Claire writes: “Do you wake up in the night sometimes thinking about and even talking to someone who has got under your skin? I do.  Of course they aren’t really there and they certainly don’t know that I wake up with them… and yet we can spend hours in imaginary dialogue.

They are not to blame.  I made that happen.  Noticing the number of conversations I have with people who also wake up in the night thinking about someone at work, this is quite common.

I was recently chatting with someone who was clearly set to take the colleague home in his head for another sleepless night. We talked about that being a choice, and he commented that he would love to leave the colleague at work if he could.  In the end, all he did was write their name on a piece of paper and hand it to me.  As I put it in my pocket, he sighed.  ‘That feels so different’, he said. He has chosen to leave hois thoughts at the office.  I didn’t even read it and just slipped the paper into a bin at the station.  He had a better conversation with the colleague the following day for not having stayed awake with them.”