I have arguments in my head. Considering what has gone on in my head in the past, arguments are an improvement, but still it's exhausting arriving at work when you've spent the drive to work stating your case over and over to someone. In my head, those people just argue back, and I never make any headway. Sometimes, in my head, they attack me and I spend the drive in defending myself. Usually some tangential person also weighs in on how I am wrong.
I though at first that this is the Voice of my depression from the link above, and that I'm just projecting my self-criticism on to other people. So there's an improvement, at least I'm putting up a fight this time.
Now, though, I think I'm just bored while driving, I need a little argument drama, and since I'm headed to work I'm getting my brain into problem-solving mode. Only, of course, these problems and people cannot be solved. It is what is is, they are who they are. I tell myself that, as soon as the arguments start, but that doesn't fill up my imagination as dramatically as the thought of me making all the points that I can't make in real life.
I decided, since all this is going on in my head anyway, why not go the extra step and fantasize the other people seeing my side? Even my imagination couldn't make that leap, and believe me, my imagination concocts unrealistic scenarios in which I end up in bed with celebrities.
So then I decided — and this is the breakthrough — when I hear these arguments beginning I am going to channel my imagination into fantasizing some way my opponents agree with my position entirely on their own, through some deus ex machina that visits their lives. They are converted to my point of view, sometimes through positive life experiences, sometimes traumatically, sometimes through industrial mishaps that deliver what amounts to electro-shock therapy.
It's much more entertaining and challenging, and not boring at all.
That's brilliant. (*Sometimes* people are able to change their minds by logic or statistics/numbers. But anecdotal/narrative experience does look to be a lot more powerful... and the idea of people suddenly *getting it* is so appealing!)
Posted by: KC | February 28, 2019 at 09:21 PM
KC - and it engages the creative side of my brain, not the logical argument side.
Posted by: TheQueen | March 01, 2019 at 01:10 PM
I am forever having arguments with people in my head when I'm walking or doing some other mindless task. There's never a resolution, just the same well-worn negative path. I have to try really hard to break away from it, but it doesn't always work. My brain can be such a bore.
Posted by: Big Dot | March 04, 2019 at 08:40 PM
Big Dot - I don’t remember having done this before menopause. I just argued directly with myself.
Posted by: TheQueen | March 05, 2019 at 10:04 PM