Practice like a Stoic: 43, Challenge your anxious thoughts

Anxiety is an unhealthy emotion and we need to fight it

Looking in vain into the future, by Midjourney.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic.Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 252-255 of the paperback edition.]

“How am I to know whether my sufferings are real or imaginary?’ Here is the rule for such matters: We are tormented either by things present, or by things to come, or by both. As to things present, the decision is easy. Suppose that your person enjoys freedom and health, and that you do not suffer from any external injury. As to what may happen to it in the future, we shall see later on. Today there is nothing wrong with it. ‘But,’ you say, ‘something will happen to it.’ First of all, consider whether your proofs of future trouble are sure. For it is more often the case that we are troubled by our apprehensions, and that we are mocked by that mocker, rumor, which is wont to settle wars, but much more often settles individuals. Yes, my dear Lucilius; we agree too quickly with what people say. We do not put to the test those things that cause our fear; we do not examine into them. We blanch and retreat just like soldiers who are forced to abandon their camp because of a dust cloud raised by stampeding cattle, or are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some unauthenticated rumor. And somehow or other it is the idle report that disturbs us most. For truth has its own definite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind. That is why no fear is so ruinous and so uncontrollable as panic fear. For other fears are groundless, but this fear is witless. Let us, then, look carefully into the matter. It is likely that some troubles will befall us, but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives, so look forward meanwhile to better things. What shall you gain by doing this? Time. There will be many happenings meanwhile that will serve to postpone, or end, or pass on to another person, the trials that are near or even in your very presence. A fire has opened the way to flight. Men have been let down softly by a catastrophe. Sometimes the sword has been checked even at the victim’s throat. Men have survived their own executioners. Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not. So look forward to better things.” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 13.7–11)

A number of our problems stem from the fact that we have a tendency to engage in bad thinking without challenging it, particularly when it comes to how we relate to our past, present, and future. Let’s start with the future. The first point to understand here is that Seneca is not counseling not to plan for the future, but to just let things happen to you. Stoicism is about action, not passivity. He is highlighting the fact that we often know far less than we think about future events, and given that uncertainty we often have no reasonable cause for our anxieties. As Seneca puts it, it isn’t just good luck that is fickle; the same applies to the bad variety as well! Rest assured, then, that more likely than not, things will actually be okay.

Now, what about the present? Surely I have a better sense of whether that is troubling, no? Seneca suggests that most of the time, nothing is really wrong right now. If we fear imprisonment, say, we are probably worrying about it while in a relatively comfortable environment. If we are concerned about a job, we are probably safely on the couch. For many (but not all) people who are worrying about something, there is nothing in the present moment causing their upset except their thoughts about the future. If you are worried about something, and yet you are healthy, feeling no pain, and free, then at this moment there is nothing wrong. This way of thinking is a consequence of the Stoic notion that the only true bad that can happen to us is our own bad judgment, since everything else can be endured with the right mental attitude. A sure sign of a bad judgment is anxiety, which results from an incorrect (or at the least unwarranted) appraisal of what is going on or may turn out to be the case.