Dear Crystal:

You wrote about writing in your journal: “thoughts get caught in my head and I don’t feel like I’m being authentic in some of my writing.”- I believe it is so because your heart has some truths it wants to communicate to you, but it is too distressing to hear those truths, so the head jumps ahead with its rational thinking to make sense of things. Only it cannot make sense of anything when it is incongruent with the heart. That incongruence is the inauthenticity you mentioned, I believe.

Here is my imaginary input by your heart as it responds to what your head says (quotes from your last note to me):

Head says: “my relationship with my mother is complicated”
Heart says: my relationship with my mother is simple.

Head says: “I know where I learned codependency from as she was this way with my father who was also mentally ill and she could not walk away.”
Heart says: my mother didn’t protect me from my father.

Head says: “I love her and she is a beautiful person ”
Heart says: I need her to love me, to protect me, to help me. I wish she loved me, protected me, helped me.

Head says: “but the traits she exhibits push all my buttons because they are my own as well.
Heart says: I hate (very angry at) her!

Head says: “When we talk it’s superficial but she’s the first person I want to call when my world is shattering and she can’t be there for me in that capacity”
Heart says: she never helps me. I need her to help me! When will she help me???

Head says: “I need to do some deep work with this inner-child thing. It’s so freaking hard!”
Heart says: then listen to me, I speak simple language, short sentences; I don’t use a rich vocabulary (I don’t use “capacity” for example). I know what I need. I know what I want. I am simple. Don’t judge me, don’t disapprove of me. Listen to me…

anita