I Used To Talk Super Openly And Plainly About My Experiences With Illness/grief/etc Because I Thought

I used to talk super openly and plainly about my experiences with illness/grief/etc because I thought if anything it would make others feel more comfortable to share their experiences too. Then a couple years ago someone I love started making jokes about me "energy vampire"ing people when I talk about traumatic events in my life. I didn't even realize how hurtful it was at first and when I explained it, they sincerely apologized and stopped, but are now no longer in my life and this feeling just kind of lives in the back of my mind now like maybe that's why I've never been able to keep a lasting friendship/relationship. Because just being around me takes too much energy for people to figure out how to react and I never even realized that it came across like I was just trying to get sympathy or pity or push my problems onto them, so I'm much more selective in what I say now but the whole thing is unbelievably isolating.

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.