- replaying some sort of argument/confrontation or other high-stakes conversation from earlier in the day (simulating ways the conversation could have gone better--the best zingers are the ones you come up with in bed at night).
- preparing for an important presentation or meeting the next day (informal rehearsal).
- out hiking alone (especially longer solo backpacking trips). Without fresh content bombarding my brain, I tend to dwell on the same ideas/conversations.
- reading a particularly engrossing book, and get into a character from their point of view.
- studying something new, then I imagine myself tutoring someone else on the subject (my go-to learning technique).
Now if you find yourself having conversations that you were convinced are real at the time, but it later dawns on you that it never actually happened, then that might be something to talk (for real) to someone about.
It is fine and good if you are doing it with purpose (e.g. tutoring someone else in your mind to understand something better, or trying to work out some problem that has a solution), but bad if you are trying to solve something unsolvable, dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, or just wasting your own CPU cycles.
This is something you can practice as part of mindfulness practice - getting spontaneous awareness that you are engaging in an unproductive internal dialogue and letting it go. Not fight it or stop it, but just let the thoughts come and go without engaging with them.
The introductory course on the Headspace app I also found good but I think it is better to not stay on it beyond that.
If your thoughts keep you awake sometimes I think you would definitely benefit greatly from this.
But I disagree slightly on #3. My frame of reference is thru-hiking and/or intense solo missions where I'm alone in the backcountry hiking for 10-14 hours a day for days on end. In that setting, I find it impossible to stay mindful continuously. Also, without news/email/social media/etc. as input, I just find that my mind gravitates towards internal dialogues about the same big picture life issues. In that state, I'm actually listening to my body and mind more, not less. Personally, it can be frustrating to worry about whether I'm "in the moment" enough (the quintessential frustration with mindfulness, I know).
That said, I do try to mix it up between fully immersing myself in the wonderment of the wilderness, letting my mind chew on ideas, listening to podcasts/music, and sometimes attempting actual meditation sessions.
One definitely should not be frustrated or worrying about being in the moment! I agree that it is all normal in the sense that one shouldn't be worrying about any of these habits. It's just that for me it was a revelation when after many many years I realized that I do not have to have/follow internal dialogues and that they may actually causing me tension and anxiety.
At one point I tried to cease this behavior because I had a perception it was negative, but I actually found my ability to be prepared for real conversations declined as well, so I've re-engaged the behavior. Visualization and behavioral rehearsal is something I've had several instructors for various things (weightlifting, target shooting, etc) encourage and at least for me it has panned out.
The question should really be "does X behavior cause any problems in my life?" If it doesn't cause you problems then you're good, and if it does, then you should look to alleviate those problems (whether that's modifying the behavior or the situation). If playing out social situations does alleviate the anxiety and your only downside is sometimes the people in your house give you funny looks - well that's probably a worthwhile tradeoff. On the other hand, if the behavior is aggravating social anxiety, then it's worth talking to someone about.
Social anxiety falls under the generalized anxiety tree, and most people do feel some anxiety in social situations - but if it's disruptive to your life then it may be worth chatting with a therapist with. Most therapists are going to try and identify the specific causes and then give you tools to alleviate those feelings.
As for having imaginary conversations with real people I know that are neither repeats of past conversations nor rehearsals of future conversations, I think there may have been a slight decline but I didn’t do a ton of this prior.
TL;DR: I think mindfulness meditation helps with this.
"Although these might have seemed off the cuff and spontaneous, they were generally carefully rehearsed, words carefully selected for punning potential, stored in his prodigious memory and then released on their unsuspecting recipient at the right moment"
https://winstonchurchill.org/the-life-of-churchill/life/man-...
My mouth and hands will move in accordance with those imaginations.
No more difficulty falling asleep. It has gotten me thru a very stressful time.
I have anxiety, somewhat, I need the right level of engagement but not too much interest then I can fall asleep. Rick & Morty, Brookly 99 do it for me - just enough to keep my mind from wandering, not enough to keep me awake.
To change focus you must have a goto list of things that have a track record of leading your mind to some place healty and good.
In any case, for the first month or so before I started my job, I was totally alone in my apartment and didn't have any conversations in my native language (English) the whole time. I began to have imaginary conversations with loved ones, both in dreams and in waking life, very much like the kind you describe.
I am one who has always been introverted and ok being alone, but this was an extremely disorienting experience. I coped by keeping a journal. The upside was that I eventually developed an ability to not feel lonely even while alone for long periods.
Now it all may be odd sounding thing but it seems okay for me as I do not look to confirm to any group nor looking for anyone to confirm to my ideas.
I’ve been doing that for years and eventually the conversation with someone else vanished and it became simply my own inner monologue.
My gut points to the limbic-cortex feedback loop. Emotional vibe in the limbic system retrieves motor agency to recite a fact and relay it.
Our society pushes constant contact. Our cortex responds in that habit.
Over time the dialog with a friend seemed superfluous. As if my cortex finally learned to ignore that as part of fact retrieval.
Just a weird vibe from a one time shroom head. YMMV
I talk to myself constantly, which always puts me to sleep, so in that case it's useful.
This really sounds like you have a dissociative spectrum symptom. Up to 1 in 12 people are at the very least at the OSDD-1b spectrum, down to 1 in 100ish and > with DID, so it's super common.
Most people don't know they're systems, but usually it involves a lot of talking to one's self, having a lot of very distinct "modes", certain kinds of memory issues/weird amnesia/short term stuff, the ability/feeling like you could be really good friends with yourself (alternately, the ability to deeply hate yourself as well), and being able to go from having an amazing day to absolute raw terror, not even recognizing it because of emotional amnesia.
So yes, it is normal, and this sounds very system-ey. If you are a system, don't pass over this! Discovering your dissociative spectrum tendencies, if you have them, is very hard and requires a lot of effort, but it is a transition that is very significantly life-changing, in a very positive direction.
The most important thing is that if your identity is fragmented, most people only focus on meeting the needs/listening to the people near the front of the brain/consciousness, so the younger alters/personality states/people/etc. get ignored and there's always anxiety and never-ending loops of feeling a desperate need for something but not getting it (because communication between people in the brain -- and yes, they are individual people! you can share multiple people in a brain, it's just like your body is more of a mech than anything else -- is usually completely cut off with DID and vastly inhibited with dissociative spectrum disorders, but the emotions eventually build up under pressure and finally leak out there.)