet.

Seriously, you haven't worked it out with Social Security yet. There's a lot of things that haven't even wrapped up, and people are already saying, you know what? It's been long enough. I think the time is up. 

Ro: I think, you know, what they're really saying is how much more time do I have to listen to this?

Three months? You know, shouldn't, shouldn't you stop talking about this now because I don't want to hear it. 

Kerry: What do you recommend to people when you hear that that's the kind of environment they're in? What do you say to those individuals? Cuz victims need to process and, and yeah, that there's nothing wrong. Anybody who's a listener and you feel like you feel stupid for sharing, you're not.

This is how we heal. So what do you encourage people to do when they're in that kind of non [00:17:00] supportive situation? 

Ro: First, I think that what you said was really important, which is, It is important to share. That's one of the, to find a safe place to share, and that's the key is finding the safe place to share.

Because not only is your verbalizing the sharing going to help you, but it's the feedback you get. So you could just share to your journal, you could just share to a voice note, but what are you getting back? So it's important to be selective of who your feedback is, because if you get back minimizing and you get back shutting down and telling you that what you experienced wasn't really that bad, or that you should be getting over it in three months, that that feedback is going to do something to you.

It's going to give you an idea of what you think you went through, right? And then you tell a little story about yourself that maybe you weren't really abused, or that you do need to get over it, or that you start to create shame of, You know, I did choose this person and I did put myself in this situation and I didn't do anything soon enough.

So choosing your feedback, because the feedback you get, which [00:18:00] is, yes, that's, that's great. Talk about more about that. You're onto something there. You know, I think that kind of, that brings out more of bringing it to reality and understanding what you went through. Like, did you know that that's gaslighting?

What you're describing is gaslighting. Did you know that what you have is ambient abuse and that's what you went through and that's a smear campaign. Choosing your feedback. I think vetting who you talk to. Are you talking to a coach? Are you talking to a therapist? Are you talking to someone who's experienced this type of abuse?

And then also just, you know, if you know you're getting bad feedback, stop it, shut it down and, and don't give up, but talk to somebody else, share it with somebody else and not give up. 

Kerry: Yes. 

Yes. Yeah, in fact, when you were talking about the importance of who we talk to, it reminded me of mirror neurons. So feelings are highly contagious, and we tend to mirror what we see.

Recently I saw a clip of a mom in the background singing and dancing to the song and the baby in front of her literally [00:19:00] begins to imitate her, starts to like move, take the, I mean, we're talking like under a year old, but this baby's grinning and dancing and everything. It literally is mirroring the emotions of the mom, and we have to be really mindful of that.

So if we're around people who make us feel ashamed, who make us feel embarrassed, or Like there's something defective, you know, like there's something wrong with us, or even that we don't have the right to feel what we feel, then we're going to inadvertently pick that up because it is contagious and affect how we feel about ourselves.

So I think that's such great advice is to be super, super selective about that. See what happens with trauma is initially when it happens, the body wants to, because of the fight and fight stage, the fact that we're in a very heightened state of alertness because of the trying to be in survival mode, trying to protect ourselves.

The body then, if it's not careful, will store these memories intact, unprocessed. So, yeah. Yeah, that's what happens that's wrong, is that they go into memory storage literally not changed. And so, every [00:20:00] time you talk about it, you're actually retrieving the memory and then the mind consolidates it differently.

When you process it aloud and get new information or new insight. The memory is changed and then stored differently. And it continues to change. And that's why we need this repetitiveness is a changing of the memory. And so when we shut people down, we're actually leaving them in that frozen state.

Ro: Right. 

Kerry: Say for example, something happened to you at 10. And you never have a chance to say out loud, it went into memory, and it gets retrieved. When you retrieve it as whatever age you are, it gets retrieved as how it felt at 10. Not how it feels at 40, reflecting on something that happened at 10.

Ro: That makes a lot of sense. I do recall sharing a lot, and even if I did get good feedback, and even if I did feel good afterwards while I was sharing, I would feel nervous. My body would start to kind of shake a little bit. I used to get psychogenic tremors when I was in that relationship. And I actually got it a little bit after, like, [00:21:00] while I was suffering CPTSD, I would think about things, like if I was spending money on food, if I would get takeout.

My body would actually shake, my fingers would shake, and my therapist said it's psychogenic tremors, which is a trauma response to the memory of feeling nervous to buy something for myself because of the financial abuse. So yeah, that checks. That makes a lot of sense. 

Kerry: You and I have gone to the same condo where I lived, and the first time I was there with you was, it had been recent.

I hadn't been there much with anybody until I was there with you. You and I have been there now several times, and I bet you, if you recall, the first time, there was times you saw me shaking, and I was telling you a really tough memory, or I suddenly just couldn't resist and say something, but the last time, which is just a few months ago, none of that happened.

Yeah. Because every single time, I go there with you and re revisit it, 

Ro: And it changes.... Oh, that's cool. 

Kerry: Now I'm building memories with you , but I'm also getting a chance to revisit those initial memories. And the revisiting it with you had caused those original memories to be changed. So then I feel less [00:22:00] stirred up.

I'd love to get into this more with the podcast extra. I do think there is something that's a trauma dumping thing that does happen for some people. But I really want to differentiate what is that versus what's just normal processing because I think we throw everybody into the category of. Oh, you're repeating the same story about something that makes me uncomfortable, so therefore it's trauma dumping.

I disagree with that. That's not trauma dumping. That's trauma processing, or whatever word you want to apply to it. But I do think there's something that does happen for some people where they get trapped in that and nothing changes. And years later, you'll see a repetitive revisiting of the same story.

But normally this is a process and I do want to urge people that when it's happening to you to put it into perspective that this is what you're doing. This is a stage of trauma reprocessing. It does help to get EMDR really helps with it too. But it's an uncomfortable stage and it unfortunately lasts longer than we like.

It lasts longer than our friends really wished that it did. 

Ro: Longer than three months. 

Kerry: I know. And a [00:23:00] lot longer than we like. But I do think that there's ways through it and that's really the great part of being in my community group with all the group coaching that we do and being one on one coaching with you and you have a community group too.

I think that's what's so lovely about these opportunities of being in with like minded people is that you get a chance to do it with people who understand and then there's more patience because we've done there, we've done this together. 

Ro: Yeah, they get it. That's the biggest thing is we promise that they get it.

And so sharing with people who get it versus people who just don't get it, you're more at risk when you share with people who don't get it because you don't get that chance to change that emotion, to reprocess that memory in a healthy, safe way. When you share with people who get it, you get that opportunity to do that and heal.

Kerry: So 

just a quick question, how long did it take you to get through that stage? 

Ro: Oh, I'm still getting through this. 

I mean, I can share now and I can, I still recall things and sometimes I bring it up, but as far as it being always [00:24:00] all the time, it was probably about a year or two. I would say like a little over a year of sharing into like just being able to identify where I feel safe sharing and recalling a memory and processing it.

As far as trauma dumping, I think I did that a lot when I wasn't out of the relationship. I think I did that because I was really trying to figure out why, why is this happening to me. And when we say something over and over and over, you know when you, you want something so bad and it doesn't work out for you?

And you say it over and over , like sharing the story. Again, almost as if maybe if you share it enough times, it'll work out like you'll get what the thing that you didn't want, right? 

Kerry: You'll manifest it.

Ro: It's like maybe I'll just go back in time and not get that speeding ticket, right? But I'll share exactly how I got the speeding ticket and you go over and over and over and over how it felt and why It didn't happen and what you were doing that day and what you were wearing and all of the things and it's almost like sharing it can delete it.

Can delete the trauma. Yeah, yeah. And so [00:25:00] I think I was doing that a lot in the relationship, but it took me about a year and a half after leaving that I realized like my trauma dumping was more trauma processing and I was able to find safe communities to share with.

So we have some fan mail and that's a new feature that has just recently been added and I'm so excited about it. So the first person is from, I don't know where, just says 5k. And this person said, I'm five months out of leaving a toxic relationship. We were together for 16 years and we have a daughter.

And he dumped me after my 37th birthday and went through my phone and didn't like my social media when he worked out of town and he wanted me off of social media and he blocked me without a car, without a furniture, he packed up and left me homeless. Wow. And that's just sharing how they ended up totally out on their own.

Any pieces of advice or comments you'd make for this person? 

That's tough. I, I would say that's a very normal thing. I think this person who did this to the [00:26:00] writer here is, they were at a desperate spot because they lost control. And so they were trying to take away all of their control, take away their ability to drive, a place to live.

And so this is just proof that you've taken your power back and it's going to be hard. It's when you leave and when, when you, you know, I don't know if they dumped her or if he dumped her. Yeah. Whoever. 

Kerry: She got dumped by him. 

Ro: Yeah. She was dumped by him. Yeah. So. However, the discard happened, they know that they have no control over you anymore, so this is your first step out.

Kerry: Yeah, it reminds me of, you know how some kids are like, fine, then I'm going to take my toys and go home. Exactly. That's what that feels like. Yeah, exactly. What you're really seeing is this 

Ro: A punishment. 

Kerry: Yeah, extremely immature reaction of an attempt to harm you because they, and somehow something here feels uncomfortable, and maybe even feels rejecting or abandoning.

I'm not saying this woman rejected or abandoned this individual, but it doesn't take much. It's called a narcissistic wound. It doesn't take much for a person like that just to move into an enraged state and then literally just try to trash your life and trash [00:27:00] you. And my best advice to this individual is first of all, I'm really sorry that it happened.

You didn't deserve that. It's bizarre after 16 years with somebody that they would do that, but that really to me shows a level of emotional immaturity that your partner had, has had. And that, unfortunately, it is a backhanded gift in a sense that you're out, which is a good thing, but I'm sorry that they devastated your life like that.

Most of us, I know you and I both have had to pick our life back up and rebuild again. That's a common problem with these relationships. They decimate our lives. Then another one came in from Holly, Michigan, and just said, great show. Thank you so much. It really has helped this person a lot staying on track.

Thank you so much for the reminders that it's not about me and to stop making excuses for their partner's behavior. So we just want to thank them back. 

Ro: So yeah, 

Kerry: I appreciate that. All right, so we're going to jump over to the podcast extra and talk about what is actually trauma dumping. How do you know if you're doing it and what to do if you start to feel the urge and you know you're overstepping.

So I thank you so much for [00:28:00] joining me today, Ro. This is fantastic. Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McAvoy PhD and whether you're in consider leaving or have left a narcissistic relationship Find community support at my toxic free relationship club You can learn about this resource as well as others at Kerry McAvoy PhD .com and I'll see you back here next week