I have a bad habit of playing out imaginary arguments in my head. It’s one of the worst examples of my brain’s unhelpful looping behavior and oh how I wish I could shake it. I don’t enjoy conflict, in general. If I sense injustice happening I tend to get pretty riled up, though and rather than confront the issue–which I will do, if need be–I tend to create a whole holodeck scenario in my head of what I would say and what I imagine the person I am arguing with would say, and back and forth, ad infinitum. It is not just exhausting, it’s counterproductive.
Playing out many possible scenarios in my head has never succeeded in preparing me for an actual, in real life, argument. One, because I never successfully predict what the person will say once I broach the subject, and two, the imaginary fight winds up using up all of my instinctual reactions. Then I am just left with not saying what I really want to say.
It’s stupid and annoying and it is definitely in my top three things I’d like to purge from my personality.
Logan M. Shannon 