Is is normal to have conversations with people in your mind?

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Exactly! I do it since I was 11. It helped a lot in social situations. : )

What's interesting is that for unknown reason I mostly talk to myself in English instead of my native language. It seems that I can only express myself properly in English and I would sound so unnatural and weird when I speak my native language that people thought I was a foreigner.

Last edited by Erieks on 19 Oct 2014, 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Me too. I have conversations with people I'm going to have to talk to in my head, and I'll say parts of them out loud, repeating both my and the other person's responses. Saying things out loud is almost like a compulsion for me, like I can't help it, or it doesn't feel real if it just stays inside my head. I'll have the same conversation with myself dozens of times until the actual event occurs, and do it whenever I have to make a phone call. I'll practise what I'm going to say when the person picks up over and over again, and when the time comes, I just recite it like a line from a script. If someone says something unexpected, or asks a question I wasn't anticipating, I get very anxious and freeze, scrambling to come up with something that wasn't on the script.

I do this too, except I'll natter to myself and my imaginary friend in French, though English is my first language. His name is Bob and I talk to him all the time. It feels very strange if he leaves for any period of time. I go to talk to him and remember he's not there, and it feels like I'm missing a limb, or something else very important. People watch me walking down the street talking to him/myself, and I'm aware I probably look Schizophrenic, paranoid, delusional, or all three.

I do this, but usually the "other" person isn't a friend or anyone else who actually exists, but just a generic placeholder human. It's generally just me arguing with myself about one of my interests.

I used to have an imaginary friend called Charlie. I picked up a pen barrel from the playground one day when I was 9 and he came up to me. I could talk with him as long as I took the pen barrel with me. But I lost it a few years later and he disappeared.



I scared my mom several times by doing this. And hey, you're a Psychology major! Nice to meet you!

It is normal, and personally it has helped me a lot in real situations and conversations. It is good practice...

I'm sure thart most folks do it. With aspies doing it a little more because we need to rehearse social situations more.

Its funny how individual people you know in your mind's eye/ear automatically exhibit the same annoying habits that the real person has in real life. Like when I imagine talking to my sister I will hear her interrupt me fifty times a minute. Or if I imagine talking to another particular friend he always blurts out bigoted judgments about every subject I mention in the imaginary conversation.

I do it all the time - been doing it my whole life and I enjoy it a lot.

Pretty much all the time - Imaginary friends, like imaginary family and imaginary lovers have never let me down.

I have no friends, I just imagine hypothetical conversations between myself and other people, be they strangers or my own relatives.

For me, very normal if I'm alone. I'll have imaginary conversations all the time with anyone who's on my mind, real or imaginary.

Amen.

You'd think so, but there's a wikipedia article describing it as a psychological disorder. It's called maladaptive daydreaming.

I'm neurotypical and I've done it all my life. Usually when I have to tell someone something and when I remember that i have to tell them the imainary conversation just plays out in my head. Other times when I imagine a conversation about me or my problems with another person, I can just develop it at great lenght. And I explain myself as if talking to a shrink. It's very satisfying, if not very real.

Well, I put "No" on your poll because I don't have a "conversation", per se, but I DO talk to MYSELF, at some point in the day----EVERYDAY!! Not without provocation, though----like, I often talk to the TV (reacting to something that somebody just said). It sounds like, though, that people are actually giving a voice to another person, and I don't do that. If I am thinking about a conversation I'm going to have with someone, it goes like this: "I know, if she says this, I'll say this", "If he says he's going to do this, I'll ask him, that".

More than anything I do this in retrospect. Anyone else here do this a lot in retrospect? I figured other ASD people might have the same hangup, of trying over and over to figure out something that happened, thinking of what you would rather have said.

Yes, I tend to have conversations in my head. It helps me prepare myself for probable outcomes so I have an answer ready. Oftentimes, I also relive conversations in my head and 'redo' them so they turn out better.