Random extra branches being made automatically?

Does anybody know how I end up with conflicts on a repo I'm the only one using from a single machine? Nobody else is working on it, I'm just committing every so often and pushing once an hour or so.

I'm using PyCharm and I keep ending up with branches I have no recollection of making? It then prompts me to merge them, which is fine, but it leaves a messy git history that I'm not able to squash.

I'm still in school and learning, so apologies if it's something super obvious. I'm still new to both PyCharm and git, but didn’t find anything obvious when reading through the documentation for either.