You're washing your hair when you suddenly think of the perfect comeback to an argument at work three weeks ago. You replay the conversation in your head, only this time you know exactly what to say, and the other person has no response. A minute later, you realize you're still arguing with someone who probably hasn't thought about the exchange since it happened.
It often happens without any conscious decision, and researchers have several explanations for why we do it. Sometimes it helps us work through a disagreement or prepare for a difficult conversation. The problem comes when we spend more time having imaginary arguments than dealing with the real ones.
The Rehearsal Has A Job
Researchers call these imaginary conversations imagined interactions, a term that has appeared in communication research since 1988. They serve several purposes, including helping people make sense of past conversations and prepare for future ones. Sometimes you're simply practicing what you want to say before a conversation you expect to have.
You think about what you want to say, imagine how the other person might respond, and work out your next reply. Having a few possible responses ready can make it easier to handle a conversation that doesn't go as planned. Research has also linked this kind of mental rehearsal to greater openness and lower levels of neuroticism, suggesting it isn't necessarily a sign of overthinking.
There is also plenty of spare mental capacity for it. A 2010 study that pinged 2,250 people at random intervals through their days found they were thinking about something other than what they were doing 46.9 percent of their waking hours. Nearly half of your waking life is already somewhere other than the room you are in.
Where It Turns On You
Not all imaginary conversations are helpful. Researchers use the term anticipatory processing, or pre-event rumination, for repeatedly worrying about a social situation before it happens. Instead of preparing for different outcomes, you keep imagining yourself saying something embarrassing or making a mistake that everyone will remember.
Both look much the same from inside your own head and behave differently. Preparation has a shape and an endpoint. Rumination circles instead, and a dozen passes through the same exchange add nothing the first few did not cover. A review of 26 studies found that higher rumination goes with more severe social anxiety and a slower response to therapy.
Sometimes you rehearse a difficult conversation so many times that you end up avoiding it altogether. You keep thinking about what you'll say to your father over dinner, but never actually make plans to see him. The longer you put it off, the more anxious you become about having the conversation, giving yourself even more reason to avoid it.
What Changes It
The goal isn't to stop rehearsing conversations in your head. Most people do it, and there's nothing wrong with it when it helps you prepare. The important thing is recognizing when you're making progress and when you're just going over the same worries. Useful rehearsal helps you figure out what to say or do next. Rumination keeps bringing you back to the same place.
Writing down what you want to say can help you stop going over it in your head. A couple of notes on your phone are enough, especially if they cover what you hope to accomplish and how you want to start the conversation. Once you have a plan written down, there's less reason to keep mentally rehearsing it.
The other thing that helps is noticing how the real conversations compare. People who finally have the dinner, or send the message, almost always report that it ran shorter than the version in their head. Yours ran long because you were writing both sides of it. The actual one has the other person in it, and they came with their own material.
