Is there a name for this?

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I used to replay events and conversations in my head obsessively. I would always be afraid I had missed something, misunderstood something, or the worst by far, been misunderstood. If something went well, I had to reaffirm that in my mind and address any possible negatives. If something went bad, I would try to understand all things that went wrong or might have went wrong. I would always end by convincing myself of the most optimistic outcome I could believe.

I have no idea how normal or abnormal this is itself, but I did it obsessively. Sometimes I would recreate how I hoped past events would go if I'd acted differently, trying to understand all the different possible scenarios with the same level of obsession. I would also obsess over things like if a fridge was closed, if my car was locked, or if I remembered to flush.

I could not relax or fully focus on something else until I'd allowed myself this analysis. The worst part was I was compelled to do it again and again until I made myself stop.

I eventually managed to stop in general, although I still do it to varying degrees on occasions.
When I (mostly) stopped it was really hard. What I did was, I refused to think about these kinds of things, no matter how worried I was. Once I had stopped, it got easier quicker than I expected to not worry, but for a long time after I stopped my neck felt tense all the time.

I still get the neck thing sometimes when I'm stressed in general, and I can't recall it happening before I started to get the upper hand in this internal battle.

I thought maybe this was comparable to OCD, but I have no idea.

Anyone know what this might be? Is it something diagnosable?

I sort of do things like that. I replay events/conversations/whatevers that I think went wrong and 'fix' them in my head. It can be time consuming as I need to figure out what went wrong and where before I can 'fix' it. Given that you cannot relax until the urge to do so is done, I would be inclined to think it is OCD, especially since it seems to cause you upset. I have OCD and it sounds to me that the thought process you have going is the 'intrusive thought' aspect of OCD and the analysis of it would be the 'compulsion' act. People tend to get an idea that OCD is just repetitive hand washing or something like that, but it is a thing that is wayyyyyy more broad than that. I am certainly no expert, and I am likely bias as I have had OCD as long as I can recall, but it does sound like OCD to me.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll try and learn more about OCD.

Internal echolalia?

Before jumping on the OCD theory, I have a question.

How do you feel when you dont do this
If that thing with ur neck is the only thing that happens then maybe its just that you are trying REALLY hard to figure things out and you just happen to have a great ability to see it in a ton of different ways and you like perhaps to be able to control your thoughts that way? Not sure that is ocd.

rumination?

I have the same problem. For years also I've had a problem where I have to picture my partners face in my mind, or I think I will forget him, and I have tried to talk myself out of it but it does no good. I thought it could be a type of OCD