Category: Stoicism

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Yes, we associated this more with ACT but notions of mindfulness and acceptance were part of earlier CBT approaches, to some extent. In fact, I think ACT probably goes too far (and contrary to the research) in emphasizing these processes almost exclusively, rather than presenting them more as options alongside other adaptive coping strategies, within a broader CBT framework.

I’m not keen on that quote. It’s half-true and would potentially be quite misleading to people who suffer from anxiety disorders, I think, based on my experience. Anxiety serves that purpose in terms of evolutionary psychology, sure, but in anxiety disorders it’s become dysfunctional and we talk about it as setting off false alarms. The anxiety of someone with GAD or PTSD is not preparing them for real danger. It’s become overly-sensitive and is triggering false warnings of danger. Still we are better to accept the feeling but not to agree with the threat appraisal implicit in it, which is probably false in most cases.

Cognitive Therapy and Emotional Acceptance

Cognitive Therapy and Emotional Acceptance

Therefore when some terrifying sound, either from heaven or from a falling building or as a sudden announcement of some danger, or anything else of that kind occurs, even the mind of a wise man must necessarily be disturbed, must shrink and feel alarm… — Epictetus, Fragment

In recent decades, there’s been a revolution in the way cognitive-behavioural psychotherapists treat emotional disorders. A “third wave” of evidence-based therapies evolved that focus more on mindfulness of thoughts and acceptance of unpleasant feelings, rather than disputing our beliefs in order to change our emotions.

This sea change emerged from a growing body of research, which converged on the finding that people with severe anxiety and depression already tend to be trying too hard to think their way out of their problems and struggling too much to control their feelings.

The Stoic philosophy, which originally inspired cognitive therapy, had also endorsed a similar acceptance of unpleasant emotions, although this is often forgotten today.

Acceptance of uncomfortable emotions had already been taught by many earlier forms of psychotherapy, e.g., the Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls and others, which developed in the 1950s. Indeed, even the original forms of behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy had, sometimes, taught emotional acceptance.

In his recently-revised manual for the evidence-based treatment of anxiety disorders, Aaron T. Beck, one of the pioneers of cognitive therapy, clearly states that his objective is not to teach people how to “control their anxiety”.

Instead cognitive therapy focuses on helping individuals develop a more “accepting attitude” toward anxiety rather than a “combative (i.e., controlling) attitude.” When thoughts like “I can’t let these anxious feelings continue” are replaced with “I can allow myself to feel anxious because I know I’m exaggerating the threat and danger,” then the intensity and persistence of anxiety are greatly diminished. — Clark & Beck, 2010, p. 195

The Stoic philosophy, which originally inspired cognitive therapy, had also endorsed a similar acceptance of unpleasant emotions, although this is often forgotten today. When people today speak of “being stoic” (lower-case) they typically mean “having a stiff upper-lip”, i.e., suppressing or concealing unpleasant and painful emotions. Several modern research studies have shown that this is often an unhealthy way of coping, though. Lower-case stoicism actually does the opposite of what people are hoping. It tends to make us more emotionally vulnerable. The stiff upper-lip is really a sign, in most cases, not of psychological strength and resilience but of weakness. In contrast, ancient Stoic philosophy led to cognitive therapy, and modern evidence-based protocols for psychological resilience training, which many studies have shown to be healthy and effective.

Indeed, the Stoics make a very nuanced distinction between aspects of emotion that are involuntary and those that are voluntary. We should accept the former, as natural and inevitable, but take greater responsibility for the latter. When we’re caught in a threatening situation, they said, like being in a ship during a storm at sea, even a seasoned sailor will often turn pale and tremble, if his life is in imminent danger. We shouldn’t struggle against those feelings or view them as bad. However, we don’t need to make things worse either by worrying or ruminating about events afterwards, or complaining excessively about them.

Beck and his colleagues introduced the convenient acronym “AWARE” in their earlier treatment manual for anxiety disorders, Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, Anxiety Disorders & Phobias: A Cognitive Perspective (2005). I’ve taught it to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of therapy clients and students over the years. It’s a very simple tool for remembering healthy ways to cope with anxiety.

Being AWARE

The letters of the word AWARE were used by Beck to stand for: Accept, Watch, Act, Repeat, and Expect.

Accept your anxious feelings as natural, transient and harmless. Allow yourself to feel anxious without becoming annoyed or frustrated with yourself. Say “hello” to the thoughts and feelings. Accept the discomfort and think of it as being fairly normal. Acknowledge the fact that these feelings exist, and adopt a very patient attitude toward change, letting them come and go freely without struggle.

Watch your anxious thoughts from a detached perspective. Observe yourself non-judgmentally, without strongly evaluating your thoughts or feelings as bad, or yourself as flawed for having them. Just imagine you’re observing your them from a distance, without placing too much importance on them. You are not your thoughts or your feelings; rather you’re the person watching them. Think of these internal experiences as transient things, like clouds passing across the sky, instead of becoming absorbed in them.

Act as normal despite your anxiety. Behave as if you’ve already overcome your fears, and act with courage and determination. Reverse your avoidance behaviour and gradually face your fears in steps and stages, dropping any unnecessary signs of anxiety such as gripping objects for safety or averting your gaze from people. Approach what you fear, where possible, rather than avoiding it, and patiently remain in the situation, until you get used to the feelings.

Repeat as much as possible. Keep getting back in the saddle. Keep accepting your anxiety, watching it from a detached perspective, and acting as if you’re better until it becomes second nature and your feelings change. Also, consider repeatedly reviewing mental imagery of upsetting events while distancing from thoughts and accepting feelings. Be persistent, don’t give up, and eventually your anxiety should abate naturally.

Expect realistic improvement. Be hopeful, confident, and optimistic but don’t rush things. Be realistic about the possibility of encountering setbacks but also see them as temporary and surmountable. Approach them as opportunities to improve your coping skills. Expect that anxiety may return, because it’s human nature. However, you can also expect to learn better ways of coping and experience more improvements as long as you keep persevering.

It takes a lot of fuel to get a locomotive steam engine going, I’m told, but a lot less fuel to keep it moving once it’s started rolling.

To begin with, adopting this mind-set might take some effort. You’ll need to keep reminding yourself to do it. However, it soon becomes easier and will evolve into a habit, something you’ll find yourself doing automatically. It takes a lot of fuel to get a locomotive steam engine going, I’m told, but a lot less fuel to keep it moving once it’s started rolling. It sometimes takes a lot of motivation to begin learning new thinking habits but it takes less and less effort with each attempt — the main thing is to take the first step and get the process started. So why don’t you begin right now and see what happens if you put the AWARE strategy into practice as often as possible over the next few days or weeks?

Cognitive Therapy and Emotional Acceptance

Therefore when some terrifying sound, either from heaven or from a falling building or as a sudden announcement of some danger, or anything else of that kind occurs, even the mind of a wise man must necessarily be disturbed, must shrink and feel alarm… — Epictetus, Fragment

In recent decades, there’s been a revolution in the way cognitive-behavioural psychotherapists treat emotional disorders. A “third wave” of evidence-based therapies evolved that focus more on mindfulness of thoughts and acceptance of unpleasant feelings, rather than disputing our beliefs in order to change our emotions. This sea change emerged from a growing body of research, which converged on the finding that people with severe anxiety and depression already tend to be trying too hard to think their way out of their problems and struggling too much to control their feelings.

The Stoic philosophy, which originally inspired cognitive therapy, had also endorsed a similar acceptance of unpleasant emotions, although this is often forgotten today.

However, acceptance of uncomfortable emotions had already long been taught by many earlier forms of psychotherapy, e.g., the Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls and others, which developed in the 1950s. Indeed, even the original forms of behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy had, sometimes, taught emotional acceptance. In his recently-revised manual for the evidence-based treatment of anxiety disorders, Aaron T. Beck, one of the pioneers of cognitive therapy, clearly states that his objective is not to teach people how to “control their anxiety”.

Instead cognitive therapy focuses on helping individuals develop a more “accepting attitude” toward anxiety rather than a “combative (i.e., controlling) attitude.” When thoughts like “I can’t let these anxious feelings continue” are replaced with “I can allow myself to feel anxious because I know I’m exaggerating the threat and danger,” then the intensity and persistence of anxiety are greatly diminished. — Clark & Beck, 2010, p. 195

The Stoic philosophy, which originally inspired cognitive therapy, had also endorsed a similar acceptance of unpleasant emotions, although this is often forgotten today. When people speak of “being stoic” today (lower-case) they typically mean “having a stiff upper-lip”, i.e., suppressing or concealing unpleasant and painful emotions. Several modern research studies have shown that this is often an unhealthy way of coping, though. Lower-case stoicism tends to do the opposite what people believe by making us more emotionally vulnerable in the long-run rather than more resilient — it’s really a sign, in most cases, of weakness not strength. In contrast, Stoic philosophy led to cognitive therapy, and modern evidence-based protocols for psychological resilience training, which many studies have shown to be healthy and effective.

Indeed, the Stoics make a more nuanced distinction between aspects of emotion that are involuntary and those that are voluntary. We should accept the former, as natural and inevitable, but take greater responsibility for the latter. When we’re caught in a threatening situation, they said, like being in a ship during a storm at sea, even a seasoned sailor will often turn pale and tremble, if his life is in imminent danger. We shouldn’t struggle against those feelings or view them as bad. However, we don’t need to make things worse either by worrying or ruminating about events afterwards, or complaining excessively about them.

Read the rest of this article on Medium.

It was easy to show that what you wrote in your original comment was historically incorrect. I don’t really know what you’re going on about now but given that it’s public, if I were you I’d acknowledge the mistake and maybe next time actually read up a bit on the subject.

This is what happens when people lazily base their opinions solely on secondary sources, especially ones that aren’t focused, without bothering to study history or philosophy properly — they come away with a very superficial and misguided understanding of the subject. Go and study the history of the era and the primary sources if you want a more accurate and balanced version of events. For example, not only progressives fought oppressive political-economic structures, for goodness’ sakes. Cato of Utica was an arch conservative but he was also the most stringent opponent of the populist Julius Caesar’s dictatorship. Famous Roman progressives like the Gracchi were influenced by Stoicism. You might also want to look up the Stoic Martyrs, and other members of the Stoic Opposition, who faced death and exile in order to oppose tyrannical emperors, contrary to what you’ve just written. Stoicism was also not entirely confined to the upper classes — Cleanthes, the second head of the school, was an ex boxer who watered gardens for a living, and Epictetus, the most famous Roman teacher of Stoicism, as you should know, was a former slave.

Three Simple Ways that Stoicism can Change your Mindset

Three Simple Ways that Stoicism can Change your Mindset

The Meditations of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is one of the most cherished and widely-read self-help classics of all time. His personal reflections contain a lot of good advice based on the ancient Stoic philosophy that he followed.

Below, I’ve outlined three of the most simple and practical Stoic exercises that you’ll find within the pages of The Meditations.

I’ve been researching Stoicism for nearly a quarter of a century, from my early days as a student of academic philosophy to my later career as a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist deeply engaged with psychological-resilience training. I’m the author of several books on Stoicism, including a recent one on Marcus Aurelius called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. Over the years, I’ve observed that although people love The Meditations they often struggle to know how to put Marcus’ psychological wisdom into practice. Below, I’ve outlined three of the most simple and practical Stoic exercises that you’ll find within the pages of The Meditations.

1. Living in Accord with Virtue

This is arguably the single most important strategy used by Marcus. Stoic philosophy was based on the premise that the fundamental goal (telos in Greek) of life is “living in agreement with Nature”. That doesn’t mean hugging trees, though. The Stoics believed that our ability to think is what really defines human nature. So the goal of their philosophy is living consistently in accord with reason. The word “philosophy”, φιλοσοφία in Greek, means “love of wisdom”. Stoicism therefore, as a philosophy of life, means actually putting this into practice by trying to live wisely. Reason, for the Stoics, is the foundation of all the other virtues.

Easier said than done, right? What matters most, though, is the intention to be guided consistently by your better wisdom. Marcus appears to have regularly checked whether his actions were in alignment with reason and his core values, perhaps several times per day. He frequently asked himself whether individual acts, or even thoughts, are actually necessary for a creature living in accord with reason. Much of what we think to ourselves and do outwardly, he said, is totally superfluous on closer inspection, and merely diverts us from our true purpose.

There are interesting variations of this technique in The Meditations. We’re to pause and ask ourselves of any action how it reflects on our character — “Am I acting like a wise Sage right now,” for example, “or like a childish, foolish or vicious person?” We’re to ask ourselves what the likely consequences of our actions are and whether we might regret them later.

Perhaps the most dramatic version advises us to radically question the importance of what we’re seeking:

On the occasion of every individual thing that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this. — Marcus Aurelius

Are you afraid of dying because you’ll miss an episode of your favourite soap opera or because you’ll not be able to go on Facebook any more? Presumably not, right? It’s a roundabout way of asking: “This thing I’m doing right now — does it really add value to my life?” How important, ultimately, is it to you? This is a profound type of self-discipline and it requires sacrifice: letting go of things that you desire but which aren’t really important in the grand scheme. Cutting away the dead wood by quitting all those activities that feel attractive but aren’t really doing you any good in the long-run.

2. Suspending Judgment

Living consistently in accord with wisdom and our core values, and fulfilling our fundamental goal in life, is a tall order, isn’t it? The two biggest obstacles, arguably, are fear and craving. Replacing these with more rational and healthy emotions was the basis of what’s sometimes called the ancient Stoic “therapy of the passions”.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy was originally inspired by Stoicism. Albert Ellis, the New York psychotherapist who developed the earliest form of CBT, in the 1950s, used to teach a quote from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus to most of his students and therapy clients:

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them. — Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius, who was heavily influenced himself by Epictetus, paraphrases this saying several times:

If thou are pained by any external thing, it is not the thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. — Marcus Aurelius

Indeed, those very words from The Meditations were quoted by Aaron T. Beck, the other main founder of CBT, in his first book on the subject Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (1976). So although our first strategy above was arguably more fundamental to the philosophy, this concept has become the most influential aspect of ancient Stoicism’s legacy.

We call this “cognitive distancing” today, meaning the ability to separate your thoughts from the external events to which they refer. The basis of Stoic therapy is the ability to suspend our value judgements, by realizing that “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet. At least, that’s true with regard to external events, for Stoics what’s truly good or bad isn’t what happens to us but how we decide to respond. Marcus frequently reminded himself of this in order to maintain a healthy sense of cognitive distance from and flexibility toward external events.

3. The View from Above

Lastly, we come to one of the most striking contemplative exercises found in The Meditations, dubbed “The View from Above” by modern scholars. Marcus refers to this several times, especially toward the end of the book.

He who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place. He should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.

This exercise involves visualizing your life as though seen from high above. The obvious analogy, from Greek mythology, would the perspective of Zeus looking down on mortals from atop Mount Olympus.

More fundamentally, though, the Stoics believed that the truth consists in the whole picture. When we forget this, and view events more selectively, we take them out of context, and inflate their significance in a way that causes all sorts of emotional upset and confusion. We could even call this a “lie of omission” that we commit, toward ourselves. In contrast to this, broadening our perspective, in terms both of time and space, allows us to see things more objectively.

Psychologists know today that strong emotions such as fear and anger cause people to narrow their field of attention, and to focus more selectively on the things that are upsetting them. In anxiety, that’s called “threat monitoring”. It probably served some evolutionary purpose but it comes at a hefty price. If we’re not careful, we lose perspective by entering into a form of tunnel-vision about the problems we’re facing in life. The Stoics, on the other hand, realized that wisdom consists in seeing the bigger picture.

What else?

Many more psychological strategies and techniques, such as these, are clearly described in the ancient Stoic texts. In my first book on Stoicism, The Philosophy of CBT, eighteen altogether were identified. However, I think living in agreement with virtue, suspending judgment, and the view from above, are three of the most fundamental and important ones. Doing these regularly, maybe every day, would provide anyone with a solid foundation for training themselves in Stoicism as a philosophy of life.

The Loeb edition by CR Haines.

Great questions. Thanks Kasey! And please, everyone check out her new course.