Why Do I Argue with People Who Aren’t There?

(And Why It Feels So Good, Then Weird)

By Frenchie | After the Anchor Podcast

I argue with people who aren’t even in the room.

Sometimes it happens when I’m brushing my teeth. Sometimes I catch myself mid-sentence, alone in the car. Other times I’m full-on staring into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror, heart racing like I’m fighting for full custody in a courtroom.

Except the mother person? They’re imaginary. The fight? Never happened. (Am I embarrassed to admit this, a little)

And yet, I walk away from it flushed, tight in the chest, flooded with adrenaline and shame like I just lost something important.

It’s a fight I didn’t choose. But my body picked it anyway.

Sometimes I win, but it still feels all chemically!

We don’t talk enough about this enough; the conversations we have with ghosts. Invisible arguments we rehearse in our heads over and over again. I always imagine a person coming for me unprovoked and I come back sharper. Louder. Ready. Except we never actually left the room. And nothing really happened. But something in us did.

And I literally don’t have the balls to ever confront someone like that ever again. Most importantly to me, why would I be around anyone who triggers me into this “fictional conversation”.

As I say “Ewe”!

It’s like all the unsaid things I wanted to say but never had the chance or wasn’t heard.

-If you do this too, hear me when I say this:

•We are not unstable.

•We are not dramatic.

•We are not broken.

•We are people who had to get really, really good at predicting danger.

And now your brain doesn’t know how to turn it off.

When we grow up with unpredictable love, volatile environments, or relationships that ran on manipulation or gaslighting, you learn to stay ahead of the hurt. We learn to anticipate the next blow, even if no one’s swinging yet.

It’s a protective script.

It’s rehearsal. It’s you, trying to stay one emotional step ahead of something that hurt you before.

And it can be loud! It can be aggressive! It can feel like your entire body is hijacked by a chemical storm! Because in a way, it is and has been for some time..

Here’s the science of what’s happening; not just emotionally, but chemically.

•Your Amygdala, the part of your brain wired to detect threat doesn’t wait for proof.

It doesn’t care if the danger is real or imagined. It sounds the alarm the second something feels familiar to past pain.

That sets off your HPA axis, a whole hormonal chain reaction: adrenaline gets dumped into your bloodstream, then cortisol starts to rise. Your breathing changes. Your jaw tightens. Your heart rate spikes. You’re not just thinking about confrontation, your body is inside the confrontation.

Meanwhile, the part of your brain that usually regulates emotions and makes rational decisions, your prefrontal cortex shuts down to conserve energy. Because your body thinks you need to fight, flee, or freeze. Not analyze.

Or you could just be living daily life and need to: Pack for a trip, order groceries, write a podcast to give musket confidence to fix my brain, find safe products for my family so they don’t get messed up like me, get school registered, get the animals to the vet, go to the dentist, make the kids doctors appointments, find moms with kids who have like minded beliefs and make friends with them for our kids to play, check on my friends, make sure my husband has all the attention he needs to keep a healthy relationship, give my kids enough time so they don’t feel neglected like I did, do therapy, organize the house, clean the garage, do therapy cat box, start the laundry, put away the laundry, make dinner, clean the kitchen, register for college so you have self worth, exercise for the chemicals. SHAVE, PLUCK AND TWEEZE my way to happiness.

The list.. goes FUCKING on and on!

So yes, even if you’re just standing in front of your bathroom mirror whispering, “And another thing…”your body is in survival mode.

This is why you feel drained after an imaginary argument. It’s not just emotional; it’s chemical. It’s cellular. You had a real stress response to a scenario that never physically occurred.

And the worst part? It’s usually followed by shame.

Shame for “spiraling.” Shame for “talking to yourself.” Shame for feeling like this still happens no matter how much you heal.

But here’s what I’ve learned: shame only grows in silence. And silence is how we keep ourselves sick.

You’re not alone if you do this.

You’re not crazy for having imaginary fights. You’re brilliant for surviving in a world that made you rehearse pain in order to feel even a little bit in control.

The difference now is: you don’t have to stay there. You can learn to interrupt the pattern, not by yelling at yourself to stop, but by whispering something softer.

“This isn’t happening right now.”

“I’m safe in this moment.”

“This is just my nervous system trying to protect me.”

Because sometimes the most powerful healing words are the gentlest ones. I call it Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or my; Self Love and Prescription Free Medicine.

On After the Anchor Podcast, we talk about things like this. Not in theory, in real life. What it looks like to spiral. What it feels like to dissociate mid-sentence. What happens when you go cold, mid-thought, staring at the wall, because your system is so overwhelmed that your body checks out before your mind can catch up.

This podcast isn’t for the perfectly regulated.

It’s for the ones who are still in it, but refusing to let it define them. It’s for the people who are healing out loud; sometimes messily, sometimes beautifully, but always honestly.

If you’re having those mirror conversations…

If you’re still fighting people who aren’t there…

If you’re learning how to stop the spiral mid-sentence.. Come sit with us.

We’re not here to judge. We freaking live and meet you in the middle of it. 😂

Peer-led Healing.

Pull up. You’re one of us.

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