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Ruminating over possible conversations and dissociate.

EuanF

Don't know if anyone else experiences this, but I've been having it a lot the past week. 

Sometimes when my mind wanders it starts to daydream/ruminate on possible conversations I can have with people, particularly those close in my life. It may be in relation to something that's already happened and the conversation is like me trying to predict what my next interaction could be with them. I always get so caught up in it that it's like I dissociate from the real world and I'm having emotional reactions to the conversation in my head. Usually frustration and agitation.

It's really upsetting as I waste emotional energy on this and chances are the conversation will never happen in the real world. I just get lost in fantasy when I just want to feel real and in the world.

I don't know if I've explained this right but does anyone else get this? 

Parents
  • EuanF said:
    Sometimes when my mind wanders it starts to daydream/ruminate on possible conversations I can have with people, particularly those close in my life.

    I used to do this a lot - especially as I would often "choke" during the actual conversations and would try to think what I should have said or would say next time for a better result - full blown attempts at scripting basically.

    When I realised how much energy I was wasting on this (I would just choke again at the next conversation so why even bother trying to script a reply and recall it) I made a concious decision to shut this down and refocus on something productive.

    I used mindfulness to be able to do this, but from what I hear from others on this site they are not all able to master this. It does take discipine and the need to have something else to be able to refocus on.

Reply
  • EuanF said:
    Sometimes when my mind wanders it starts to daydream/ruminate on possible conversations I can have with people, particularly those close in my life.

    I used to do this a lot - especially as I would often "choke" during the actual conversations and would try to think what I should have said or would say next time for a better result - full blown attempts at scripting basically.

    When I realised how much energy I was wasting on this (I would just choke again at the next conversation so why even bother trying to script a reply and recall it) I made a concious decision to shut this down and refocus on something productive.

    I used mindfulness to be able to do this, but from what I hear from others on this site they are not all able to master this. It does take discipine and the need to have something else to be able to refocus on.

Children
  • in reply to Iain

    You describe the "choke" very well. I'm very much of the mindset now of "that's happened and its absolutely fine".

    Theres two strands to this. Any waking moment I am not engaged in anything else, my head is a conversation with another person. I think some of it stems from needing to file things in my head / manage unresolve.  The other is probably going over all the different eventualities of past or future conversation / replaying a specific future or past conversation on a loop. I can get lost in this in my head. Regarding past interactions, if I've had clear feedback from the other person it doesn't tend to happen. If I've been with unfamiliar people it happens more and there's an element of needing to "come down" from the momentum afterwards. It happens less these days now though.