Planning conversations and counselling

[margaritadrakeina]

I don't know why it struck me today but I suddenly wondered if everyone else plans conversations before they have them. My mind was in overdrive today and it seemed a bit excessive, bordering on ridiculous. Before I do something where i know i have to speak to someone, like make a phone call, go and ask for something in a shop etc I have to think through what I want to say, think what I might be asked in return and work out what I would my if I was asked that question (for every eventuality I can think of). Only then can I pick up the telephone and make the call. If I then get asked something different to what I think I might be asked I get all flustered and then can't think straight and come up with an answer. It makes situations like job interviews an absolute nightmare and more to the point I'm beginning to panic about my next counselling session. It's tomorrow and its been a couple of weeks since I've spoken to him and I have absolutely no idea what he is going to ask me. So I've got potential conversations going round and round in my head and I can't seem to settle on the most likely situation. Does anyone else do this? Is it a normal thing to do? If so, how do you cope with situations that you can't predict?

I do this.

And if I get responses I hadn't planned for have said some pretty daft things in reply to try and appear unflustered by their departure from the script I'd worked out. It's worse if I am tired or stressed for some reason. I think for me it is about not being caught out or put on the spot by the unexpected.

Re the counsellor thing - I also used to do that as well. Because I wanted to have something interesting to tell them rather than being a boring client - which in my head I was. I don't mean I made things up, more that I found a more interesting or amusing way to describe things. Then I told him what I was doing and that's when the counselling started to go really well. It is worth winging it sometimes, especially in counselling. Telling him seemed to short circuit the process and helped me get to the deeper stuff.

Good luck and it is nice to know that I am not alone in rehearsing conversations and agree that it would be good to switch it off sometimes. But sometimes when it goes exactly as planned it can be quite satisfying!

So it's not something that most people do then! I don't do it to try and find an amusing way of saying something, more just that I can give an answer instead of sitting there in silence. Do you think it's something I should speak to him about or it's not worth bringing it up?

I did this. I'm fairly sure it's an anxiety behaviour, bordering on mental compulsion at its worst but before pathologising it, remember it's also potentially very normal e.g. I bet most people do it with something like a job interview or meeting with the bank manager, and the fact this is viewed as typical but doing the same about therapy is considered less so is just an arbitrary distinction. Spilling your guts to a professional who is probably sitting there writing notes is in itself a stress sometimes and that seems pretty obvious to me.

For me the conversation was going round endlessly in my head in the days before appointments with the cpn/psych/therapist but I was pretty obsessive and it was just more mental noise to drown out my fears. Mindfulness is good for this sort of thing, noting what you are doing then going back to contact with the present moment whether that's focusing on the breath or feeling your feet on the floor or some other physical aspect of the moment.

You can discuss it if you wish but try yourself to interpret this compassionately as a normal and understandable reaction to a situation which provokes feelings of vulnerability vs some big pathological thing that means something in the grand scheme of things.