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Waking Up in Stoicism

Last year, I was invited to design an audio course on Stoicism and Mindfulness for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. Waking Up have provided a special link so that you can enroll on the course and claim a free 30-day trial if you’re new to the app.

To be really awake when you are awake, to fear nothing, to be anxious about nothing… — Epictetus

The app is named after Sam Harris’ bestselling book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, where mindfulness meditation is, basically, compared to awakening from sleep or a dream. It recently struck me that the same “awakening from a dream” metaphor is front and centre in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, where it appears to be connected with the influence of the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus. In this article, I’ll therefore be exploring the concept of “waking up” in Stoic philosophy.

First of all, we can potentially find a similar notion in the Discourses of Epictetus, who said to his students, for example,

In order then to secure freedom from passions, tranquillity, to sleep well when you do sleep, to be really awake when you are awake, to fear nothing, to be anxious about nothing, will you spend nothing and give no labour? — Discourses, 4.10

Here, as elsewhere, being “really awake” is associated with Stoic apatheia or freedom from irrational desires and emotions. The language that Epictetus uses, in Greek, implies that he means awakening, in this sense, is freedom from psychopathology, mastering our irrational fears and desires, through the process of Stoic psychotherapy.

Photo by Mark McGregor on Unsplash

Marcus devoured the Discourses of Epictetus, and was probably more influenced by him than by any other philosopher. In one of the most striking passages of the Meditations, he writes:

Of human life the duration is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgement. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion. What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. Meditations, 2.17

The contents of the soul, that is, are a dream (oneiros) and mist (tuphos). The word tuphos is typically associated with Cynic philosophy, where it refers to a mist that clouds our judgment with regard to the world, e.g., holding misplaced values, such as prizing wealth and reputation above wisdom and virtue.

Return to your sober senses… and in your waking hours look at these things about you as you look back on dreams. — Marcus Aurelius

This theme of awakening from a dream, by clearing the mist from our mental vision, recurs throughout the Meditations.

Return to your sober senses and call yourself back. And when you have roused yourself from sleep and have perceived that they were only dreams which troubled you, now in your waking hours look at these [the things about you] as you once looked at those [dreams]. — Meditations, 6.31

That’s a slightly ornate way of saying: awaken! Realize that until now you have been living as if in a dream state. Stoic philosophy is your wake-up call.

Inquire of yourself as soon as you awaken from sleep whether it will make any difference to you if another does what is just and right. It will make no difference. — Meditations, 10.13

In the passage above, Marcus takes it for granted that the sleep he’s referring to is ordinary life. Awakening means realizing that other people’s actions are indifferent to us, and withdrawing our value judgments from externals, by reminding ourselves that virtue is the only true good.

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Photo by Sacre Bleu on UnsplashHeraclitus

Elsewhere in the Meditations, Marcus explicitly attributes similar language to the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus. The influence, indeed, of Heraclitus’ writings on Marcus appears second only to that of Epictetus. The Stoics in general admired Heraclitus, starting with Cleanthes, the second head of the school, who wrote several lost volumes on him.

We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do. As men also when they are asleep, of whom it is Heraclitus, I think, who says that they are laborers and cooperators in the things which take place in the universe. — Meditations, 6.42

Even those who are asleep play their role in the story of the universe. Heraclitus is typically cryptic here. Does he mean those who are literally asleep? I think he is referring, metaphorically, to the “sleep” of the ignorant and unenlightened.

Always remember the saying of Heraclitus, that the death of earth is to become water, and the death of water is to become air, and the death of air is to become fire, and reversely. And think too of him who forgets whither the way leads, and that men quarrel with that with which they are most constantly in communion, the reason which governs the universe; and the things which they daily meet with seem to them strange: and consider that we ought not to act and speak as if we were asleep, for even in sleep we seem to act and speak; and that we ought not, like children who learn from their parents, simply to act and speak as we have been taught. — Meditations, 4.46

Here, Marcus seems to be presenting a flurry of references to the sayings of Heraclitus. The one most relevant to “waking up” has to do with Heraclitus’ saying that we should not act and speak as if were asleep — we should awaken! The context seems to make it clear that the “sleep” in question is metaphorical. Being asleep, and dreaming, is equated with accepting uncritically what we have learned from our parents, as opposed to learning how to think for ourselves, which is what philosophy aims to teach us. Marcus seems to interpret Heraclitus as meaning by “sleep”, a kind of metaphorical death, in which we forget our way in life, and quarrel over things that should be obvious to us. In this “sleep”, our clouded judgment alienates us from everything, even universal reason and everyday experience.

Indeed, Heraclitus, known among ancient philosophers as “The Obscure”, in the surviving fragments of his On Nature, frequently refers to sleep and dreaming in cryptic and paradoxical ways, often seemingly as a metaphor for a sort of ignorance or estrangement from the real world.

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own. — Heraclitus, B89

They are estranged from that with which they have most constant interaction. — Heraclitus, B73

It is one and the same thing to be living or dead, awake or asleep, young or old. The former aspect in each case becomes the latter, and the latter again the former, by sudden unexpected reversal. — Heraclitus, B88

Finally, this is perhaps Heraclitus’ most concise and mysterious saying about the sleep that afflicts us. To awaken, and come alive, is to see death in all things.

Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep. — Heraclitus, DK B21

I can only speculate that he means that when we are asleep, figuratively, we see nothing but dreams. When we awaken, we perceive Nature for what it is, a constant flux, in which nothing is permanent, the perpetual death of one thing as it becomes another. Of course, Heraclitus is most famous for his doctrine of panta rhei, “everything flows”, the image of Nature as a river, and the saying “We cannot step into the same river twice”, because new waters are continually flowing through it.

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If you want the goods you have to pay the price...

Has someone been honoured above you at a dinner-party, or in salutation, or in being called in to give advice? Now if these matters are good, you ought to be happy that he got them; but if evil, be not distressed because you did not get them; and bear in mind that, if you do not act the same way that others do, with a view to getting things which are not under our control, you cannot be considered worthy to receive an equal share with others.

In this lengthy passage, which I’ll divide up for convenience, Epictetus confronts his students bluntly with the realization that unless they place a great deal of value on climbing the social ladder, or accumulating wealth, they should not be surprised if others do better than them in this regard. In other words, if you prioritize wisdom, you’re bound to “lose out” in some regards, if you compare yourself to people who dedicate their lives to acquiring status or material possessions.

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The Stoicism of Benjamin Franklin

One man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business. — Ben Franklin

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The great Benjamin Franklin has more in common with Stoic philosophers than most people realize. Franklin barely ever mentioned the Stoics. Nevertheless, as we’ll see, in his remarkable Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection, he drew inspiration from an ancient philosophical tradition, which also played an important role in Stoicism.

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Franklin believed that the republic would flourish only if the freedoms secured by the U.S. Constitution were combined with wisdom and virtue. I think it’s fair to say that the Founding Fathers’ original emphasis on character, especially the virtues necessary for true leadership, has been largely sidelined from modern political discourse in the United States. However, Franklin took the challenge of improving his own character incredibly seriously.

In his Autobiography, he proclaimed that around 1728, in his early twenties, he “conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” He reasoned that due to inattention and habit, it was impossible to develop good character without a certain amount of effort and self-discipline, applied in a systematic manner.

I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

“For this purpose”, he concludes, “I therefore contrived the following method”, and he proceeds to lay out his plan for attaining moral perfection.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

In his youth, Franklin had studied Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates and became obsessed with the Socratic method of questioning, somewhat to the annoyance of others. He soon realized, though, that it was much healthier to begin by applying the same scrutiny to his own character. He tells us that he was inspired to develop this practice of moral self-examination into a daily self-improvement routine based on an ancient poem called The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, which had been very influential in among the Hellenistic philosophers who followed Socrates.

Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that examination.

We’ll return to the details of Franklin’s method of self-examination below. However, the lines from the Golden Verses to which he’s referring were very famous in the ancient world and read as follows:

Never allow sleep to close your eyelids, after you went to bed, until you have examined all your actions of the day by your reason.

The Golden Verses then lists three questions meant to be posed during this routine of moral self-examination:

What have I done wrong?

What have I done well?

What have I omitted that I ought to have done?

The text continues:

If in this examination you find that you have done wrong, reprove yourself severely for it; and if you have done any good, rejoice. Practise thoroughly all these things; meditate on them well; you ought to love them with all your heart. It is those that will put you in the way of divine virtue.

The ancient Stoics were also greatly influenced by the same text and borrowed the same techniques from it. We don’t know when this started. The Golden Verses is hard to date. However, some scholars believe it may have been around even at the time when the Stoic school was founded.

The Stoic Practice

Zeno of Citium, the first Stoic, the founder of school, wrote a book known as Pythagorean Questions, of which nothing survives except the title. Likewise, the last famous Stoic of the ancient world, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, lists Pythagoras as one of the philosophers he most respects (Meditations, 6.47). Marcus is also intrigued by ancient Pythagorean contemplative practices:

The Pythagoreans used to say that, first thing in the morning, we should look up at the sky, to remind ourselves of beings who forever accomplish their work according to the same laws and in an unvarying fashion, and to remind ourselves too of their orderliness, purity, and nakedness; for nothing veils a star. — Meditations, 11.27

Zeno’s fascination with Pythagoreanism therefore appears to have continued throughout the entire history of the Stoic school, right down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, almost five centuries later. However, what’s even more interesting is the way that The Golden Verses of Pythagoras are used by Seneca and Epictetus, Marcus’ Stoic predecessors.

Epictetus quotes the lines from The Golden Verses we mentioned above: “Never allow sleep to close your eyelids…” He tells his students that they ought to memorize the advice they contain in such way that they can actually put it into practice rather than just reciting the words without paying attention to their meaning (Discourses, 3.10; quoted again briefly in 4.6).

Seneca likewise talks of the “ardent zeal” he felt for Pythagoras’ teachings as a young man. In his treatise, On Anger, he describes the practice of a Pythagorean philosopher called Sextius, which involved strengthening his character by examining his own mind on a daily basis. Each evening as he was about to retire to bed, Sextius would ask himself three questions:

What bad habit of your have you cured today?

What vice have you checked?

In what respect are you better?

Seneca says that he sleeps more deeply each night as a result of following the same practice. Also knowing he is going to review his own character and actions at the end of the day, he finds himself naturally more self-aware and less inclined to be swept away by passionate anger.

I make use of this privilege, and daily plead my cause before myself. When the lamp is taken out of my sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done. I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing.

Seneca is describing a process moral self-analysis resembling the cross-examination of a witness in a law-court. Indeed, that was the original analogy for the Socratic method of questioning, known as the elenchus. However, Seneca is also careful to explain that this must be done compassionately.

For why should I be afraid of any of my shortcomings, when it is in my power to say, “I pardon you this time: see that you never do that anymore? In that dispute you spoke too contentiously. Do not for the future argue with ignorant people. Those who have never been taught are unwilling to learn. You reprimanded that man with more freedom than you ought, and consequently you have offended him instead of amending his ways. In dealing with other cases of the kind, you should look carefully, not only to the truth of what you say, but also whether the person to whom you speak can bear to be told the truth.” — On Anger, 3.36

He adds: “A good man delights in receiving advice; all the worst men are the most impatient of guidance.”

Franklin’s Little Book

Like the Stoics, Franklin was inspired by these lines from The Golden Verses to begin following a daily regime of moral self-examination. He created a “little book” to track his progress, rather like the “self-monitoring” record sheets we use in cognitive-behavioural therapy today.

He says: “This my little book had for its motto these lines from Addison’s Cato”, quoting these words spoken by by Cato in the play:

Here will I hold. If there’s a power above us 
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud 
Thro’ all her works), 
He must delight in virtue; 
And that which he delights in must be happy.

Franklin immediately follows this with a Latin quote from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, a book on Stoicism and the promise of philosophy:

O philosophy, guide of life! O searcher out of virtue and exterminator of vice! One day spent well and in accordance with thy precepts is worth an immortality of sin.

Franklin’s little book contained a table consisting of seven columns, one for each day of the week, and separate rows for each virtue. His plan was to focus on a different virtue each week. Every time he noticed himself failing to live up to the virtue he would put a black mark in the corresponding cell, trying thereby to develop greater self-awareness and minimize his failures.

The Stoics had a fourfold classification of the virtues, derived from Socrates, which later became famous among Christian authors as the four “cardinal virtues”: wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Franklin was a devoted Freemason and, alongside its admiration for Pythagoreanism, the symbolism of Freemasonry had assimilated the four cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy, symbolized by the four corners of each lodge.

Franklin’s Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection contains a more extensive list of virtues. He noted down this system of classification in his little book, attempting to express the essence of each in a short saying, as follows:

Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.

Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin thought it would be logical to proceed by focusing on one virtue at a time, attempting to train himself to acquire the habit of acting in accord with it and thereby improving his own character over time. Interestingly, he concluded that it made sense to begin with temperance:

Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations.

Epictetus likewise taught his students that they should begin their training by focusing on the Stoic Discipline of Desire, which is to say the virtue of temperance, as this provides a solid foundation for everything else they must learn.

The next virtue Franklin sought to acquire was silence, because he says he desired to gain knowledge and observed that “in conversation it was obtain’d rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue”. That’s somewhat reminiscent of a saying of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, to the effect that we have two ears and one tongue because nature intended us to listen twice as much as we talk.

Franklin tracked his progress on the tables contained in his little book, as he tried to develop each of these thirteen virtues in turn. In doing so, he also asked himself two questions each day: one at the start of the morning and one at the end of the evening.

Morning: “What good shall I do this day?”

Evening: “What good have I done today?”

He would write down the answers in a few concise phrases, e.g., one evening he wrote of the good he’d achieved that day:

Put things in their places. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day.

Franklin followed this practice for years. He even wore out the pages in his notebook eventually and had to contrive a method for recording his progress on a re-usable tablet, which could be wiped clean each week with a sponge.

Conclusion

Franklin admitted this was a laborious process and that he made more progress in some areas than others. Nevertheless, it was worth doing.

But, on the whole, tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it…

He explains that the technique for cultivating virtues described in this chapter of his Autobiography was originally intended to form part of a larger book called The Art of Virtue. We’re told that he was unable to complete this “great and extensive project” because it was too ambitious in scope. However, his fundamental goal was actually to demonstrate a particular theory of virtue.

[…] that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wish’d to be happy even in this world...

Now, that’s essentially the ancient doctrine that “virtue is its own reward”, which is typically associated with Socrates and particularly with the Stoics who came after and were influenced by him.

Do you ask what it is that I seek in virtue? Only herself. For she offers nothing better — she herself is her own reward. Or does this seem to you too small a thing? — Seneca, On the Happy Life, 9

Virtue is good because it is inherently beneficial, and constitutes our happiness, and not good just because it’s praised by others. Virtue ethics is central to Freemasonry. However, Franklin must also have inherited this moral doctrine, consciously or unconsciously, from his early study of Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates, and perhaps also from his exposure to Stoic ideas in the writings of Cicero.

As far as I can see, Franklin mentions Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in passing, only briefly, and once quotes a Latin saying from Seneca, which can be translated as:

He whom the dawning day has seen exalted in his pride, the departing day has seen downfallen.

Nevertheless, he seems to have shared the Stoic conception of virtue as an end in itself. Like the Stoics he saw temperance, and self-discipline, as the foundation of a rigorous practice of moral self-examination, based on The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Franklin’s Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection contains a method of cultivating specific virtues, by monitoring one’s daily progress in a little book, and thereby developing habits that would lead to improvements in one’s character.

I recently visited Washington DC and took this photo of Franklin’s statue outside the Trump hotel

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How to Control your Anger According to Seneca

In this episode, I chat with Charif Ahmed of Study the Greats and Become Greater, about the Stoic approach to anger management found in Seneca’s On Anger.

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Study the Greats and Become Greater

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Get your ticket for tomorrow's conference on anger

Today is your last chance to register for tomorrow's big event, our virtual conference on The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger - so don't miss out! (Over 1,200 people have already registered in advance.) See our EventBrite listing for more details of the program.

Get your Ticket

Registration is completely free of charge, although donations are appreciated. Recordings will be available to those who book in advance. Everyone is welcome!

“First, consider your relationship with the person making you angry, and remember that we were born to help one another…” — Marcus Aurelius

We’re looking forward to seeing you there. I’ve asked each of the speakers to try to leave you with some questions to think over.

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Regards,

Donald Robertson

Last Chance: The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger

Today is your last chance to register for tomorrow's big event, our virtual conference on The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger - so don't miss out! (Over 1,200 people have already registered in advance.) See our EventBrite listing for more details of the program.

Get your Ticket

Registration is completely free of charge, although donations are appreciated. Recordings will be available to those who book in advance. Everyone is welcome!

“First, consider your relationship with the person making you angry, and remember that we were born to help one another…” — Marcus Aurelius

We’re looking forward to seeing you there. I’ve asked each of the speakers to try to leave you with some questions to think over.

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Regards,

Donald Robertson

Watch us chat about the philosophy and psychology of anger

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with Anya Leonard of , discussing anger! Join me for my next live video in the Substack app.

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Don’t sacrifice your integrity for the sake of wealth and power...

Let not these reflections oppress you: “I shall live without honour, and be nobody anywhere.” For, if lack of honour is an evil, you cannot be in evil through the instrumentality of some other person, any more than you can be in shame. It is not your business, is it, to get office, or to be invited to a dinner-party? Certainly not. How, then, can this be any longer a lack of honour? And how is it that you will be “nobody anywhere,” when you ought to be somebody only in those things which are under your control, wherein you are privileged to be a man of the very greatest honour?

As this is one of the longest passages in the Handbook, I’ll split it up, and intersperse some initial comments. Epictetus opens by challenging our ambition and the desire for status and reputation, which characterized many Romans.

But your friends will be without assistance? What do you mean by being “without assistance”? They will not have paltry coin from you, and you will not make them Roman citizens. Well, who told you that these are some of the matters under our control, and not rather things which others do? And who is able to give another what he does not himself have? “Get money, then,” says some friend, “in order that we too may have it.” If I can get money and at the same time keep myself self-respecting, and faithful, and high-minded, show me the way and I will get it. But if you require me to lose the good things that belong to me, in order that you may acquire the things that are not good, you can see for yourselves how unfair and inconsiderate you are. And which do you really prefer? Money, or a faithful and self-respecting friend? Help me, therefore, rather to this end, and do not require me to do those things which will make me lose these qualities.

We are too ready to think of helping others in terms of material wealth and not, like Epictetus himself, to think of helping them by being a good person, and a good friend.

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REBT, Single Session Therapy, and Anger

In this episode, I chat with Windy Dryden. Windy is Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths in the University of London. He has been working in the field of psychotherapy since 1975, and was one of the first people in Britain to be trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). He learned from pioneers such as Albert Ellis, Aaron T. Beck and Arnold Lazarus, among others. He is a very influential figure in the field himself, best-known as the UK’s leading expert on Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). In a career spanning almost half a century, he has worked with thousands of clients, trained countless students, and written or edited 285 books on psychotherapy.

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.

Highlights

What was different when you first began studying psychotherapy in the 1970s?

Do you think anything was done better in the past?)

In a nutshell, what is Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy?

What the relationship is between REBT and CBT.

What is single-session therapy?

What information do you need to get from the client to make this approach work?

Do you ask clients to do preparatory work before the session or homework afterwards?

How can REBT help with anger?

How do we distinguish healthy from unhealthy anger?

What’s the simplest bit of good advice, in your view, that could be given to people struggling with anger?

Links

Website: windydryden.com

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Turning the "Anger Dial" Up and Down

One of the techniques that I’ve found most personally useful for managing anger isn’t widely employed by other therapists. It works for me, and it has worked for many of my clients and students, so you may find it works for you as well. I call it “Turning the anger dial up and down”, because it involves imagining that you have a dial, which you can use to control the intensity of your anger.

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash

There are some techniques used in different psychotherapy approaches, which are somewhat similar. For instance, the Rational-Emotive Imagery (REI) technique used in Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). Albert Ellis, the founder of REBT, describes how this method can be used to overcome your unhealthy feelings of anger.

First, you imagine a negative event that normally leads to your feeling angry. Vividly and intensely imagine, for example, that I not only refuse to share the apartment [we had decided to share] with you and unjustly withdraw from our agreement, but that I also deny I ever made such an agreement with you.

It’s important to actually allow yourself to experience the unhealthy emotion of anger, so that you can carefully observe, in the laboratory of your imagination, how you actually managed to anger yourself.

Now imagine this negative experience and let it evoke intense feelings of anger and rage. Let yourself feel enraged at me, both for going back on my word and for denying we had ever made such an apartment-sharing agreement. Rather than avoid these angry feelings, let them erupt with their fullest intensity; let yourself fully experience them for a few minutes.

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.

Ellis emphasizes that multiple research studies have shown that merely “venting” anger does not tend to reduce the problem in the long-term, and in some cases makes it worse. (Contrary to what some therapists in the past taught their clients.) So, instead of merely attempting to release the feeling by expressing it, Ellis advised his clients to closely study how their thinking and irrational beliefs contributed to their anger, and then to make an effort to replace anger with a more healthy emotional response, and observe how they were able to do so.

After you have really and truly experienced your rage for a while, push yourself—really try to push yourself—to change these feelings. […] If you feel anger, don’t think that you can’t change this feeling by talking to yourself. You can. You can change it at almost any time by working at doing so: by getting in touch with your gut-level feeling of anger and by pushing yourself to change so that you experience different and more healthy feelings, such as keen disappointment and irritation at my behavior.

Ellis taught this technique to hundreds of clients and reported that those who practiced it diligently, for a few minutes per day for a couple of weeks, usually found that they could significantly reduce their tendency to experience unhealthy anger. He observed that they usually found that in order to anger themvelves, they had to focus on certain irrational beliefs such as “People must respect me, and if they don’t it’s just awful, they’re total jerks, and I can’t stand them.” Getting unangry usually involves focusing on more flexible attitudes such as “I really prefer it when people respect me but if they don’t, it’s not the end of the world, and I will survive.”

Ellis employed another technique, which he called “paradoxical intention”, which involves escalating your irrational angry beliefs until they become absurd. He compares this to the philosophical method that logicians call reductio ad absurdum. For example, if you irrationally believe that someone must do what you want, and it makes you angry because they do not, you might practice intensifying your anger and making your demands even more obviously irrational.

“Of course he has to do what I want him to do! I have absolute control over his behavior. If he tells me that he will jump through hoops to please me and then refuses to go through with this jumping, I can easily put him in chains and whip him until he jumps and jumps and jumps! In fact, if I want him to give me a million dollars or to grovel in the dust before me ten times a day, he has no choice but to do my bidding! Because I desire him to do anything whatever, he completely has to do it! And if he refuses, I can immediately send down thunderbolts and annihilate him.”

“If you take the idea of having control over a person to a ridiculous extreme such as this,” explains Ellis, “you will soon see that you really have virtually little control over him and that he has a right to do whatever he wishes even when he unfairly inconveniences you by exercising this right.“

The exercise I describe below combines elements of Rational-Emotive Imagery and paradoxical intention, as well as drawing on principles from other areas of anger management and cognitive-behavioural therapy.

This character in the 2000 AD comic book has an anger-dial in his foreheadThe Anger Dial

My favourite exercise is slightly different. I ask people to imagine that they have a dial that controls the intensity of their anger, from 0 to 10. As in REI, they begin by imagining a situation or event that provokes their anger — I’ll call that the “trigger situation”. Initially, this should be a memory, about which they still feel moderately angry. With practice, though, they can replace this with hypothetical or anticipated events, in order to prepare themselves for what situations they may encounter in the near future, as long as they feel angry when they imagine them happening now. For the sake of convenience, we’re going to calibrate the dial so that it is set to five, and that corresponds to your initial level of anger. The reason for that is simply that this exercise assumes you are able either to turn the anger up or to turn it down, from the starting position.

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

Continue to imagine yourself in the trigger situation, as if it’s really happening right now. Slowly, turn up your anger dial, though, and imagine your anger increasing in intensity, one notch at a time. In other words, turn it up from five to six, and imagine what you would have to do in order to become a little angrier in response to your trigger situation. Then turn it up from six to seven, and so on, until you reach ten, the maximum level, or as close to that as you can get. Do not view this as a “venting” exercise but as a self-awareness exercise. Your goal is to carefully study how you actually go about angering yourself. What do you have to say? What do you think? What beliefs or attitudes must you focus upon? Do you have to do anything with your attention, facial expression, or body language? Doing this slowly increases awareness of the ingredients of anger, how they function, and also heightens your sense of ownership over your anger. You will increasingly realize that you are responsible for angering yourself and you will notice how you are doing so. You may also notice, as Ellis described above, that in order to escalate your anger above normal levels you will have to make your irrational beliefs even more absurdly demanding.

The next step requires turning the dial slowly back down to five, while continuing to imagine that you are in the trigger situation. Pause for a moment, then continue to turn the dial down, from five to four, observing how you manage to reduce your anger. Then from four to three, and so on, very slowly, all the way down to zero, or as close as you can get to eliminating your anger totally. Pause for a while, and focus on the trigger situation, observing how you are able to remain non-angry or only mildly angry. Do you think differently? Focus your attention differently? Use your body differently? For example, I find it’s difficult for me to really feel angry unless I frown and tense my facial muscles.

Repeat this process about 3-4 times, or more, turning your anger back up again, as high is it will go, and then slowly back down again, as low as it will go, while all the time continuing to imagine you’re in the same trigger situation. Doing this exercise has several benefits. You will probably become much more aware of how your anger functions and more able to spot the early-warning signs of anger when they arise in different situations. Simply noticing the onset of anger at an earlier stage, often means that you will be able to nip it in the bud quite easily.

Moreover, anger can be viewed as a habit. There’s good reason to believe that unwanted habits may become weaker when voluntarily repeated multiple times in a short space of time. This is especially likely if it starts to feel slightly tedious or you approach the exercise with the intention of weakening rather than strengthening the habit. This phenomenon was first noticed, and was called “negative practice”, by the early 20th century psychologist Knight Dunlap.

Indeed, 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, which seems to anticipate Dunlap’s theory of negative practice.

“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

Similar techniques are known by many different names in psychotherapy, e.g., Milton Erickson referred to it as “symptom prescription” and Victor Frankl as “paradoxical intention” — the term adopted later by Ellis. Actively increasing their anger is the reverse of what most people normally expect the therapist to prescribe doing but, paradoxically, it can help you to cope better with the emotion when it arises. It can also help to overcome the tendency to be afraid of anger or unhealthy attempts to suppress the emotion.

This exercise can also feel like role-play. You may therefore feel that as you turn up the dial you’re identifying more deeply with the role or character of an angry person, and less so as you turn the dial back down again. Practice often takes away the “automatic” quality of anger, leaving you feeling as if you could get really angry if you wanted to do so — but why bother? It seems more like a voluntary decisions on your part, as you experience anger increasingly as a verb, i.e., that you are responsible for angering yourself rather than being made angry by other people.

Thanks for reading Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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