The Others

Why do we talk to people who aren't there?

You’re in the shower, three days after the argument, and suddenly you have the perfect response, the thing you should have said. Clear, measured, devastatingly accurate. You deliver it flawlessly to the tile wall, to the version of them that exists only in your mind. They understand. The conversation finally goes the way it was supposed to.
You replay this exchange several times, refine it. The imagined conversation becomes more vivid than the actual one, more satisfying, more real in some ways than the words you actually spoke.

I talk to people who aren’t here aaaaaall the time. To my empty kitchen while I’m making coffee, to the couch I’m sitting on. Days after a difficult conversation, I’m still having it, except now I’m saying the thing I feel I should have said, and it lands exactly right.

Do you find yourself doing this too? Where and when does it happen for you? In the car on your commute? While you’re running? Late at night when you’re relaxing on the sofa? And how does it manifest: do you speak the words aloud or hear them in your mind? Do you mouth them silently? Move your hands as though gesturing to someone across from you?

Certain contexts seem to invite these conversations more than others. Solitary, repetitive activities create space for the mind to wander into dialogue. Transitional moments, when you’re between one thing and another. Restless moments, when the mind won’t quiet and old conversations return unbidden.

We rarely talk about this aloud. Most people do it, and there’s something socially awkward about admitting you talk to people who aren’t there, as though saying it might make you occur lonely or unstable rather than it being what it is: a fundamental part of how the mind processes relationships.

Some of the most influential conversations in our lives happen entirely in our heads: with people who aren’t present, who may never hear what we’re rehearsing, who might not even be alive. We speak to those we’ve lost, those we’re avoiding, those we’re preparing to confront, those we’ll never confront. These imagined dialogues are deeply relational, emotionally charged, shaping how we think and decide and move through the world.

Most of us are intimately familiar with this experience, even if we rarely name it. We rehearse confrontations that will never happen. We explain ourselves to people who never asked for explanation. We deliver apologies to those who will never receive them. Sometimes these conversations pass through quickly, barely registering. Other times they return obsessively, carrying the weight of something unfinished.

Psychologically, this isn’t pathological, it’s fundamental to how the mind processes relationships. Human cognition is deeply social. We don’t simply interact with people when they’re physically present; we carry internal representations of them. Research in social and cognitive psychology shows that significant others become part of our inner landscape (Baldwin, 1992). Their voices, expectations, imagined responses shape our internal dialogue, influencing how we interpret events and make decisions even in their absence.

From a neuroscientific perspective, when we imagine conversations, many of the same neural networks activate as when we engage in real social interaction (Redcay et al., 2010). The brain doesn’t draw a sharp line between actual and simulated dialogue. Regions associated with language, perspective-taking and emotional processing engage whether the other person is present or not. We’re practicing social cognition internally, running models of interaction that help us prepare, regulate emotion, anticipate outcomes.

These internal conversations often emerge at moments of ambiguity or emotional intensity. When something remains unresolved, when meaning hasn’t settled, the mind continues the dialogue as a way of searching for coherence. Speaking to someone who isn’t there becomes a method of sense-making. It allows us to structure our experience, test interpretations, explore different versions of ourselves in relation to another.

Replaying What Already Happened

The argument with your partner that ended badly. The meeting where you stayed silent when you should have spoken. The moment you said the wrong thing and only realised it hours later. You return to these scenes, rewrite them, deliver the words you wish you had said.

I do this constantly. A difficult conversation with a colleague goes poorly, and for days afterward I’m having the better version of it. The one where I’m calmer, more articulate, where my points land with clarity. The imagined version becomes a kind of alternate history, and sometimes it’s more emotionally present than what actually occurred.

Our mind is trying to work through what happened, to understand it differently, to find the version of yourself you wish had shown up. Sometimes this processing is integrative, it allows you to make sense of the interaction, to see where things went sideways, to clarify what matters to you. Other times it loops without resolution, amplifying distress rather than easing it.

Rehearsing What Hasn’t Happened Yet

Then there are the conversations we’re preparing for. The performance review. The difficult talk with a family member you’ve been avoiding. The boundary you need to set. You script it in your mind. Test different approaches. Anticipate their responses. Adjust your tone.

Last month I knew I needed to have a conversation with my colleagues about a difficult operational decision that was going to challenge us all. I rehearsed it. Different framings, different entry points, different ways to acknowledge their perspective while holding to what needed to happen. By the time the actual conversation occurred, I’d already had it a dozen times internally. And here’s the strange part: the rehearsal helped.The conversation didn’t go as I had imagined but the internal practice had clarified what mattered to me, what I was willing to negotiate and what I wasn’t.

Preparation through internal dialogue is how we prepare ourselves for difficulty, by building the psychological infrastructure to say it.

Speaking to Those Who Are Gone

And then there are conversations with people who are no longer here. A parent who’s died. A relationship that’s ended. A version of someone who no longer exists, the friend before the falling out, the partner before things changed irreparably.

Continuing bonds theory in grief research suggests that maintaining an internal relationship with someone who has died is a healthy part of grieving (Klass et al., 1996). People continue to speak to those they’ve lost, to imagine their responses, to consult them on decisions. The dead remain psychologically present, not as delusion but as internalised relationship.

I still talk to my grandmothers, months and years after they passed away. I don’t see it through a mystical lens, it’s mostly a practice that gives me comfort, a way of accessing perspectives I valued, voices that shaped me. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I sometimes imagine what they would say, it makes me feel gotten and protected. The conversation continues because the relationship was formative, and formative relationships don’t end cleanly just because someone is no longer physically present.

This also applies to people who are alive but no longer accessible: estranged family members, former partners, friends you’ve grown irreconcilably apart from. You may still be negotiating with them internally, explaining yourself, defending your choices, seeking understanding you’ll never receive. The absence doesn’t end the dialogue; it relocates it.

Not everyone becomes part of this internal landscape. The people we continue talking to are those with unresolved emotional significance, formative influence or prominent presence in our lives, who help us understand ourselves. They’ve made you think, their perspective remains relevant even when they’re no longer physically present. The neighbour you see occasionally rarely becomes an internal voice. The parent who questioned every choice does.

There’s an aspect of this that I find truly fascinating: when you’re talking to someone who isn’t there you’re recalling them and actively constructing them through memory.

When I talk to my mum in my head, I’m drawing on years of experience, her patterns of thought, her likely responses, the way she would frame communication. I’m predicting what she might say, though the prediction is always imperfect as I’m reconstructing her. Every time I engage with her internally, I’m leveraging past interactions to create a present conversation.
That construction shapes both the present and, potentially, the future. The internal conversation I have with her now influences how I might approach similar conversations with others, what I’m willing to consider. Memory becomes generative.

This is true for anyone we carry internally. We’re not passively remembering them; we’re actively using memory to simulate their presence, to test ideas against their imagined perspective, to maintain relationship through cognitive rehearsal. The conversation feels real because it’s built from genuine material, years of interaction compressed into a working model of how they think.

The model is always incomplete. We fill in gaps and project. We sometimes hear what we need to hear rather than what they would actually say. The person we talk to internally is part memory, part construction, part wish.

Sometimes, the internal conversation isn’t supportive. The voice you’ve internalised questions your choices, challenges your reasoning, holds you to standards you’re not meeting. Your father asks the difficult questions you would rather avoid. The colleague you’re rehearsing with has a point you don’t want to hear. The internal other can push back, create friction, represent perspectives that complicate rather than validate. This is one of the functions of internal dialogue, to hold complexity, to test your thinking against someone whose judgment matters to you.

There’s another category of internal conversation that operates differently: the imagined audience. Not specific people, but an abstract “they” you’re always aware of. The judgment you’re anticipating, the approval you’re seeking, the critics you’re defending yourself against.

This is the internal monologue that runs during ordinary moments, explaining your choices to no one in particular, justifying decisions to an unnamed observer, performing competence for an audience that doesn’t exist. Social media has intensified this. We’ve become accustomed to narrating our lives for an imagined public and that narration doesn’t stop when we log off. The internalised audience persists, watching, evaluating, requiring constant explanation.

This diverges from talking to a specific person. With a specific person, the internal dialogue has contours such as their voice, their probable responses, their known perspectives. With an imagined audience, it’s more diffuse.

There’s also a performance dimension to some of these conversations that differs from genuine processing. Sometimes you’re not working through emotions or preparing for difficulty, you’re rehearsing how you’ll tell the story later, crafting your narrative.

Then there’s prayer, or what functions like prayer even for those who don’t name it that way. Speaking to something larger, more abstract, less defined. God, the universe, fate, your future self, some version of understanding you hope exists somewhere.

This form of internal conversation operates differently because there’s no expectation of response, no model of the other person’s psychology to simulate. It’s less dialogue than articulation into the void. And perhaps that’s precisely its function: to speak what needs to be said without the complication of another’s reaction. To clarify your own thinking by addressing it outward, even if outward leads nowhere specific.

For those who pray in traditional religious contexts, the conversation is with a presence they believe listens, even if the listening isn’t verbal. For those who don’t, it’s often still directional, speaking to something that represents clarity, wisdom, perspective you don’t currently have access to. Either way, it’s a form of internal dialogue that doesn’t require the other to be present, alive or even real in a conventional sense.

But for conversations with specific people, those we’ve discussed with internally, there’s eventually a question that surfaces:

When should an internal conversation become real?

You’ve been rehearsing this conversation for weeks. You’ve refined it, clarified it. At what point do you have it? At what point does keeping it internal serve you versus keeping you stuck?

Sometimes the internal conversation is complete on its own. You’ve processed what needed processing. The act of articulating it was sufficient. Speaking it aloud would be redundant, or worse, would create conflict that isn’t necessary.

Other times, the internal dialogue is preparation, and it’s waiting for the right moment to become external. The clarity you’ve found internally needs to be tested in actual relationship, where the other person can respond in ways you haven’t predicted, where dialogue can move beyond your script.

The difficulty is knowing which is which. I’ve sat with conversations I needed to have for months, and I’ve also held conversations internally that never needed to be spoken, where externalising would have been self-indulgent, where the processing was complete once I had articulated it to myself.

There’s no formula. As a rule of thumb: when the internal conversation starts to feel repetitive, when you’re looping through the same script without new understanding emerging, that’s when externalisation might be needed. The internal dialogue has gone as far as it can on its own.
Occasionally, the loop itself becomes the problem. When internal conversation turns into rumination, it stops being a tool for processing and starts amplifying distress. The same exchange, the same emotional response, over and over without resolution. That’s when the internal dialogue isn’t serving you and it may be a signal that something needs to shift, either by speaking to the person or by finding another way to process what’s stuck.

What’s striking about all of this is how relational our thinking is. Even alone, we think in conversation. We address others, anticipate their responses, argue with their perspectives, seek their approval or understanding. Thought isn’t a solitary act; it’s social even when no one else is present.

We’re rarely (or maybe never?) thinking in isolation. We’re thinking in relation to others, those we love, those we’ve lost, those we’re avoiding, those we imagine. The mind is not a private space but a meeting place, where multiple voices are held simultaneously.

Contemporary life may intensify this. We’re more isolated physically, more connected digitally, more aware of distant audiences, more flooded with others’ perspectives. The line between internal and external dialogue has blurred in ways previous generations didn’t have to navigate.

Talking to people who aren’t here isn’t a quirk or a flaw. It’s part of how we make sense of relationships, process emotion, prepare for difficulty and remain connected to those who’ve shaped us. These internal conversations are how humans make sense of experience, part of the architecture of relational thinking.

Not every internal conversation is meant to be spoken aloud. Some exist precisely to spare the relationship, to let emotion settle before words are released. Some allow us to process what can’t be resolved through speech. Some keep us connected to people we’ve lost in ways that honour the relationship without requiring their presence.

Some, eventually, need to stop being rehearsals and become real because the living conversation, with all its unpredictability and imperfection, is what allows relationships to move.

The conversations we don’t have are part of how we think, feel, and relate. They reveal that we’re always in dialogue with memory, with imagination, with the people who’re important to us and the people we’re becoming. Some of the most important work often happens in these quiet exchanges before we ever speak a word aloud.

Our Weekly Reflection Question

I would like to leave you with this question; I hope it ignites a playful reflection.

Thank you for being part of Worth Asking. Here’s to the questions that move us forward.

With love,

Vjera Orbanic,

Worth Asking