You know those relationships that you have that are so tense and anxiety provoking that you feel the need to pre-live your potential interactions?
I tend to do this for a good 24 hours before I see a particular someone in my life. Instead of just entering the situation cold (literally and figuratively) I like to torture myself by acting out (mostly in my head... but I did catch myself actually acting it out while doing laundry this evening) all potentially charged conversations. This person is an incredibly literal person... me?... not so much... so pretty much any and every conversation has the potential to nose dive pretty quickly. While the role playing means I add an additional day's visit (albeit virtual) on to their trip it does help me to get my most sarcastic remarks out of my system and practice more neutral responses.
It's not that crazy... it's not any different than practicing a speech... right?