Dealing with stress Stoically

We’d love it not to be the case, but life will never be stress-free. We’re not sages, and so, stress, while it is certain to ebb and flow, will always be a factor in our lives. Stress from work, stress from relationships, stress from challenges and struggles – there is no completely escaping it. In this week’s edition, I’ll be talking about how I frame, manage, and address stress in order to minimize the negative impact it is capable of having on my (imperfect) character.

Framing: stress is an opportunity to practice our philosophy

Every choice that we make requires us to engage our rational faculty to reason. The engagement of our rational faculty is how we “do” Stoicism. Remember what a Stoic practice is: it’s the pursuit of Virtue through the careful use of our minds to determine what is morally just and appropriate.

From the moment we ask ourselves, “Should I consider this? Yes or no?” to “I’m considering this” and then “I’ve considered this, and these are the impressions I’m assenting to after doing so,” we’re doing Stoicism.

When we are confronted with stress, just like when we are confronted with anything that requires us to engage our rational faculty, we are provided an opportunity to practice the philosophy we are students of.

This framing doesn’t “solve” stress, it only enables us to regard stress in a more practical and useful way than we otherwise might. We’re not oppressed by stress, we’re not trying to survive it, we’re, instead, engaging with our stress rationally to make sense of it and to form impressions about it that can lead to resolution of it.

Management: stress isn’t a light switch, it’s more like a pendulum

Epictetus is somewhat famously known for saying, essentially,

I shouldn’t have placed that in quotes because I’m paraphrasing (wildly) from memory. What Epictetus said was certainly phrased (very) differently but was, in spirit, precisely the same: you can’t read your way to Virtue.

Why am I bringing this up?

Because the theory of Stoicism, when we rely on it solely, can get in the way of effectual practice. Case in point: stress is like a light switch, for the sage; for the ideal Stoic. For the sage, stress (negative stress anyway – unhealthy stress) doesn’t exist. The moment someone becomes a sage, switch! No more stress.

Theoretically, sagehood is achievable (and, theoretically, stress is like a light switch).

However, as I’ve said many times, sagehood cannot be proven empirically (by ourselves or by others). The sage should only be seen as an ideal to work toward – as a reminder that there is always room for improvement. If we hold firmly to the belief sagehood is both an achievable state and the point of our practice, it becomes far too easy to create unreasonable, unfair, and thus unjust expectations of ourselves.

The point of our practice cannot be sagehood since sagehood is an empirically unprovable state (it’s impossible to falsify its attainment). Likewise, the point of combatting our stress cannot be the elimination of stress if the elimination of stress isn’t possible.

It’s not combat, it’s a dance – it’s not a light switch, it’s a pendulum.

When the pendulum of stress swings towards us, we must habituate certain maneuvers that enable us to receive it gently and move with it in a way that both slows its speed and reduces the force it hits us with. Eventually, it comes to a gentle stop and we must then let it go, allowing it to swing away from us – prepared for its inevitable return.

So, what does the execution of all this abstract thinking look like? How do we receive stress gently, dance with it, and then send it away for a while?

Addressing stress: pay attention, be prepared with a plan, execute the plan, revise the plan, repeat

We’re accepting stress as inevitable, as an opportunity to practice our philosophy, and as a thing we must learn to dance with, not endeavor to destroy. How do we put all this abstract thinking into action, though?

First: Pay attention, know your triggers, and foresee what you can

You know what stresses you out, or you learn what does as you go along. Pay attention well enough and long enough to identify these things and write them down. For many, top stressors include money, job stability, and family dynamics. Once you’ve identified them, try to suss out what tends to signal their coming.

For example, if family get-togethers stress us out, the harbinger of them is likely to be either (A) the holidays or (B) some well-meaning family member’s impromptu suggestion that “we haven’t all been together in a while, maybe we should plan a trip this summer.” Learning to identify these signs and signals of a coming stressful event can allow us to mentally prepare ourselves for them well before they arrive.

Once we can see stress coming, we can prepare ourselves to catch it, cradle its impact, and dance with it.

Second: be prepared with strategies that enable you to dance with stress, not do battle with it

After choosing to use family get-togethers as our example, it’s easy to joke that our strategy ought to be lots of alcohol. While I admit I’ve used this strategy in the past, and no doubt many of us will from time to time in the future, alcohol clouds our judgment and reduces our grip on the rational faculty. So, jokes aside, alcohol isn’t an appropriate strategy for coping with stress.

What is?

Giving ourselves time to properly assess reality and assent to impressions about people and their eccentricities that are appropriate and reasonable.

Imagine we have an “Uncle Terry”, and that he’s a racist. By taking time to properly assess our expectations of him, we give ourselves time to prepare for how we will choose to “dance” with his triggering personality.

You already know the strategy I’m outlining by a fancy Latin-sounding name: Premeditatio Malorum (the premeditation of evils). While not uniquely Stoic (which I’ve talked about before), this technique is, perhaps, the foundation of any Stoic strategy for prepping oneself to endure a stressful event or period of time.

Everything that we have the ability to choose exists within our mind. That means any control we’re attempting to exert over our thinking, our emotional or physical states, or the world around us, happens in our hegemonikon; our rational faculty. This is, truly, our only tool when it comes to figuring out how to navigate stress. It should come as no surprise then that the only thing we can do to endure stress as we dance with it, is to prepare our minds to be in the presence of stress (and then think through how we will be when in its presence).

This is the opposite of replaying a past event in our heads, as we talk to ourselves in the shower, saying, “Oh, yeah, that’s what I should have said!” or “Why did I let them get the better of me? I could have just brushed it off and ignored it.”

This is the behavior of those who don’t look for harbingers or heralds (of stressful events) and don’t prepare their minds accordingly ahead of time.

We don’t want to be those sorts of people anymore.

Third: Execute.

Do the premeditation. Effort to keep those premeditations in mind and, when the stressful event comes, say to yourself,

We’ve already played the scenario out, we already know the reality of it, we’ve already assented to an impression of it. All that’s left to do is stand our ground in support of that impression. We regard Uncle Terry, in real life, the way we’ve regarded his visage in our premeditation. We’ve trained for this.

Fourth: watch the aftermath, and take notes. Where did your execution fail?

Uncle Terry may have said something that really got to us. With an hour left to our family get-together, we turn to Uncle Terry and call him an asshole, throw our drink in his face, and storm out of the house in a huff. We prepared, but not well enough.

The Stoics would say we had this reaction for two reasons:

1. We hadn’t made peace with the fact that there are things we cannot choose. This upsets us because we don’t want people to act like Uncle Terry. When they do, we become angry that we can’t stop other people from behaving in ways we don’t want them to. This is a foolish reason to be angry.

2. We chose to regard a dispreferred indifferent in a way that required us to abandon our pursuit of Virtue. Uncle Terry’s words have no power over us or anyone else, and yet we choose to act like madmen in response to them – we choose to give up our temperance (for example) to express indignation.

No one is perfect, except the sage, so this will always be us. We won’t get it right, perfectly, ever. We can, however, get it better by continuing the effort and not quitting just because it’s a “forever job.”

Take actual notes on how you messed up, and roll that new knowledge into your strategy for next time.

No strategies for navigating stress should be off-limits if we deem them (honestly) as appropriate

I’m going to provide you with a very personal, very recent, anecdote.

I’ve recently become a father. My son, Cailean, is now 6-months old. In 2020, I was diagnosed with adult ADHD.

What many people don’t know about ADHD is the impact it has on one’s “Executive Function” which includes the ability to manage emotional responses.

The forgetfulness, the half-finished projects, the cutesy stuff that makes it into memes and TikTok videos, those things are real, but the real hell of the condition is how hard it is to get a hold of yourself and to choose to do the things you know you ought to be doing.

Many self-proclaimed Stoics will tell you that certain approaches to certain problems are “unStoic.”

For example, such people might say it’s unStoic to be on anti-depression medication because, “if you were a real Stoic,” you’d know not to be depressed.

These people are, in the kindest terms, ill-informed.

Stoicism doesn’t cure depression, ADHD, Autism, migraines, stress (as we’ve seen), or any other physical condition – Stoicism is simply a philosophical approach to living that gives you a blueprint and some tools so that you can navigate your life in a certain way. The philosophy may result in increased resilience to certain maladies, certainly I believe that’s true, but it doesn’t make us bulletproof. As I’ve said, it’s just a framework for living.

I mentioned my son because his crying triggered a lot of angry emotions in me during the first 3-months of his life. It’s hard to describe why, or what it felt like, but I would become so angry, at him, for doing nothing more than what a baby is naturally expected to do: cry.

I was up against a wall with it. I knew I shouldn’t feel angry, I knew I shouldn’t have been storming out of a room, leaving my crying child alone with my wife for her to deal with, in response to this completely natural thing, but I couldn’t choose otherwise. My mind was angry, and I couldn’t “Stoicism” myself out of it – not until the crying stopped. My ADHD was getting in the way of me behaving in the way I knew was the appropriate way to behave.

After doing some research, I discovered that this isn’t an uncommon reaction for new parents, that there are some hormonal changes (in men and women) that happen at this stage in an individual’s life (when they become a parent), and that crying, in particular, can invoke a very powerful fight or flight response that frequently manifests as rage. It is especially strong in those with ADHD because of certain audio processing issues that arise from diminished control over our Executive Function.

“Never shake a baby!”

You’ve probably heard this public service announcement before. If you have, you probably thought, as I did, “Who the hell would shake a baby? What kind of psychos are having children?”

The nurse at the hospital where Cailean was born even gave my wife and me a speech about it before we brought the little guy home from the hospital – we both thought it was so strange. We both said the same thing, “Do they think we’re crazy?”

Turns out, that public service announcement is a thing because of how overwhelmingly common what I was experiencing actually is. People get angry, overwhelmed, they’re sleep-deprived, they’re emotional, they just want the noise to stop, and they wind up shaking their kids.

Thankfully, I didn’t.

Thankfully, I applied the strategies I listed above to reason myself to a choice and course of action that lead me to overcoming the issue – one that solved the anger and frustration entirely: muting earplugs.

Turns out the combination of frequency and volume was the trigger for my emotional state. By blocking out a little of the volume and a lot of the frequency, I became “crying baby proof” overnight.

Some people, the sort I mentioned before, would say, “oh, you needed earplugs? That must be because you don’t know how to be a real Stoic. A real Stoic could just “virtue” themselves to a proper mental state.”

But, as I would hope we all understand by now, it is our choices, not outcomes, that make us Stoic or not. Is it morally appropriate to choose to purchase special earplugs to become a more patient father, or is it morally appropriate to continue to be a less patient one because “real Stoics don’t need help”?

I know you know the answer — or, at least I hope you do.

Don’t let others dictate whether the strategies that work for you are morally appropriate and just strategies — instead, make your choices and judge your strategies yourself. Only you know whether you’ve done the right thing or not, only you have access to your hegemonikon.

Use your mind, it’s the only way to find the way

While our mind, itself, won’t be the thing that directly addresses the stress in our lives (see my earplugs), it is the only tool we have to think through identifying and implementing the devices, strategies, mechanisms, etc that we will employ in successfully navigating stress in our lives.

Everything we do springs from the mind. Start there, and you’ll find your way forward.

Thanks for reading.