Donald J. Robertson's Blog, page 14

What Nobody Tells You About Breaking Habits

The Paradox of Negative Practice in Behaviour Change

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise. — William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Most people who want to eliminate their bad habits try to do so by directly suppressing them — just forcing themselves to stop. Often they find that simply doesn’t work. In his novel Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence gives a truly remarkable description of the opposite technique:

“A very great doctor taught me”, [Hermione] said, addressing Ursula and Gerald vaguely. “He told me for instance, that to cure oneself of a bad habit, one should force oneself to do it, when one would not do it — make oneself do it — and then the habit would disappear.”

“How do you mean?” said Gerald.

“If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don’t want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. And you would find the habit was broken.”

“Is that so?” said Gerald.

“Yes. And in so many things, I have made myself well. I was a very queer and nervous girl. And by learning to use my will, simply by using my will, I made myself right.” — Women in Love, 1920

Knight Dunlap

A similar method for breaking bad habits was developed in the 1920s by Knight Dunlap, Professor of Experimental Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Dunlap’s method, known as “negative practice”, was described in his all but forgotten Habits: Their Making and Unmaking (1932). Dunlap was, without question, a man far ahead of his time in the field of psychotherapy, whose ideas in some ways anticipated modern cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

The Beta Hypothesis: Intention Matters

We normally assume, of course, that “practice makes perfect” and that repeating a habit makes it stronger. We can call that the “alpha hypothesis” (hypothesis a) concerning habits. Dunlap contrasted that with his “beta hypothesis” (hypothesis b), which says that under certain conditions voluntarily engaging in your habit can have the paradoxical effect of making it weaker, perhaps even eliminating it completely.

Dunlap’s hypothesis was that your attitude is key. “In negative practice”, he wrote, “the determining factors are the thoughts and desires in the practice.” If you’re repeatedly performing some action with the intention of making it a habit then, with practice, you may well succeed. However, if your intention is to weaken an existing habit that’s what tends to happen.

Dunlap’s favorite example comes from a method he noticed being used to train typists:

The non-professional typist and the learner frequently make persistent errors, such as the transposition of the into hte, and these errors are ordinarily eliminated with difficulty. It has been found, however, that even a small amount of practice in writing the word in the wrong way will eliminate the error. –- Dunlap, 1932: 95–96

A small study by Holsopple and Vanouse (1929) tested the beta hypothesis with eleven shorthand students. They were asked to employ normal (“positive”) practice to counteract one set of errors, and negative practice to deal with another set. Negative practice was found considerably more effective with this group. In fact, all eleven students appeared to benefit, with errors for negatively practiced words being reduced to zero while mistakes were still being made with the positively practiced words about thirty percent of the time.

A few years later, two researchers published an article summarizing the findings of several additional experiments, from which they concluded:

These and other considerations arising from a more detailed analysis of the data tend strongly to support Dunlap’s beta hypothesis of negative practice. — Kellogg & White, 1935

The main recommendation emerging from early research reviews was that negative practice tends to work better when “massed” rather than “distributed”, i.e., when the behavior to be eliminated is practiced lots of times in rapid succession during each practice session.

How to do Negative Practice

In a nutshell, Dunlap’s method involved asking subjects with stutters, tics, and other unwanted habits to voluntarily engage in the behavior over and over again with little or no delay between repetitions. Most importantly, though, they were to bear in mind their goal of breaking the habit. For example, before each negative practice session, clients wishing to overcome a stammer would say to themselves:

“I am going to stammer; I am going to perfect my stammering (i.e., make it as near as possible like my usual stammering). I am to do this now, when I want to, because so doing will make it possible later for me not to stammer when I don’t want to. The better I stammer now, the sooner I will break the habit of stammering.” — Dunlap, 1932: 205

Dunlap found that behavior could be changed in this way, though it sometimes required as much as two fifteen-minute sessions of daily practice for 3–4 weeks.

Negative practice is so-called because it involves practicing a habit you want to unlearn or negate. Later authors refer to a variety of similar techniques as “paradoxical” therapy — the paradox being that you’re instructed to do more of something you want to stop doing. It’s also sometimes referred to as “symptom prescription”.

The behavioral psychologist Clark Hull argued that negative practice might work through a neurological process he called “reactive inhibition”. According to this theory when some piece of behavior is repeated many times in rapid succession your nervous system automatically begins to react by weakening and inhibiting the habit regardless of your intentions.

Other behaviorists observed that intensive sessions of negative practice can also lead to feelings of fatigue, self-consciousness, awkwardness or aversion, which might actually be helpful if they inhibit the unwanted habit. Although there are differing opinions about exactly how the technique works they’re not mutually exclusive — several of these things might be happening at once.

More Examples of Negative Practice

The pioneering behavior therapist Andrew Salter adopted Dunlap’s negative practice technique in the 1940s, and gave this brief case-study of blushing as an example:

I explained to Mr. T. that the human nervous system had, as it were, a logical battery and an emotional battery. Both were connected by wires to different parts of the body. “Your emotional battery, through what is called the autonomic nervous system, sends messages unconsciously to the blood vessels in your face, making you blush. Now, if we can use some power from the logic department instead, you will develop a deliberate hold on the blood vessels, and overcome the unconscious blush signals. The logical department of the brain will tell your face, “You won’t have to blush.” So I want you to deliberately practice blushing. Tell yourself to blush at all times: when you’re alone, and when you’re with people. Get practice in sending logical electricity to your face instead of emotional electricity, and that will put logic in charge of blushing. When you control it, that will be the end of it.” I emphasized that he must practice this vigorously, and it was my impression that he would. When I saw him a week later, he was a bit perplexed. “You know,” he said, “I find that I can’t blush whether I want to or not. It’s the darndest thing.” — Salter, 1949: 64–65

Salter also provides a further example of the technique in which he prescribed that a pretty young lady who had a flatulence problem should, “practice the deliberate breaking of wind at all times.”

The existential psychotherapist Victor Frankl, author of the bestselling Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), likewise developed a technique he called “paradoxical intention”, which appears very similar to Dunlap’s negative practice.

It consists not only of a reversal of the patient’s attitude toward his phobia inasmuch as the usual avoidance response is replaced by an intentional effort — but also that it is carried out in as humorous a setting as possible. — Psychotherapy & Existentialism, 1967

Elsewhere Frankl provides a brief case study concerning a young doctor who had developed a phobia about sweating. One day, meeting his boss on the street, as he extended his hand in greeting, he noticed that he was sweating more than usual. Each time he then found himself in a similar situation he grew nervous, expecting that he would sweat profusely.

It was a vicious circle… We advised our patient, in the event that his anticipatory anxiety should recur, to resolve deliberately to show the people whom he confronted at the time just how much he could really sweat. A week later he returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anxiety, he said to himself, “I only sweated out a litre before, but now I’m going to pour out at least ten litres!” What was the result of this paradoxical resolution? After suffering from his phobia for four years, he was quickly able, after only one session, to free himself of it for good. — Psychotherapy & Existentialism, 1967, p 139

Although Frankl emphasized that humor was an important part of symptom prescription, researchers employing similar techniques haven’t always found this necessary.

Dunlap used negative practice as his main approach for a wide variety of problems, including behavioral habits like nail-biting, mental habits like worrying, and emotional habits like becoming angry with people. Over the years similar paradoxical techniques have been used to address an even wider range of problems. The treatment of insomnia is perhaps one of the most common uses of symptom prescription in behavior therapy. Paradoxically, clients often find that being told to “try to stay awake as long as possible” tends to make them fall asleep sooner.

Another technique that’s become increasingly common in modern cognitive-behavioral therapy involves the prescription of deliberate “worry time”. A client who feels immersed in their worries is advised to set aside, e.g., half an hour each day to sit in a specific chair and worry voluntarily. Worrying is postponed until then when they can focus more attention on the process. Of course, nobody “worries” deliberately, worries creep into our mind when not wanted. When we set about thinking our worries through deliberately they often seem ridiculous or trivial and the effort can become tedious after a while. This feeling of fatigue or boredom while engaged in the negative practice is perhaps useful, as mentioned earlier. It may actually contribute to the inhibition of the habit.

The English psychologist Edward B. Titchener was reputedly the first to observe, at the start of the 20th century, that when a word or short phrase is repeated aloud very rapidly for a period of time the speaker typically begins to experience it as meaningless gibberish. Recently this has become a common technique in a state-of-the-art form of cognitive-behavioral therapy known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). For instance, suppose that you’re troubled by a distressing thought such “Everyone hates me!” Repeating that sentence aloud, as fast as you can, for at least a minute, will feel surprisingly difficult. Research shows that in about 90% of cases people who do this report that the phrase feels more empty or meaningless as a result, which can greatly diminish the thought’s ability to cause distress.

Conclusion: Some Practical Tips

Here are some more practical tips derived from the clinical and research literature on negative practice:

You should have a moderate desire to eliminate the behavior you’re practicing and focus throughout the practice on the idea that you’re repeating the habit in order to rid yourself of it.

It often helps to bear in mind examples of how negative practice has been found effective in removing undesired habits such as in the training of typists.

You’ll need to address any underlying motives for clinging on to the habit, e.g., biting your fingernails as a way of distracting yourself from social anxiety.

You may need to have a new way of responding once the habit is gone, e.g., if you eliminate the habit of mispronouncing a word you’ll need to know the correct pronunciation to replace it.

It’s important to reproduce the habit that you’re trying to eliminate as accurately as possible and to repeat it for long enough that it starts to feel quite awkward or tedious.

It can also be useful to spot the bad habit whenever it happens spontaneously and straight away repeat it over and over again, voluntarily, as a form of negative practice. Of course, if you’re suffering from a severe problem you should seek assessment and treatment from a qualified professional. However, many everyday bad habits can be broken by using a variation of this simple technique. People often find it tremendously liberating to discover, after years of trying to force themselves to stop a bad habit, that an easier and more effective solution may be to actually do the very thing they’ve been trying so hard to avoid. As Blake also said, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

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Socrates Explains Your Cynicism

What can Socrates tell us about the root causes of cynicism, misogyny, misandry, and misanthropy, in modern society? It turns out, in typically Socratic fashion, that his answer is to highlight a paradox.

By cynicism with a small c (never capitalized) I mean the modern concept of a negative attitude concerning other people’s motives. A cynic assumes the worst about their fellow human beings and says things like “People are only out for themselves.” That’s not to be confused with Cynicism, which is usually capitalized to denote the ancient Greek philosophy exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope, and his followers. The Cynic philosophers definitely appear cynical at times but there was much more to their philosophy than this, and their goal was to flourish and help improve their fellow citizens, not simply to complain about them.

Timon of Athens, the classic misanthrope

In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates briefly discusses the concept of misanthropy, a deep-seated distrust and even hatred of other humans. Misanthropy is like cynicism and some. Misanthropes don’t just distrust other people, they actively detest them. We can view misogyny, or hating women, and misandry, or hating men, as specialized forms of misanthropy, worth mentioning because arguably they’re more common, and more prominent, today than the more general attitude of simply detesting everyone.

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The Phaedo depicts Socrates’ final hours in prison, before his execution. He contentedly discussed philosophy with a group of friends, focusing on questions about the nature of the soul and its fate after death.

At one point, however, Socrates tells Phaedo that if they wish to continue their discussion they must be on their guard against a danger. Phaedo is puzzled and asks him what he means.

The danger of becoming misologists or haters of reason, as people become misanthropists or haters of man. For no worse evil can happen to a man than to hate reason.

A misologist is someone who hates reason or rational argument, and by implication, philosophy.

Socrates is serious. He believes that there are many people who exhibit an aversion to logic or reason, and that this is among the worst afflictions that can befall us. For our purposes, though, it’s interesting to note that he considers this problem to originate in more or less the same way as misanthropy.

Misology and misanthropy arise from similar causes. For misanthropy arises from trusting someone implicitly without sufficient knowledge. You think the man is perfectly true and sound and trustworthy, and afterwards you find him base and false. Then you have the same experience with another person. By the time this has happened to a man a good many times, especially if it happens among those whom he might regard as his nearest and dearest friends, he ends by being in continual quarrels and by hating everybody and thinking there is nothing sound in anyone at all.

Ironically, then, we become cynical because we trust other people too much.

Socrates believes that our cynicism is spawned by our own misplaced trust and gullibility. When we naively place too much faith in the wrong people, we are bound to be let down by them eventually. If this happens repeatedly, and with people we care about, then we end up feeling that we can no longer trust anyone, and are left permanently bitter and cynical.

It’s even easier to see this if we narrow our focus and look at the example of misogyny. Suppose a young man falls in love with a woman, loses perspective, and falls into the trap of viewing her in a naive and idealistic way. If he falls for the wrong woman, she’s likely to end up rejecting, betraying, or otherwise disappointing him. If his feelings are hurt too often or too catastrophically, he may become bitter and cynical. In order to protect himself from making the same mistake again, and naively trusting the wrong woman, he will now tell himself that all women are untrustworthy.

This can happen to anyone, if they trust blindly in the wrong individual. It’s more often young people who react so strongly to rejection, because they have less experience to draw upon, in order to maintain perspective. Depending on whether your heart has been broken by a woman or a man, you may end up trying to protect your self-esteem by becoming either a misogynist or a misandrist — a pathological women-hater or man-hater.

Socrates goes on to explain that someone is only vulnerable to this sort of cynicism, if they lack a basic understanding of human nature.

Well, is it not disgraceful, and is it not plain that such a man undertakes to consort with men when he has no knowledge of human nature? For if he had knowledge when he dealt with them, he would think that the good and the bad are both very few and those between the two are very many, for that is the case.

Socrates thinks this is shameful because it is obviously quite childish. Children tend to think in more black-and-white terms than adults. As our thinking matures, we become more capable of fine distinctions.

When someone lacks a mature and balanced understanding of human nature they will tend to either idealize or demonize other people. They naively invest their trust in someone, idealizing them at first, only to discover that they are not perfect, at which point they may feel hurt and demonize them. They go from one extreme to the other. And if this happens too disastrously or too frequently, they may end up, misanthropically, demonizing everyone they meet. They think, perhaps without even realizing that it is what they think: that if they never trust anyone again, they will never again be disappointed.

Socrates notes that “big” and “small” are relative terms, and that, almost by definition, it is unusual to meet a very big person or a very small one, as most people are medium sized. In the same way, we should realize that it is unusual to meet a very good person or a very bad one, and that most people are in between, and capable of doing both good and bad things. A wise person, therefore, realizes that most people cannot be trusted unconditionally, at all times, and to assume otherwise would be childish and naive.

Socrates concludes by returning to his analogy, and explaining that misology, a pathological distrust of reason, can originate from gullibility in much the same that misanthropy does.

When a man without proper knowledge concerning arguments has confidence in the truth of an argument and afterwards thinks that it is false, whether it really is so or not, and this happens again and again; then you know, those men especially who have spent their time in disputation come to believe that they are the wisest of men and that they alone have discovered that there is nothing sound or sure in anything, whether argument or anything else, but all things go up and down, like the tide in the Euripus, and nothing is stable for any length of time.

In other words, people who are gullible and too easily persuaded by weak arguments, will usually end up disappointed when they discover, later, that they have been misled. If this happens repeatedly, they will end up feeling as though nothing is true, and that anything goes. Ironically, that makes them assume that they are wise and others are foolish, when, in fact, they have merely replaced philosophy, and the pursuit of wisdom, with cynicism.

Conclusion

It’s not clear who the misologists are, although it seems likely that Socrates may have had certain Sophists in mind. The first famous Sophist was Protagoras, who was known as the wisest man alive among his followers. Plato portrays him as a relativist, who doubts whether anything can be absolutely or objectively true. Protagoras and the Sophists who followed in his footsteps were more interested in using rhetoric to win arguments than in employing reason to arrive at the truth. Their wisdom, therefore, was all about appearance.

In modern society, it’s often been observed that many of those drawn to philosophy, looking for some sense of direction, are young men. In some cases, they seem to be turning to philosophy, looking for direction, and seeking a substitute for a father figure. They often feel very angry, disillusioned and cynical about the world. Sometimes they are preyed upon by “self-improvement” influencers, in the so-called manosphere, who exploit their sense of vulnerability concerning their masculinity in order to make money from them. (Andrew Tate, for instance, who has referred to himself as a “misogynist”, something in which he appears to revel.) Exactly the same thing used to happen in ancient Greece, and Socrates often warned young men to be on their guard against those who would take advantage of them in this way.

Cynicism and misanthropy are, basically, forms of anger. Clinical research on the psychology of anger has shown that in the vast majority of cases people become angry in response to initial feelings of hurt or anxiety. We usually get angry in order to conceal our pain and defend ourselves against having our feelings hurt again. The misogyny of these angry and desperate young men is perhaps a direct result, ironically, of their childishness and naivete with regard to women. They invest too much, emotionally, in the wrong people, and set themselves up for failure, and disillusionment. Indeed, by embracing misogyny and casting their lot in with gurus from the manosphere, they appear to be simply replacing their failed idealization of women with the irrational idealization of another male. That too may be doomed to end in disappointment, leading to yet more bitterness and cynicism.

Cynicism, misanthropy, misogyny, misandry, etc, offer us protection. If we never trust anyone again, we’ll never be disappointed by anyone again. Or at least, that’s what we assume. In reality, we make ourselves even more vulnerable by embracing this kind of pervasive negativity. Anger excels at achieving the opposite of what it desires. Angry people want others to respect them, but ultimately they alienate everyone, and destroy any hope of finding fulfilment in a lasting relationship. Marcus Aurelius said that, ironically, our own anger harms us more than the things about which we’re angry. Cynicism, likewise, does you more harm than the things about which you are cynical.

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The Stoicism of Augustus

The Lost Exhortations to Philosophy

’Tis glorious to tower aloft amongst great men, to have care for fatherland, to spare the downtrodden, to abstain from cruel bloodshed, to be slow to wrath, give quiet to the world, peace to one’s time. This is virtue’s crown, by this way is heaven sought. So did that first Augustus, his country’s father, gain the stars, and is worshipped in the temples as a god. — Pseudo-Seneca, Octavia

The most famous Stoic philosopher is, without doubt, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Countless people have read his book The Meditations since the first English translation appeared in the early 17th century. Many moviegoers also became familiar with Marcus from Richard Harris’ portrayal of him in the Hollywood sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator (2000). However, it’s less well-known that, over a century before Marcus was born, the first Roman emperor was also a student of Stoicism and the author of an essay praising philosophy.

The man we call Augustus (63 BC — 14 AD) was the founder of the Roman empire. Early in his life he was known as Octavian, the grand-nephew of the dictator Julius Caesar. Lacking any legitimate offspring, Caesar adopted Octavian and named him his heir. Following Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC, Rome went through a long period of political instability which culminated in the naval Battle of Actium (30 BC). The fleet of Octavian defeated the combined forces of Mark Antony and his lover, Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. Octavian was left the sole ruler of Rome and gradually accumulated more and more powers. In 27 BC, the senate granted him the titles Augustus and Princeps, or first citizen, effectively becoming emperor and defining the role that would be occupied by his successors for centuries to come.

Augustus was certainly never remembered as a Stoic philosopher in the sense that Marcus Aurelius was. However, the historian Suetonius claims in Lives of the Caesars that Augustus was the author of numerous writings including a lost work titled Exhortations to Philosophy. We’re told that late in life Augustus would read these to a group of his intimate friends, as though delivering a class in a lecture room. Suetonius also mentions a text by Augustus called “Reply to Brutus on Cato”. We can probably assume this was a response to Brutus’ eulogy for his uncle, the famous Republican Stoic, Cato of Utica. Brutus, one of the main assassins of Augustus’ adoptive father, Julius Caesar, was also reputedly a student of Stoicism.

So, in addition to Augustus’ Exhortations to Philosophy, his Reply to Brutus on Cato may have touched on philosophical themes, as may his other lost writings. These claims become more plausible when we learn that, earlier in his life, Augustus had two Stoic tutors.

Athenodorus Canaanites & Arius Didymus

Athenodorus Canaanites, from Canaana near Tarsus, a student of Posidonius of Rhodes, was Octavian’s first Stoic tutor. He began teaching the young man in the city of Apollonia, Illyria (modern day Albania), and later followed Octavian on his return to Rome in 44 BC, aged 19. Athenodorus reputedly wrote a lost work dedicated to the elder sister of Octavian, Octavia Minor.

Octavian’s other, and probably slightly later, Stoic tutor was Arius Didymus of Alexandria. Arius was the author of an important summary of early Stoic teachings, long fragments of which survive today in the anthologies of the doxographer Stobaeus. Seneca says, in On Clemency, that although Augustus naturally had a temper, and executed many enemies earlier in his life, he changed completely later in his reign. Around 16 BC a man called Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus was caught plotting to assassinate Augustus. Following the advice of his wife, Livia, Augustus decided that he could no longer continue executing his enemies, and adopted a policy of clemency toward Cinna, after which plots against him apparently ceased. Arius was an expert on Stoic psychotherapy, and later, around 9 BC, wrote a highly-regarded consolation letter to Livia, the wife if Augustus, containing Stoic psychological advice to help her cope emotionally with the loss of her beloved son, Drusus. The philosophy’s value in consoling his wife, Livia, appears to have strengthened Augustus’ association with Stoicism.

Suetonius, the historian, said that Augustus had at first been interested in studying Greek literature. He trained in Greek rhetoric, although he never mastered the language, but later became more interested in philosophy, particularly Stoicism.

Later he became versed in various forms of learning through association with the [Stoic] philosopher Areus [Didymus] and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor. — Suetonius, The Lives of Caesars

We’re told that in reading both Greek and Latin, “there was nothing for which he looked so carefully as precepts and examples instructive to the public or to individuals”. He would copy these down verbatim and send them to members of his household, generals and provincial governors, who might especially benefit from them. Suetonius says Augustus even recited “entire volumes” to the senate and called the attention of the public to them through proclamations, including a speech by Publius Rutilius Rufus, another Stoic, titled “On the Height of Buildings”.

Although more of Arius’ writings survive, in this article I’m going to focus on Athenodorus and his possible influence upon Octavian. For example, in his Moralia, Plutarch recounts the following anecdote:

Athenodorus, the philosopher, because of his advanced years begged to be dismissed and allowed to go home [presumably from Rome to Tarsus], and Augustus granted his request. But when Athenodorus, as he was taking leave of him, said, “Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet,” Augustus seized his hand and said, “I still have need of your presence here,” and detained him a whole year, saying, “No risk attends the reward that silence brings.” — Plutarch, Moralia, Sayings of Romans: Caesar Augustus

This strategy of taking what modern therapists would call a “time-out” before acting on feelings of anger was fairly well-known in the ancient world. However, Athenodorus gives a very clear example of how this was to be accomplished in practice by pausing to recite the Greek alphabet. Perhaps it worked, as Seneca refers to Augustus as an example of someone who ruled without anger.

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things, which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. — Seneca, On Anger, 3.23

Seneca goes on to explain that Augustus was satisfied to leave the company of critics, without feeling the need to take revenge on them.

Let everyone, then, say to himself, whenever he is provoked […] Have I more authority in my own house than the Emperor Augustus possessed throughout the world? Yet he was satisfied with leaving the society of his maligner. — Seneca, On Anger, 3.24

In his earlier years, Octavian is believed to have had quite a violent temper but perhaps Seneca means to suggest that later in life, as Augustus, he overcome this tendency, perhaps in part as a consequence of his training in Stoicism.

There were several philosophers called Athenodorus but it seems likely Seneca again means the tutor of Octavian when he mentions with approval a saying from Athenodorus: “Know that you are freed from all desires when you have reached such a point that you pray to God for nothing except what you can pray for openly” (Letters, 10). In other words, our deepest desires should be such as we would be unashamed to admit in public — a typical Cynic-Stoic theme that recurs in the writings of Marcus Aurelius.

Elsewhere Seneca also writes that Athenodorus said “he would not so much as dine with a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so” (On Tranquillity, 7). Seneca says he takes this to mean that Athenodorus would not eat with men who lay on banquets as a way of repaying their friends for their services because in doing so they rate their own generosity, with food and drink, too highly compared with friendship.

The Exhortations to Philosophy

These sayings of Athenodorus are interesting. However, Seneca also quotes a lengthy excerpt from his writings, which seems especially relevant. It’s explicitly addressed to young Roman men who are considering a life in public office, just like Octavian was when he first met Athenodorus.

It argues that although their desire to benefit society is a noble one, political office is inherently corrupting. It advises them to remain in private life and focus on improving their own character first and foremost. They can more safely benefit society by providing a living example of wisdom and virtue than by trying to exercise political influence over others. In other words, what Seneca quotes at length from Athenodorus is a typical example of an exhortation, a genre also known as philosophical protreptic.

Although Augustus’ Exhortations to Philosophy has long been lost, we know his tutor Athenodorus’ exhortation reads like this…

The best thing is to occupy oneself with business, with the management of affairs of state and the duties of a citizen: for as some pass the day in exercising themselves in the sun and in taking care of their bodily health, and athletes find it most useful to spend the greater part of their time in feeding up the muscles and strength to whose cultivation they have devoted their lives; so too for you who are training your mind to take part in the struggles of political life, it is far more honourable to be thus at work than to be idle. He whose object is to be of service to his countrymen and to all mortals, exercises himself and does good at the same time when he is engrossed in business and is working to the best of his ability both in the interests of the public and of private men.

As noted above, these are words of advice explicitly aimed at Roman youths training themselves for future political careers, possibly including the young Octavian. However, Athenodorus continues,

But because innocence is hardly safe among such furious ambitions and so many men who turn one aside from the right path, and it is always sure to meet with more hindrance than help, we ought to withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life, and a great mind even in a private station can find room wherein to expand freely. Confinement in dens restrains the springs of lions and wild creatures, but this does not apply to human beings, who often effect the most important works in retirement. Let a man, however, withdraw himself only in such a fashion that wherever he spends his leisure his wish may still be to benefit individual men and mankind alike, both with his intellect, his voice, and his advice.

Although, in a sense, the highest calling in life involves a commitment to the welfare of society, nevertheless public office can have a corrupting influence. So one is best advised to avoid a career in politics and retire instead to private life, where wise counsel can still be given from the sidelines. We should not live like hermits, however, but as philosophers, scholars, and teachers, who share their wisdom with others and provide them with role models.

The man that does good service to the state is not only he who brings forward candidates for public office, defends accused persons, and gives his vote on questions of peace and war, but he who encourages young men in well-doing, who supplies the present dearth of good teachers by instilling into their minds the principles of virtue, who seizes and holds back those who are rushing wildly in pursuit of riches and luxury, and, if he does nothing else, at least checks their course — such a man does service to the public though in a private station.

He goes on to ask whether one does more good for society as a magistrate, whether dealing with international or domestic cases (praetor peregrinus or praetor urbanus), or as one who can show people through his own example “what is meant by justice, filial feeling, endurance, courage, contempt of death and knowledge of the gods, and how much a man is helped by a good conscience”. It is better to be a wise and virtuous role model, Athenodorus is saying, and provide an example through your own character and way of life than to exert influence over society through public office.

If then you transfer to philosophy the time which you take away from the public service, you will not be a deserter or have refused to perform your proper task. A soldier is not merely one who stands in the ranks and defends the right or the left wing of the army, but he also who guards the gates — a service which, though less dangerous, is no sinecure — who keeps watch, and takes charge of the arsenal: though all these are bloodless duties, yet they count as military service.

By now, it’s clear that Athenodorus is writing an exhortation, encouraging his young readers to embrace the life of a philosopher.

As soon as you have devoted yourself to philosophy, you will have overcome all disgust at life. You will not wish for darkness because you are weary of the light, nor will you be a trouble to yourself and useless to others. You will acquire many friends, and all the best men will be attracted towards you, for virtue, in however obscure a position, cannot be hidden, but gives signs of its presence. Anyone who is worthy will trace it out by its footsteps.

He’s saying that a Roman youth can choose a private life of wisdom and virtue, through training in philosophy, and others will still seek him out because of his character and reputation. Stoic philosophers continue to dedicate themselves to the common welfare of mankind but they do so by sharing learning rather than engaging in lawmaking or politics. However, there’s another sort of retirement from public life, which is just vice and idleness, because it lacks any concern for the welfare of others.

But if we give up all society, turn our backs upon the whole human race, and live communing with ourselves alone, this solitude without any interesting occupation will lead to a want of something to do. We shall begin to build up and to pull down, to dam out the sea, to cause waters to flow through natural obstacles, and generally to make a bad disposal of the time which Nature has given us to spend. Some of us use it grudgingly, others wastefully. Some of us spend it so that we can show a profit and loss account, others so that they have no assets remaining: something than which nothing can be more shameful. Often a man who is very old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time. — Athenodorus quoted in Seneca, On Tranquility, 3

The Stoics firmly believed in the brotherhood of all mankind. One of the cardinal virtues of their philosophy is justice (dikaiosune), consisting of both fairness and benevolence toward others. As Marcus Aurelius would later put it, to turn our backs on others is to be alienated from Nature as a whole, a form of injustice and impiety.

If I remember, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be well contented with all that comes to pass; and in so far as I am bound by a tie of kinship to other parts of the same nature as myself I shall never act against the common interest, but rather, I shall take proper account of my fellows, and direct every impulse to the common benefit and turn it away from anything that runs counter to that benefit. And when this is duly accomplished, my life must necessarily follow a happy course, just as you would observe that any citizen’s life proceeds happily on its course when he makes his way through it performing actions which benefit his fellow citizens and he welcomes whatever his city assigns to him. — Meditations, 10.6

Conclusion

It’s hard to say how much the young Octavian’s Stoic tutors influenced his developing character and later career as Augustus. There are some tantalizing details, though. We’re told by he author Lucian that Augustus’ stepson and successor, the Emperor Tiberius, also studied Stoicism, under an otherwise unknown tutor called Nestor. Perhaps Augustus merely dabbled in Stoicism but set a precedent, planting seeds in imperial Roman society that would only grow to maturity, over a hundred years later, with Marcus Aurelius.

There are obvious differences. Augustus was at times perhaps a more politically opportunistic and violent ruler than Marcus. He was also curiously vain by comparison. Augustus notoriously insisted that all depictions of him should show him in the prime of life. Not a single statue exists today showing what he actually looked like later in life, although he lived to seventy-five — a grand old age by Roman standards. In sharp contrast, several statues of Marcus Aurelius, apparently in his late fifties, survive to this day, some of which look frankly haggard.

Marcus mentions the first Augustus three times in The Meditations. (The names of Roman nobles can be confusing: later emperors including Marcus also bore the name Augustus.) He says that everyday words from the past now have an archaic ring to them, as do the names of famous men such as Augustus. The founder of the empire was once flesh and blood but now he’s remembered by statues and stories in history books. Marcus notes that he has watched this happen, in his own lifetime, with the emperors Hadrian and, his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius (4.33). He knew them as real people but by the time he’s writing The Meditations, they’re already beginning to be seen as merely names in history books.

Elsewhere, Marcus reminds himself that even his most illustrious predecessors are now gone, returned to dust, and that this is his own fate, despite the supreme position granted to him.

First of all, be untroubled in your mind; for all things come about as universal nature would have them, and in a short while you will be no one and nowhere, as are Hadrian and Augustus. — Meditations, 8.5

Finally, Marcus once again uses Augustus, and the image of his entire court, to contemplate the transience of power, fame, human life, and indeed all material things.

Speak both in the senate and to anyone whatever in a decorous manner, without affectation. Use words that have nothing false in them. The court of Augustus, his wife and daughter, his descendants and forebears, his sister, and Agrippa [his general], his relatives, associates and friends, Areius [Didymus], Maecenas [his friend and political advisor], his doctors, his sacrificial priests — an entire court, all of it dead. — Meditations, 8.30-31

As it happens, in this passage, Marcus also mentions Arius Didymus, one of the Stoic tutors of Augustus, whom we met earlier. Marcus reminds himself that even the Stoic philosophers who taught the first Augustus, are long dead and gone.

Signed Copies of How to Think Like Socrates

When people ask me how they can get a signed copy of my new book, I finally have the answer!

The good people at Porchlight books, however, have arranged to accept preorders for signed copies of How to Think Like Socrates to your address, which can be shipped anywhere in the world. Porchlight are currently offering these at a discounted price — check the listing for more details.

Preorder your Signed Copy

If you do want a signed copy, this is the way to do it. (If you preorder my books, it helps a lot because it tells retailers there’s demand, and they’re more likely to feature them and help promote them.)

I used to sign copies in an independent bookstore in Toronto, who would take orders and ship them overseas, but, unfortunately, they closed following the pandemic. So it’s taken me a little while to find a viable alternative, now that I live in Quebec.

Unfortunately, these can’t be personalized, as I have to hand sign bookplates in bulk and mail them to the US warehouse that ships the orders. However, you’ll be able to place an order now and receive a signed copy as soon as the book is published.

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Join Me for a Conversation on the Power of the Socratic Method

I am pleased to share a recent conversation with Michael Balchan, President and Head Coach at Heroic. We explored the enduring relevance of the Socratic method together and its application to modern life.

Watch the Video

Below are some of the key themes we addressed:

The Power of the Socratic Method: How the Socratic method isn’t just for philosophers—it’s a powerful tool you can use to approach life with more curiosity, wisdom, and self-awareness.

What "Know Thyself" Really Means: The importance of truly knowing yourself, how it can lead to personal breakthroughs, and how that concept applies today.

Understanding Anger: The root causes of anger and how understanding these can lead to transformative personal growth and emotional mastery.

The Power of In-Person Training: I’m thrilled to be joining Heroic in Athens this November, where we’ll immerse ourselves in the rich history of Stoicism. It’s a unique opportunity to experience learning on-site and connect with others on a similar journey. (If you'd like to join us a few tickets are still available, learn more here.)

Join us in Athens

Heroic's Founder and CEO Brian Johnson has also created PhilosophersNotes on several of my books. Heroic is sharing the Notes from How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, also available for you right here.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation. 

Regards,

Donald Robertson

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How to Stop Catastrophizing

When we’re anxious, we tend to catastrophize. The term “catastrophizing” was coined in the 1950s by Albert Ellis, one of the pioneers of modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Ellis had been influenced by the linguistic concept of verbing or verbification, which refers to the act of turning a noun, such as catastrophe, into a verb, such as to catastrophize. By replacing the noun with a verb, we are encouraged to think of ourselves as engaged in an activity, and take more responsibility for the way we view things. Nothing in nature is a catastrophe. Humans choose to interpret certain events as catastrophic. Realizing when and how you’re catastrophizing is the first step to change.

Decatastrophizing is the name of a specific strategy used in cognitive therapy, of which there are several variations. Sometimes the term decatastrophizing is used more loosely simply to refer to the idea of countering catastrophic thinking. For example, catastrophizing is typically characterized by What if? thinking. “What if this happens? What if that happens? How will I cope?” Therapists often refer to the idea of replacing What if? thinking with So what? thinking. “So what if it does happen? It’s not the end of the world.” This technique of So what? thinking can be viewed as the simplest form of decatastrophizing.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this article, I’ll look more closely at the nature of catastrophic thinking, before describing in detail how different versions of the decatastrophizing technique are used in cognitive therapy, and how they can be used for self-help. I’ll also be drawing some analogies with Stoic philosophy along the way.

Photo by Shannon Kunkle on UnsplashWhat is Catastrophic Thinking?

You may, perhaps as a child, have heard the tale of Chicken Little or Henny Penny. She was walking through the farmyard one day when something landed on her head — and it hurt! She flew into a state of high anxiety, and began to worry that the end of the world was nigh. Running around the farmyard, squawking “The sky is falling!”, she spread panic among the other animals. Eventually, a wise owl, the voice of reason, explained to everyone that it was merely a harmless acorn dropping from an oak tree that had hit Chicken Little on the head. With her catastrophic thinking dispelled, she returned to pecking corn peacefully in the yard. The moral is that once our anxiety is triggered we are all prone to take small threats and amplify them into ones that are much more severe and catastrophic.

Photo by Toni Cuenca on Unsplash

When we become anxious, our brain enters a different state, which cognitive psychologists call the “threat mode”. This is associated with a number of psychological and physiological changes, such as the fight-or-flight response, but also certain cognitive and attentional biases. We tend to pay more attention to potential signs of danger in our environment and to overlook signs of safety. One of the main problems with the threat mode comes from the way it causes us to engage in biased “threat appraisals”.

These appraisals can be broken down into three main elements:

Overestimating the probability of threat

Overestimating the severity of threat

Underestimating our ability to cope

In plain English, we tend to tell ourselves: Something awful is about to happen and I won’t be able to deal with it! Negative automatic thoughts of this kind are common in all forms of anxiety. When we dwell on these thoughts and ruminate about them, we experience a longer, and more voluntary, sequence of anxious thoughts known simply as worry.

Worrying tends to focus our attention exclusively on the worst-case scenario. Our thinking becomes extreme. We also tend to exhibit highly selective thinking, by ignoring evidence of safety, and what psychologists call “rescue factors”, such as resources available that might help us cope. We may jump to conclusions prematurely about what is bound to happen, which therapists sometimes call “fortune telling”. These are some of the most basic “cognitive distortions” or thinking errors found in anxiety and particularly in worried thinking.

Simply being more aware of catastrophizing as an activity, labelling it as a form of bias, or a thinking error, and taking more responsibility for doing it, can help us to break free from its grip. Often, near the start of therapy, clients will say “I noticed myself doing that ‘catastrophizing’ thing again but I was able to stop once I realized what was happening.” Often simple insights like this can be surprisingly powerful. Once we notice how we are deceiving ourselves, we are no longer deceived. The instant you truly realize that you are making an error in your thinking, you cease to make the error. As a result, you may have an Aha! moment and see through the illusion created by catastrophic thinking, almost as if you’re awakening from a trance.

Decatastrophizing in Cognitive Therapy

Beck and his colleagues have described their method of decatastrophizing in a number of different ways. It’s based on the premise that the situations we fear are, in reality, seldom as bad was we imagine when feeling anxious. It therefore requires facing your fears by confronting the idea or image of the worst-case scenario.

Normally people avoid really exposing their mind to their biggest fears in this way. You have to be prepared to endure what may be quite a challenging and uncomfortable experience. However, although your anxiety may increase at first, it will typically reduce during the exercise. By repeating this several times, perhaps once a day for five days or a week, you may find that the anxiety has been extinguished or at least reduced to a normal or negligible level.

The emphasis in this procedure is for the patient to see whether he can learn to accept and tolerate the experience he fears.  The therapist stresses that the feared outcome is unlikely and that the patient still has some choice over how the situation turns out.  — Beck et al., Anxiety Disorders and Phobias: A Cognitive Perspective (2005)

Don’t do this exercise alone if you suffer from a psychiatric condition, or if you experience panic attacks. In those cases, you’re probably better doing it under the supervision of a qualified mental health professional, simply because facing their worst fears can, despite the long-term benefits, be overwhelming in the short-term for some individuals, particularly those suffering from anxiety disorders.

For the majority of people, with less severe anxiety, though, facing the worst-case scenario will feel uncomfortable at first, as you’d expect, but it quickly becomes quite manageable. You could compare it to getting into a swimming pool filled with cold water, which may feel very bracing, like a shock to your system, but after a few minutes your body will get used to the temperature, until the water starts to feel quite normal and comfortable.

It’s therefore important to rate your level of anxiety before, during, and after each decatastrophizing exercise. Most people use a simple SUD (subjective units of discomfort) scale, from 0-10, although some people prefer to use a percentage. Measuring changes in your emotions actually makes them more likely to happen, and it also helps you to track your progress.

While avoidance may seem easy, and tempting, the more we try to suppress thoughts, especially those rooted in fear, the more persistent they become. Consider this example: try not to think about a polar bear for the next minute.  The more we try to avoid thinking about anything, especially our fears, the more likely the thought is to keep recurring in the future.  What if thinking about the worst could make it more likely to happen?  That’s a common concern.  However, clinicians have consistently found it disproven by experience.  The mind doesn't manifest negative events simply by imagining them.  Facing our fears, in the right way, usually makes them less powerful not more powerful. 

Decatastrophizing Imagery

Some people prepare themselves to do decatastrophizing by writing a catastrophizing script, describing in detail all of their worries about the worst-case scenario, which they fear. This can help you to visualize things but it’s not essential. The main step is simply to close your eyes and picture the worst-case scenario as if it’s happening right now. This is a form of what therapists call “imaginal exposure therapy”, which requires exposing your mind for a prolonged period to images that trigger anxiety. We know that doing this, very reliably, tends to lead to an initial increase in anxiety, followed by a reduction. Decatastrophizing differs from conventional imaginal exposure, however, because it also involves changing the way you think about the perceived threat, by challenging your catastrophic thinking.

As we’ve seen, simply realizing that you’re engaged in catastrophizing and labelling it as such is often enough to change how people feel. As we’ve seen, catastrophic thinking usually entails overestimating the probability of the threat. So Beck recommends that, if appropriate, you should focus your attention on the low probability of the worst-case scenario happening, while you mentally picture it. Consider the evidence for its likelihood, such as the fact that you have worried about many things in the past, and what percentage of them have happened as predicted.

Decatastrophizing involves the identification of the “worst-case scenario” associated with an anxious concern, the evaluation of the likelihood of this scenario, and then the construction of a more likely moderate distressing outcome. Problem solving is used to develop a plan for dealing with the more probable negative outcome. — Clark and Beck, Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders (2010)

I would say that, generally, however, I find it somewhat more helpful to focus on the other aspects of threat appraisal: the severity of the threat and your coping ability. This is where imagining the threat becomes more interesting. Picture the worst-case scenario in as much detail as possible, looking at it from different perspectives, patiently, maybe for 5-10 minutes, or longer. Explore the image by asking yourself questions such as: “What’s the worst that could realistically happen in this situation?”, “What’s so bad about that?”, “How might it affect your life?”, etc. By developing a more moderate and realistic appraisal of the threat’s severity, you will usually also arrive at a more likely perception of the outcome.

Ask yourself, therefore, whether your thinking about the severity of the situation is realistic or if it might contain any exaggeration or other thinking errors. Are things really as bad as you initially assumed? Knowing that the threat mode tends to narrow your attention onto signs of danger, causing selective thinking, try to reverse that by now paying more attention to any signs of safety or rescue factors. Look for evidence that things might not be as catastrophic as you at first imagined. Are there resources available or people who could help you survive?

Coping and Moving Forward

Even if the worst-case scenario happened, are there ways in which you could cope? What help or support is available in the situation? What resources could you use to get through it okay? What would you do if you were behaving more confidently or assertively in that situation? How might someone else cope with this problem?

When people worry, for some reason, their mind typically fixates on the worst moment in a sequence of events, the point at which their anxiety reaches its peak. In most cases, though, if you simply asked yourself what would probably happen next, and moved forward in time a little, you would eventually experience a sense of relief, and the image would feel less overwhelming. So deliberately get yourself past that stuck point. Ask yourself “what would most-likely happen next?, and after that?, and after that?”, and so on.

You can combine this with another technique called time projection, which involves asking yourself how you would feel about the feared event a week from now, a month from now, a year, a decade, and far away in the distant future. It might seem, at first, like an odd thing to ask but if you know that you would feel less upset about this event in the future, why shouldn’t you just choose to feel that way right now? (It can be useful just to contemplate that question for a while.)

After you’ve finished picturing the worst-case scenario and examining it patiently in your mind, asking yourself whether it’s really as bad as you initially felt, you may want to review the exercise by writing what’s sometimes called a decatastrophizing script. (If you earlier wrote a catastrophizing script, this would be the opposite, in a sense.) Write down a new description of the worst-case scenario, using completely objective language. Suspend any value judgements or emotive terminology. Just stick to the facts. Focus more than normal on any potential signs of safety or rescue factors, and conclude by describing in some detail how you would cope with the stress and problem-solve the external situation. Describing the worst-case scenario in this way should make it feel much less intimidating. When you then repeat the decatastrophizing imagery, you’ll find it much easier from now on to imagine events more realistically and without catastrophizing.

Some people also like to follow this by asking themselves what the best-case scenario would be. The most-likely case will usually be somewhere between the worst-case and the best-case scenario. Whenever you notice that you are worrying, catastrophizing, and focusing on the worst-case scenario, you can now deliberately shift your attention onto the most-likely scenario. In my view, though, if you adopt this strategy of shifting focus onto the most-likely scenario prematurely you risk turning it into a form of subtle (cognitive) avoidance. It’s better to wait until you’ve practised decatastrophizing in the image enough times for your anxiety to have reduced significantly.

Stoic Decatastrophizing

There are many ideas in the Stoic literature that could be linked to the concept of decatastrophizing.

Premeditation of Adversity

The Stoics advise us to go further than Beck, by imagining any misfortune that could conceivably happen, one at a time, as if it is happening now. The primary aim of Stoic premeditation appears to have been, in a word, to rehearse a philosophical attitude toward misfortune. However, the Stoics also seem to have understood the phenomenon of emotional habituation, i.e., that anxiety abates naturally through prolonged, repeated, exposure, such as imagining various misfortunes or worst-case scenarios for long enough. By targeting a range of adverse situations pre-emptively, Stoic premeditation appears designed to create general emotional resilience, and to function preventatively rather than therapeutically.

The Dichotomy of Control

This is the opening sentence of Epictetus’ Handbook and the topic of the first book of the Discourses so it appears to be given a fundamental position in his approach to Stoicism. During premeditation or decatastrophizing, you can simply ask yourself which aspects of the situation are up to you and which are not. Another way of doing this is to ask yourself how much control you have over the outcome of the situation, roughly, from 0-100%. Assuming it’s not at either extreme, you can first ask yourself why you didn’t rate it 0% and then why you didn’t rate it 100%. This technique definitely seems helpful to people who are engaged in decatastrophizing. Dividing things into two columns seems to make it easier to parse difficult situations. All you have to do next is focus on accepting the aspects that you don’t control and taking more responsibility for the aspects that you do control.

Cognitive Distancing

The most well-known saying from Stoicism is the fifth passage of Epictetus’ Handbook, which reads “People are not disturbed by events but by their opinions about them.” Bearing this in mind while you’re examining the image during decatastrophizing can help you to gain what Beck called “cognitive distance”, by separating your thoughts from the situation to which they refer. Nowadays, we’d tend to view this as a form of mindfulness and acceptance practice in CBT and, indeed, you can approach decatastrophizing as an opportunity to exercise mindfulness while rehearsing the mental imagery. That alone will tend to reduce your anxiety as well as improving your ability to think through coping strategies.

Stoic Functional Analysis

We could list many other Stoic techniques but the one I sometimes find most helpful, for want of a better name, I call Stoic “functional analysis.” In behaviour therapy, functional analysis is a process whereby we understand the purpose of a behaviour by identifying its antecedents and consequences. (For which we use the acronym ABC: antecedents, behaviour, consequences.) Most habits are triggered by certain antecedents and maintained, often in subtle ways, by its consequences, in the form of external punishments or rewards. For the Stoics this takes a slightly different form because their philosophy assumes that we should be more motivated by whether something helps or harms our own character. The way they would remind themselves of that perspective was by repeating the paradoxical saying that our own fear does us more harm than the things of which we are afraid.

Here are some variations of that you can try doing during decatastrophizing imagery:

“What does you more harm, the situation you worry about or your worry itself?”

“What does you more harm, the worst-case scenario or your catastrophizing?”

“What does you more harm, the trigger event or your emotional response?”

These are all questions designed to shift your focus away from perceived threats and back on to your way of thinking and responding to the situation. You will find that by asking these questions, with mindfulness and self-awareness, you are able to gain further cognitive distance in the situation.

Conclusion

If you understand the concept of catastrophizing and can spot yourself doing it, you will already be able to gain cognitive distance, and by facing your fears in imagination, patiently, and repeatedly, you can learn to turn a perceived catastrophe into a more tolerable experience, from which you can potentially learn. To recap, apart from just getting used to the feared situation, decatastrophizing also works by encouraging us to view the worst-case scenario more rationally and realistically, in a balanced way.

We begin to re-evaluate our appraisal of the probability of the threat, by becoming more aware of evidence suggesting the worst-case is quite unlikely

We begin to re-evaluate our appraisal of how severe the worst-case would be — is it really the end of the world?

We become more aware of the whole situation, including signs of safety and rescue factors, which we’d previously overlooked, such as opportunities for help and other resources

We begin to problem-solve and identify practical solutions, which we can rehearse in our mind’s eye until we feel more confident about coping

We move past fixation on the worst moment and begin to imagine what would happen next, viewing events from a broader chronological context

Remember, as Seneca once said, "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality", because there are far more things in life that are capable of frightening us than there are which can actually destroy us.

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Testing Stoic Anger-Management Technique #1

Every so often I like to ask people to provide feedback on a psychological technique. At the moment, I’m doing research for a book on the philosophy and psychology of anger, so I’ve been writing about various anger management strategies. The technique below is extremely simple, and virtually lifted straight out of the ancient Stoic literature. My experience has been that clients in therapy and coaching have found it helpful, and I believe it may have potential as an adjunct to cognitive psychotherapy for anger.

If you want to give it a try, just click the button below or follow this link to complete the online exercise. It only takes a few minutes.

Complete the Exercise

Gathering your self-ratings and other feedback helps us to refine these techniques. This isn’t, of course, intended to be a controlled research study. However, simple feedback questions like the ones in this form can help refine protocols which could be tested more formally at a future date.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve deliberately given minimal instructions in the online form because I want to know how people respond to the bare-bones technique, what problems they encounter, if any, and what questions they have. In reality, a technique like this would normally be delivered as one component of a more complex cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) treatment plan for anger, along with a lot more assessment and information about the problem and a variety of treatment strategies. So don’t worry too much if it seems like a fragment of something bigger, because that’s the idea.

Photo by Lewis Roberts on UnsplashTips and Advice

I'll just a couple of brief points in response to some of the questions we’ve had so far. Several people asked how this could be applied to real world (in vivo) situations as well as the imaginal (in vitro) situation, a memory, which we used for the exercise script. The short answer is that, with repetition, emotional changes experienced in response to mental images tend to transfer to real world situations, and there are other strategies that can be used to facilitate this. Moreover, for many people, anger in response to memories is a major component of their problems. We chose a memory for this exercise because it’s much easier for most people to do that sort of test.

Some people said it can be challenging to focus attention on a question of this kind while experiencing anger in a real situation. That’s to be expected but the difficulty here may actually be a an integral part of the exercise. For instance, it requires significant effort to do sit ups with a weight on your chest but that’s precisely why it’s beneficial. So don’t worry if it feels hard at first to focus your attention continually on the question assigned in the exercise. Think of yourself as exercising your brain, your mental muscle, in the same way that you might do physical exercises to strengthen the muscles of your body. You’ll definitely find it easier with practice.

Likewise, you’ll notice that here we’re only asking you to do the exercise once — the bare minimum. In reality, you’d normally repeat an exercise like this at least three times, perhaps more, or just continue doing it for longer, maybe another five minutes, in one session. You’d also typically expect to repeat those sessions about once per day, for roughly 5-10 days. With more repetition, you’d expect to observe more benefit, but here we’re just interested in getting feedback on a single repetition of a few minutes’ duration. Of course, there’s nothing to prevent you from using the technique more extensively afterwards, if you choose to do so.

There are definitely other techniques, which we would expect to enhance the effects of the one described in the online form above. We’re isolating it here, though, because we want to ensure we’re getting feedback on this technique alone, and not mixing it up too much with other techniques that could affect the outcome. Although, under normal circumstances, of course, we’d want to do combine techniques that enhance each other when used together.

If you want a more comprehensive overview of anger management strategies from CBT, check out my pretty detailed article below.

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What can Stoicism teach us about anger?

I’m doing some research for a book about anger, and would value your input. What concepts or practices do you think we can learn from Stoic philosophy that might help us deal with our own anger and that of others? Let’s start a discussion! Everyone is welcome to join in. Please comment.

Photo by Caz Hayek on Unsplash

Some Anger-Management Strategies

All of these techniques are used in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), although different practitioners tend to combine them in different ways.  Our main source for concepts and terminology used below will be the works of Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Core StrategiesSelf-Monitoring

Self-monitoring is an important part of most CBT.  In many cases, though, it’s not just about gathering information.  In my view, it’s better to think of self-monitoring as cognitive skill, i.e., a form of “mindfulness” or self-awareness training.  That’s because self-monitoring alone can often lead to self-improvement, perhaps through a “measurement effect” of sorts.  One reason for this is that self-observation tends to interfere with the automaticity of habits, including the sequence of thoughts and actions that occur during anger.

The simplest form of self-monitoring is to keep a tally or count of how many times each day you notice yourself getting angry – tracking the frequency in this way is usually how I advise clients to begin self-monitoring.  For example, you might simply note down that you became angry once on Sunday, three times on Monday, and twice on Friday. 

The next step could involve recording the frequency, intensity, and duration of your anger episodes (e.g., 'Angry twice on Wednesday - once for 5 minutes at 5/10 intensity, and once for an hour at 4/10 intensity'). Timing episodes last can help reduce their duration, which often also leads to a decrease in their frequency and intensity.

A more advanced approach, although commonly used in CBT, is called the daily thought record.  This can take different forms but, e.g., a simple version might include recording where and when an episode of anger occurred, and your thoughts, actions, and feelings in response to it.

Situation | Automatic Thoughts | Feelings | Behaviour

Briefly describe the situation, including the date and time.  Note especially any negative automatic thoughts that popped into your mind between the triggering event occurring and your emotional reaction appearing.  Describe your emotions briefly (rating the intensity from 0-10), and note any physical sensations accompanying them, and also note what you said or did.  Below, I’ll describe how cognitive therapy disputes negative automatic thoughts.  This form can be adapted to include thinking errors you identify in your negative automatic thoughts, and evidence for and against them, which turns it into more of an exercise in cognitive disputation instead of simple self-monitoring.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on UnsplashSpotting Early-Warning Signs

I normally recommend that all clients do this early on, when working on anger.  People tend to report feeling that they have more control earlier in episodes of strong emotions such as anger and that as it escalates they feel less in control.  If you can notice what previously went unnoticed, especially the “early-warning signs” of anger, you will be more able to “nip it in the bud” before it escalates.  Writing things down tends to heighten attention, so making a list of the early warning signs that you notice can actually change how you feel during an episode of anger.  You have to first notice that you’re becoming angry before you will be able to apply any other techniques in the situation.  However, becoming more aware of what’s happening earlier in the process will often be sufficient to break the cycle.  

Early-warning signs might include certain images, automatic thoughts, or bodily sensations, but in practice it’s very common for people to begin noticing areas of muscular tension, or physical behaviours, that they’d previously overlooked. A coach or therapist can help you do this by asking questions.  For instance, it’s common for angry people to frown, clench their jaw, tense their shoulders, or make their hands into fists. They’re often unaware, at the time, though, that they’re doing these things because they’re so absorbed in thoughts about the situation that is making them angry.  Reversing that by increasing awareness of your own activity in the present moment is therefore likely to derail your anger, and increase your sense of control over your response to the situation. Charles Darwin famously observed that some of our emotional expressions are inherited from animals, such as furrowing our brow when worried or angry. 

Taking a Time-Out 

One of the simplest and most powerful tools for managing anger comes simply from learning to view anger as a different “mode” of psychological functioning from your normal brain state, not unlike the way we think of someone who is intoxicated or very tired or anxious as temporarily “not themselves” or “not thinking clearly”.  Anger introduces some well-documented biases and limitations, which impair our ability to solve complex problems, especially social ones.  Once we know that, though, if we notice ourselves entering what Beck calls the “hostile mode”, we can treat it as a signal to take a “time out” from the situation, and postpone our attempts to tackle any problems.  Wait until you’ve calmed down and are thinking more clearly before planning how to respond to the situation, or engaging in problem-solving.

Automatic versus Voluntary Thoughts

Why do people find it so difficult to deal with anger and other unruly emotions?  One of the reasons is that most of us don’t distinguish clearly enough between our automatic and voluntary mental activity.  Automatic thoughts are ideas or images that just pop into your mind unbidden, perhaps triggered by something you hear or so, or just seemingly out of nowhere.  They are usually fast, sometimes barely conscious, and typically stand-alone at first rather than part of a logical sequence of reasoning.  Voluntary thinking tends to be slower, more conscious, and consists more of an ongoing internal conversation, or line of reasoning.  

Trying to unthink automatic thoughts is basically a fool’s errand.  People often try to suppress them or distract themselves from upsetting automatic thoughts, which arguably constitutes a subtle form of avoidance.  It’s usually better, though, to learn to tolerate these thoughts, and view them with indifference.  There’s a knack to replacing avoidance with acceptance, which can be described as sitting with it for a few moments, and doing more or less nothing in response to them – just allow them to fade naturally from your mind.  There may be a number of them, or they may keep coming back – just keep noticing them and doing nothing.  At least at first, the only thing you really need to do in response to automatic thoughts is to view them with detachment, rather than become fused with them – see the defusion techniques below.

Voluntary thoughts in response to anger can simply be stopped.  If that seems difficult at first, defusing the automatic thoughts and sometimes using postponement strategies can help, although in practice, once they’re able to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary thoughts, the majority of people seem able to suspend or cease most of their voluntary angry thinking.  The main obstacle turns out to be our belief, in the heat of the moment, that anger is helpful or necessary in the situation, which can be addressed using cognitive therapy questioning techniques.  The distinction between automatic and voluntary aspects of anger is very important because it helps to resolve an apparent contradiction in the research literature.  Various students have found that people who think anger is bad or harmful may be more likely to engage in suppression or avoidance, and often experience problems as a result, such as relationship difficulties or even health problems.  Other studies have found, on the contrary, that people who believe anger is helpful or justified tend to experience more problems on average and to suffer from more episodes of anger.  How can it be harmful both to view anger as bad and to view it as good?  What’s the alternative?  Well, the answer is that we have to distinguish between different aspects of our anger. Learning to view the involuntary aspects of anger as neutral or indifferent and the voluntary aspects as unhelpful appears to be the healthiest solution. 

Photo by Christopher Campbell on UnsplashIdentifying Anger Rules

Traditional cognitive therapy begins with a “working hypothesis” or conceptualization of the problem, which places your beliefs at the centre.  By carefully observing your automatic negative thoughts, and discussing them with a coach or therapist, you will soon notice recurring themes and patterns, which indicate underlying beliefs.  With anger these typically (but not always) take the form of “should” statements or rules, that lead you to become angry if they’re violated.  

For instance, I may notice that when I’m angry I have automatic thoughts like “Why is that guy talking to me like this?”, “He should speak to me more politely!”, “Did he just turn his back while I was talking?”  Perhaps that indicates that I have a rule that says other people must treat me politely and with respect – and if they don’t, I will get angry.  Sometimes  these rules are barely conscious because we just take them for granted.  Sometimes people, when they’re feeling calm, may even deny that they have these rules because they consider them irrational, but nevertheless when they get angry they start to behave as if this is the rule they’re following.  That’s because such rules only tend to become fully activated when our anger is triggered.  

Some common examples:

“People should treat me with respect.” – You will be angry with other people.

“Life should be fair.” – You may become frustrated with a situation.

“I must succeed.” – You may become angry with yourself, an attitude that is often associated with depression.

Again, merely putting our beliefs into words and becoming clear about them often changes the way we feel, because it can allow us to gain defusion and view them in a more detached way.  It can also help you to spot early-warning signs of anger because you may notice when you perceive that your rule is being violated.    

Identifying Aggression Beliefs

By “anger” we mean the emotion, whereas the word “aggression” is typically used to describe angry behaviour.  (I include ruminating under this heading, although it’s a mental activity.)  In addition to the fact that anger is usually triggered when a personal rule is thought to have been violated, this often leads to the activation of harmful beliefs about how to cope with the situation.  Typically, angry people tend to believe that aggression is their best or only option, in the heat of the moment.  If the target of their anger is no longer present, though, they will often activate a belief about rumination, and replay arguments in their mind, or ruminate about why someone acted the way they did, or they may even engage in elaborate revenge fantasies.  

“I have to teach you a lesson.”

“This is the only way I can get what I want.”

“I can’t control my temper.”

“People who do wrong must be punished.”

“Going over this in my mind will help me solve the problem, or prevent it from happening again.”

These sort of beliefs have to do with how we respond to our initial feelings of anger, and our attempts to solve a problem or cope with it.  Unfortunately, when we’re in the angry mode we can often only see one possible solution, and it will tend to be a crude one, which we will try to make work not by adapting or refining it but by exerting more force.  That could be the belief that the “only way” that we can get our way is by yelling at someone or punishing them, or even engaging in violence toward them, such as punching them.  It’s helpful to realise that this whole way of thinking is due to tunnel vision.  Angry people are well-known to have impaired problem-solving ability, because they tend to become absorbed in the idea that they must use solutions that are relatively crude, and sometimes even violent.

Cognitive Defusion

Beck believed that before we can begin questioning our own beliefs we must first change perspective and realise that they are merely hypotheses and not facts – we have to at least be open to the possibility that our assumptions could be mistaken.  More recently, researchers have found that this shift in perspective (called “distancing” or “defusion”) can actually be one of the most powerful and versatile techniques in therapy.  Beck described it as the difference between looking at the world through coloured lenses and looking at the lenses.  Cognitive defusion is a subtle shift in perspective that we don’t even have a word in English to describe – so we have to refer to it using jargon.  It’s not difficult to learn, though, and there are now several techniques that are known to help acquire it.  These include:

The leaves on the stream exercise, or similar mental imagery, from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Repeating a phrase very rapidly aloud for about 45 seconds, or sometimes repeating it very slowly with pauses

Visualising the thought projected onto a wall and focusing on the physical properties of the writing, such as colour and font, etc.

Referring to thoughts from a third-person perspective or as though they are in quotation marks, e.g., “I notice right now that Donald is telling himself: ‘How dare that guy talk to me that way!’”

Imagining that you are holding the thought in your hands and experimenting with repeatedly moving it closer and further away again 

Anger often involves cognitive fusion, where our thoughts become fused with reality.  We go into a sort of tunnel-vision and become completely absorbed in one way of thinking about the situation.  Defusion has two main benefits.  The first and most obvious is that it dilutes the intensity of negative emotion.  The second is less obvious but more important.  Defusion leads to greater cognitive flexibility – we become able to view the situation from different perspectives.  That makes it easier to problem-solve, and come up with alternative ways of coping, which can benefit us over the longer-term.

Modifying Beliefs

We can dispute or modify underlying beliefs in a variety of ways in cognitive therapy.   It’s usually best to begin by defusing them.  With anger rules and beliefs about aggressive behaviour, the easiest way to dispute them is usually to begin thinking about their consequences.  Very simply, ask yourself: “How is this rule working out for me?” or “How is holding this belief working out for me in the long run?”  (Probably not very well, right?)  You might say you already know that but repeatedly posing this question isn’t so much meant to gather information as to shift your attention.  We know that the angry “mode” of functioning tends to inhibit people’s ability to think about the consequences of their actions, that probably explains the well-documented tendency for angry people to under-estimate risks and engage in impulsive behaviour.  It’s also very useful to rate how helpful your belief actually is in practice, rated from 0-100%.  That allows you to follow-up, if appropriate, by asking yourself why you didn’t rate it higher or lower – why didn’t you rate it 0% helpful; why didn’t you rate it 100% helpful?

You can expand this basic technique by asking yourself to think about the consequences of holding the belief in the longer-term: months, years, decades from now.  How would it work out for you overall as a philosophy of life?  Would you teach the same rule to children?  Broadening your perspective on the consequences can further weaken the belief.  Another technique is to consider the wider impact of holding the rule on different domains of your life.  

How might believing in that rule impact your quality of life in general?  

How might it impact your performance at work or in your studies?  

How might it affect different relationships over time, such as with a spouse or partner, with parents or children, with friends?  

How might it eventually affect your physical or mental health?  

Again, this sort of technique will be much more beneficial if you actually take time to write down notes and maintain a list of the negative consequences of holding the belief, which you should review periodically and refine over time, until it becomes so familiar that if someone asked you, you would be able to summarise its disadvantages very easily and in very clear and concise language.  

Another way of approaching this would be to draw two columns and list the pros and cons of holding the belief, or advantages and disadvantages.  Typically you will find that the perceived advantages are short-term and some of the disadvantages are more obvious over the longer-term.  Next, you should challenge the perceived advantages, and look for reasons to question whether they are real or merely illusory.  For instance, people often say that expressing anger is “the only way” to get their point across or get their way, in some situations, which can feel like a short-term advantage.  That needs to be vigorously challenged if you want to weaken the habit of becoming angry, though.  For instance, you might question whether getting angry merely gets you what you feel that you want in the heat of the moment, rather than achieving what would ultimately be in your best interests – so is it really getting you anywhere?

Generating Alternative Beliefs 

Once you begin questioning your rules, you’re likely to think of alternative ones that appear less rigid, healthier, and more rational.  This often happens automatically, once you defuse beliefs, although sometimes it may require more work.  Generating multiple alternative perspectives, and being able to shift between them, can enhance cognitive flexibility, which will tend to reduce the intensity of emotions such as anger, and make you better at problem-solving.  Here are some questions you can use to prompt yourself:

What would be a better way of looking at things?

How could you view things in a more healthy and rational way?

Would you teach this rule to a child?  What would be a better alternative?

If the roles were reversed, what rule would you prefer other people apply in this situation?

Again, writing down your rational alternative beliefs, reviewing them periodically, and refining them, will make you more likely to remember them.  They’re most likely to “stick”, though, if you actually try living in accord with them by applying the new rules to challenging situations in the real-world.  A good way to prepare for that is to mentally rehearse by imagining typical situations that would normally provoke anger, and asking yourself what the consequences would be if you were to apply your new rule.  You should repeat this, in your imagination, until it becomes more familiar, and begins to feel like a habit is forming.  Then remind yourself of that rule when you’re actually facing a real situation, but try to do so immediately beforehand, in anticipation, or as soon as you notice any early-warning signs of anger.    

Additional StrategiesDisputing Automatic Thoughts

This is the bread and butter of traditional cognitive therapy but I’m placing it in this section because “cognitive restructuring” is less widely-used in recent approaches, and I find that other techniques are often more helpful when dealing with anger.  However, most people will still find it helpful to use this approach to some extent.  

Evaluating the Evidence

Beck used to say that the central question used in cognitive therapy is simply: “Where’s the evidence for that?”  When you notice negative automatic thoughts, you can dispute them by asking yourself what evidence exists for and against them, and perhaps writing this down.  It can also be helpful to rate from 0-100% how strongly you believe each thought before and after evaluating it in this way.  

A closely-related technique involves generating alternatives to negative automatic thoughts, by writing down more rational and realistic ways of thinking.  These can potentially become coping statements (see below).  One down-side of this approach is that, according to some researchers, cognitive disputation techniques can sometimes inhibit the benefits of defusion techniques, and may lead some clients, particularly those prone to “overthinking”, to become entangled in analysing their thoughts.  It’s important, therefore, to keep this method concise, and not to allow it to turn into rumination.

Spotting Thinking Errors

This is an easier technique for many people, and potentially fits in slightly better with the use of cognitive defusion.  There are many lists of common cognitive distortions or thinking errors.  Once you learn how to spot them, you may immediately recognize that certain automatic thoughts are irrational, and this can sometimes help you to defuse them.  I like to use this simple classification that comes from Beck’s first book on cognitive therapy:

Extreme thinking, which can take the form of exaggerating (blowing up) some things or trivialising (downplaying) others, such as idealising one person and demonising another, or judging one thing to be perfectly good and another to be absolutely bad, and so on.  A common example in anger is what we call “catastrophizing” where we greatly exaggerate the severity of some feared event. 

Selective thinking, where relevant information is simply ignored or discounted, leading to a very incomplete and distorted perception of events.  We can call this cherry-picking data, and we have all heard of selective hearing, and selective memory.  For example, when angry with someone we tend to conveniently forget the good things they’ve done for us, or times when we have been guilty of similar wrongdoing ourselves.

Unfounded assumptions, or jumping to conclusions, without sufficient evidence.  The two most common forms are referred to as “mind-reading”, where we make assumptions about other people’s motives or what they are thinking, and “fortune-telling”, where we make assumptions about what is going to happen in the future.  

Overgeneralization, which takes the form of saying “always” / “never”, “all” / “none”, or “everybody” / “nobody”, despite the fact we can seldom draw such general conclusions based on a limited sample.  When people are angry they often make sweeping generalisations of this kind, such as “nobody ever lifts a finger to help me!”

Simply learning to notice when you are guilty of common thinking errors can weaken the effect they have.  For example, you might tell yourself: “Oh, I seem to be making the error of mind-reading again and assuming I know what people are thinking without any evidence!”

Turning the “Anger Dial” Up and Down

This is what I call a technique, loosely based on Albert Ellis’ “Rational-Emotive Imagery” (REI).  Over the years, I’ve found that, especially with anger, people find it useful to imagine themselves reliving a specific situation in which they became angry, by visualising it as if it’s happening now, and rehearsing ways of changing how they feel.  You can also visualise a future event in which you want to reduce the risk that you will become angry.  Imagine the situation as vividly as possible, and allow yourself to evoke some genuine anger.  Think of yourself as having a dial marked 0-10, which we will calibrate to 5, in the middle, for the exercise.  Begin by slowly turning it up, first one or two points, then very gradually, all the way up to ten, or as close as you can get.  Imagine that your anger is increasing and study how you would have to think differently in order to get more angry.  

Again, this is best seen mainly as a form of self-awareness training.  If you can learn what makes you more angry, you will soon realise what makes you less angry.  Don’t “cheat” by changing the situation.  Focus on your response.  In particular, notice what you do with your level of absorption in or cognitive fusion with certain thoughts.  In most cases, as you become more angry, cognitive fusion will increase, and you will become more focused on the most upsetting aspects of the situation.  Next, turn the dial down and practice making yourself less angry.  Study how you do that?  The chances are that you will be exhibiting cognitive defusion by viewing your angry thoughts from a more detached perspective.  By repeatedly turning the dial up and down, very slowly, in this way, you should be able to study the ingredients that go into your anger.  Raising awareness in this way will normally give you more control, by encouraging you to become generally more defused from your angry thoughts, as well as making you more aware of early-warning signs and other associated parts of the experience.

Decatastrophizing

We saw earlier that therapy usually begins with self-monitoring.  Beck asked his clients, in particular, to record their initial automatic thoughts when angry.  He was surprised to discover that in almost every case, anger followed initial automatic thoughts about having somehow been harmed or being threatened with harm.  Sometimes these were obvious to clients but in many cases they were so fleeting that they went unnoticed until self-monitoring began.  This has contributed to the theory that, in many cases, anger is not a primary emotion but a secondary one, which occurs in response to an initial feeling of emotional pain or anxiety.  Often the harm is an injury to our self-esteem or social status.  For instance, if someone insults me, I may become angry so suddenly that I don’t even notice how my feelings have been hurt.  For a split second, though, rather than anger, I may initially have felt terrible sadness or anxiety, as though the insult diminished me in my own eyes or the eyes of others.  

Anger is very effective at masking emotional pain of this kind, for several reasons.  The first is that when we respond to emotional pain by becoming angry with another person, it radically changes our focus of attention from internal to external: we stop blaming ourselves and start blaming them.  That means we’re no longer focusing on the pain or anxiety inside, though.  In other words, anger often functions as a subtle but very powerful avoidance strategy.  Anger, for example, can become a temporary distraction from:

The pain of rejection

The pain of confrontation.

The pain of humiliation   

If you have identified an initial sense of hurt, though, you can potentially eliminate that using other techniques, such as decatastrophizing.  Decatastrophizing refers to a variety of techniques designed to reduce the perceived severity of a perceived threat or injury – it’s about realising that it’s not the end of the world.  One very simple method, known as time projection, involves asking yourself how you will feel about the situation looking back on it from the future.  Suppose someone insults you, by calling you an idiot, and it really hurts your feelings initially.  How will you feel about that tomorrow?  What about a week from now, or a month?  How will you feel differently about it, looking back on it a year or a decade from now?  Some people can do this shift in perspective very quickly and easily, whereas others find it helps to ask a series of questions like that, progressively moving further away in time.  You can also close your eyes and try to use your imagination more, as if you’re visualising looking back on events from the future.  The basic strategy is very simple, though.  

When someone says “I would feel less upset”, I usually ask “Why shouldn’t you feel that way about it right now?”  Often people struggle to answer that question.  Another popular form of decatastrophizing involves describing a situation in objective language without any emotive words, rhetoric, or value judgments – just sticking to the bare facts of what happened, described in a “neutral” way.  Decatastrophizing is just one of many different ways we can tackle the initial fear or emotional pain that precedes anger but for now these examples should suffice.     

Coping Statements

Coping statements are less common in modern CBT but they were widely used for anger management in the past, with good results.  These are short verbal statements that you repeat to yourself as soon as you notice that you are starting to become angry.  

“I can handle this.”

“This is just a feeling; it will pass.”

“It’s not worth getting upset about this.”

“Pause, take your time, and think about this rationally.”

“We both have a right to be heard in this situation.”

In  my opinion, these sorts of statements can help in a variety of ways.  They may interrupt the sort of thinking that typically causes anger.  They shouldn’t, however, become a substitute for addressing the underlying problem, which usually consists in the rules that cause anger.  

Assertiveness Training

Assertiveness training used to be extremely popular in the 1970s but during the 1980s and 1990s it was superseded by a very different approach: mindfulness training.  Assertiveness training can still be very helpful, though, particularly in overcoming anger.  It was originally part of early behaviour therapy, as Wolpe argued that social assertiveness was incompatible with and was therefore capable of reciprocally inhibiting anger.  Certainly, some people become anxious and also angry when they feel they’re struggling to communicate effectively.  As we’ve seen, anger is often associated with aggressive coping strategies, and the sense that this is “the only way” to get what you want.  What if there’s another way, though?  For instance, instead of feeling like you would need to yell or punch someone to get your point across, what if you were confident that you could get your point across assertively by communicating very clearly.  There are two well-established assertiveness techniques that I find it helpful to teach people:

1. Acknowledging Mutual Rights

When people are angry they often feel entitled.  They assert their own rights but typically deny the rights of others.  This strategy modifies that by encouraging you to assert mutual rights.  It’s useful because once you get the basic concept, it’s very quick and easy to use.  Some typical rights address in this way include:

The right to express your feelings and opinions

The right to make mistakes and learn from them

The right to disagree with something or say no

The right to change your mind about things

The right to be treated with respect

For instance, suppose you get angry sometimes because you feel you have a right to be treated with respect.  Shifting your attention onto the idea, instead, that both you and the other person have the same right to respect, may be useful on several levels. One is that it divides your attention between yourself and the other party, which will tend to dilute the intensity of your feelings.  It will also force you to think less rigidly because you will probably immediately recognize that the other person’s right to respect needs to be balanced, as does your own, with other considerations, such as a mutual need for honesty and your common right to express yourselves.  By starting to think more flexibly about mutual rights, you can train yourself to move beyond the rigid one-sided thinking that tends to be associated with anger.r.

2. Four-Step Assertiveness

This has long been a popular formula for assertive communication, although it can require a little practice.  

State common ground, without any value judgments, just sticking to the basic facts that both parties can agree upon.  This helps to frame the rest of the conversation more in terms of collaboration and avoid opening with anything that might provoke the other party or make them defensive.

“First of all, I think we both agree that there appears to be a fly in my soup.” 

Acknowledge their perspective, stating with some empathy what you understand their feelings and desires to be concerning the subject.  This allows them to relax and hear you out without feeling that they need to interject and make themselves heard.

“I understand, from what you’ve said, that you want me to keep my voice down, in case everyone else wants one.”   

Express your perspective, stating concisely how you feel, if relevant, what your concerns are, and what you desire.  Having established common ground and validated the other party, this is your opportunity to say your piece.  

“However, I really don’t like the look of it, and it’s putting me off my meal.”

Propose a solution, in plain language, state what you think should be done and by whom, given what you’ve just said.  This allows you to quickly move beyond grievances or concerns and focus on a way forward that is actionable and potentially acceptable to both parties.

“So this is what I’d like to suggest: if you’d be kind enough to take it back to the kitchen, and bring me another bowl of soup, I won’t mention it again.”

This way of communicating can easily be learned through role-play exercises with a partner but some people also find that once they understand the steps they’re able to apply them without any need for coaching.  

Muscle Relaxation

Relaxation techniques are no longer commonly used in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), but they can still be of value in some cases.  Muscle relaxation techniques have the advantage that progress tends to be easier to judge.  We also know that anger tends to be associated with muscular tension, so relaxation can be viewed as directly antagonistic to that and capable of suppressing it through what’s sometimes called counter-conditioning, i.e., replacing one habit with its opposite.  

In my experience, most people find it easiest to learn muscle relaxation exercises by listening to an audio recording about once per day for about 2-3 weeks.  Relaxing for 20 minutes or so every day on your bed, or in an armchair can be helpful, and it may naturally generalise to make you more calm throughout the day.  However, there’s a risk that your relaxation, like any skill, may become compartmentalised.  For instance, I once met a yoga teacher who could relax her muscles extremely deeply, very easily, because she had practised savasana for many years.  She still became very angry, however, when she perceived someone as disrespectful and she had never learned how to apply her skills during challenging situations in the real world – she left her relaxation on the yoga mat  

There are two main ways in which you can transfer a behavioural skill such as relaxation to real situations, where you would otherwise become angry.

Rapid cue-controlled relaxation.  If you can learn to induce relaxation very rapidly by associating it with a gesture or cue-word, and you are able to spot early-warning signs of anger, or to anticipate high-risk situations, you can potentially apply that skill before your anger has a chance to escalate and nip it in the bud.

Mental rehearsal.  If you can imagine typical situations in advance, where you might become angry, while you relax at home, you will probably be able to condition yourself to associate relaxation with the triggers, which we now can inhibit anger and anxiety through a process called counter-conditioning or reciprocal inhibition.   

One of the earliest forms of evidence-based psychotherapy was systematic desensitisation, a fairly robust form of behaviour therapy that involves muscle relaxation training, followed by repeatedly pairing relaxation with imagined distressing scenes to reduce anxiety or anger.

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