Talking to yourself in your head

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Today it occurred to me as I was walking from A to B in the street that whenever I am in public I try to be alone and just view everybody else out there as a kind of backdrop while I think out some conversation that I'm expecting to have at some stage in the future. I conduct the conversation endlessly in my mind, sometimes getting stuck on one particular sentence and just repeating it over and over and over again for maybe ten minutes. If anyone interrupts me while I'm in my own little world like this I glance at them as briefly as possible, then look away to show that I do not wish to communicate and turn my body away slightly, too. Sometimes I repeat a conversation in my head for maybe a month before it happens and when it actually does happen it always seems a little strange that the actual conversation involves a real person and doesn't go the way I had practised it. It is strange that I avoid actually talking to people but instead of thinking about something else I just repeat planned conversations endlessly in my mind.

If something gets that stuck in your head, try writing it down. For me, it keeps things objective and I can figure out- what in this "conversation" am I trying to accomplish.

That makes sense to me! I don't avoid talking to people when that happens, but I do sometimes rehearse conversations in my head. More often, though, I rehearse whatever I happen to be writing in my head, or music I'm working on. I don't actually think in words, but sometimes I practice speaking with words or come up with sentences for my writing with words.

Yes definitely, all very familiar. I tend to practice scenarios excessively and also replay past conversations. Like you they never work at as planned

Jason.

I do this all of the time. I spend hours while at work rehearsing conversations in my head. A lot of these conversations are talks I plan on eventually having with my roommates or someone else about something that they do that bothers me. I usually end up spending days planning and rehearsing these conversations and half the time, I never even end up talking to the person.

Quoting myself from past topics:

Oh, I do the same thing but usually to a lesser degree. My first reaction to your post was that it was a way of forming associations to help with memory, which I do extensively. For example, my razor blade packages contain 5 blades. When I must place the blade back into the package for traveliing, I think of the 5 days of week and remember that I am using the "Wednesday" blade for example so that I do not pick the wrong blade. After reading it a second time though, it sounds to me more as if what you are doing is something called "scripting" or the formation of standard responses so as to not get caught off guard by Aspie cognitive delays when pressed to respond quickly. Aspies do that a lot too and at one time I knew an Aspie whose responses were nothing but scripted responses.

What I also do is to talk to myself out loud, especially in times of stress and frustration. I remember a comment by someone to the similar question posted here 6-12 months ago of "Do you talk to yourself" in which the user replied, "yes, I'm the only intelligent person available to talk to". This is somewhat humorous, but there is a lot of truth to this too. When people behave stupidly, you just have to do something to set the record right and let the truth be known, even if only to yourself. I find that this helps to avert some of the meltdowns that result from an accumulation of frustrations resulting from NT stupidity. In talking to yourself, you help to release those frustrations gradually so that they do not build up to a meltdown. I frequently go so far as to hold the phone to my ear and have conversations with myself about all that is going on around me. Give it a try sometime... it helps... and gives you somebody to talk to as well.

Yes. All of this. Exhausting if you ask me. Do NT's do this too???

I'm amazed at how many things I can relate to on this forum. This is just another one of them. Really, I think I talk to myself more than anybody, and not because I'm conceited or anything. I do it mostly to script out future conversations I might have or just have in depth discussions about things I know no one else around me would care about.

Yup, I can definitely say this is me. The frustration is I often imagine an unlikely situation first and even then I can't get the conversation to go the way I want, which is when I get stuck on the same point and keep repeating it without it going anywhere.

What I find is that in the hours, days, weeks or months before the actual conversation takes place I've gone over it so many times in my head that it's kind of frustrating, disappointing and not so interesting to have to say it all again to the person when you've already said it a thousand times in your head already along with all the other possible variations. For example, I might think of ten different ways of beginning the conversation and think about the many different directions the conversation could take depending on how I choose to start it. Then, if I actually do start it in one of those ways I expect it to follow the route I have predicted and am disappointed when it doesn't,, or if the conversation takes a wrong turn that I have foreseen as being likely if I were to say such and such then that is frustrating too because the person has gone down that (for me) wrong route and I want to tell them that I know and had foreseen the route they have taken and why they have taken it. But that doesn't go down very well because it looks as though you're treating them like a machine.

People tend to find me very comical when I try to have a planned conversation. I tend not to accomplish my objective in having the conversation. Thus, I talk to people more in my head than in real life.

I don't rehearse conversations in my head, but I do walk along constantly talking to myself in my head as though I am imagining some person walking with me. It's annoying because I find myself doing it before I realise I'm doing it, and it distracts me from everything else around me. I wish I could just stop my mind from constantly having conversations with me, and then maybe I might be a little more streetwise, and able to take in what's going on around me a little more.

I get the impression some of this stuff is the minds way of distracting you from something you find stressful. I've been observing my own behaviour a lot lately and notice that I do my subtle stims when I'm mental gymnastics more when I'm in an anxiety inducing situation. This I assume is the reason I don't feel so anxious a lot of the time,

So perhaps if you were not like this, you'd actually be even more anxious?

Jason

I do this too, rehearsing conversations. And while the conversations never go exactly along any of my rehearsed paths, it does help me to hit on certain key points regardless of where the other person may take the conversation..

Really, it's when people start talking about themselves that things become far less predictable.. At that point I suppose they are trying to bring the conversation along their rehearsed path... Mmm.. something new to consider in future rehearsals.. oh my, infinity is showing up again

I talk to myself in my head all the time I even argue with myself lol.