Dear Meredith:

We all do that, having conversations within our brain, not with another person. The voice of the person who minimized your feelings in real life gets daily activated as thoughts and you, the child who heard that person in real life,  argues with that voice for her right to feel what she feels. The noticing of those “conversations” is part of the practice of Mindfulness.

It is necessary in the process of healing, to increase mindfulness of existing thoughts patterns (and the feelings attached to them), and insert new thoughts in there, new thoughts that unlike the old are congruent with reality. Reality is that your feelings matter. It matters that you are disappointed by the fact that only a handful of people called to wish you a happy birthday, that you dislike texting happy-birthday, that it seems hollow to you. It matters that your practice of getting a card or making a handmade card for others on their birthday was not reciprocated.

Your feelings carry valid messages to be listened to. It may be that you will choose to not send a card to some people’s birthdays, those who texted you or did not contact you at all on your birthday. It may be that you will choose to spend your next birthday some other way. Or today, maybe today, you will choose to do something really nice for yourself.

anita