Going to the Stoic Mind Gym

How to carry out evidence-based practical philosophy

Epictetus (left) and Albert Ellis (right).

Stoicism is a philosophy of life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy. The latter began with the work of Albert Ellis in the 1950s, and Ellis was directly inspired by Stoic writings, especially those of the second century slave-turned-teacher Epictetus of Hierapolis.

In particular, Ellis was motivated by a crucial passage in Epictetus’s Enchiridion, or manual for a good life. He cites this passage in the second edition of his book, The Practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (Springer, 1997, p. 112):

“It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions about things.” (Enchiridion 5)

Ellis pointed out that Shakespeare writes something very much along the same lines in Hamlet:

“There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” (Act II, Scene 2)

Indeed, Epictetus goes on to provide a specific example of what he is talking about:

“Death, for instance, is nothing terrible (otherwise, it would have appeared that way to Socrates as well), but the terrible thing is the opinion that death is terrible.” (Enchiridion 5)

In this essay I will outline the difference between Stoicism as a philosophy of life and CBT as psychotherapy, spelling out as clearly as I can how one may proficiently practice both in pursuit of a more serene life (CBT) and of ethical self-improvement (Stoicism).

Stoicism: the philosophy

The major difference between a philosophy of life and a psychotherapy is that the first one aims at providing us with prescriptive advice about what is important in life, while the second one aims at solving specific psychological issues we may suffer from and that may affect the quality of our life.

The difference between the two is not always that sharp, and Ellis himself articulated his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) as a mix of therapy and philosophy. Nevertheless, to a first approximation, the distinction holds, and is very useful.

Let us, then start with the broader perspective, that is, with the philosophy. The goal (telos, in Greek) of Stoicism is to live in agreement with Nature, as Epictetus clearly states:

“Everything that’s in accord with nature is rightly done.” (Discourses, I.11.5)

What does that mean, exactly? Two things: we should live by understanding and complying with universal nature, i.e., the nature of the cosmos, as well as by understanding and complying with human nature more specifically.

Let’s unpack this a bit more. To live according to universal nature means to understand how the world works and to adapt our behaviors accordingly. For instance, the universe is regulated, among others, by two natural laws known in physics as the first and second principle of thermodynamics. The first principle says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change form. The second principle says that not all heat energy can be converted into work. Together, these two principles make it impossible to build any kind of perpetual motion machine, that is a machine that can do work indefinitely, without an external source of energy. If you try to build a perpetual motion machine (and plenty have!) you are a fool, because you do not understand that such machines are impossible in the kind of universe we happen to live in.

The second component of living in agreement with Nature concerns more specifically human nature, since, after all, we are talking about what makes human beings happy. According to the Stoics, the two fundamental aspects of human nature are that we are social animals and that we are capable of reason. To live accordingly, then, means that we ought to use reason to solve our problems, and that we ought to live prosocially, that is, cooperatively with other human beings. An extension of this concept is the Stoic notion of cosmopolitanism.

I could continue to write at book length about what Stoicism is and how it works, but, in a nutshell, this is it: live according to cosmic and human nature and you’ll be happy (in the sense of eudaimon, living a life worth living).

CBT: the therapy

A CBT practitioner is not normally in the business of telling you how to live your life. As we’ve just seen, that’s the province of philosophy, not psychotherapy. But the practitioner can help you overcome a number of obstacles and setbacks that constitute everyday life. Think of “living in agreement with Nature” as your overall objective, which then breaks down in a number of day-to-day challenges. At he level of individual challenges the general principle is not very useful, you need a series of specific techniques that equip you to deal with such challenges.

The basic idea of CBT, which is a modification and elaboration of Stoic psychology, is summarized by the following diagram:

The basic concept of cognitive behavioral therapy, image from Wikimedia.

The triangle at the center makes explicit the three types of core beliefs we all have: about ourselves, about other people, and about the future. Stoicism actually adds a fourth component: beliefs we have about the past. These core beliefs underly our feelings, our thoughts, and our behaviors. Specifically, we think in a certain way about things, which—largely unbeknownst to us—generates the feelings we have about those things. These feelings in turn trigger certain behaviors.

For instance, let’s go back to Epictetus’s example above: the (initially unchallenged) thought that death is a bad thing may trigger pathological levels of anxiety and fear about death. This in turns may lead one to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as refusing to get on an airplane to visit one’s relatives, on the mistaken assumption that air travel is very dangerous.

The way CBT works, at the most general level, is to exploit the connections among thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to challenge incorrect thinking, nudge us toward different behaviors, and ultimately change how we feel about the issue.

In the case of death, we may deliberately challenge the notion that it is a bad thing, perhaps using the sort of arguments that the Epicureans used: since death is a state of permanent unconsciousness, where people do not experience anything, then it is irrational to be afraid of it as if we would experience something. As Epicurus puts it, where death is we are not, and where we are she is not.

This kind of challenge is part of the CBT goal of cognitive restructuring: mindfully changing the way we look at things. But simply to tell yourself that death is nothing to be afraid of is only the first step, the cognitive one. Next comes the behavioral step: you need to engage in behaviors that are in line with your new way of thinking. For instance, you decide to book a plane ride to go visit your relatives come next Christmas. Or perhaps you begin with a smaller step: going to the airport and spend a few hours looking at planes taking off and landing.

The more you work on your thoughts and behaviors (repeatedly, back and forth) the more you begin to also change the last component of the triad: your feelings. Although there is disagreement and confusion even in the scientific literature about the difference between feelings and emotions, for the purposes of this article I’m calling “feeling” the non-cognitive component of your emotions and reserve the term emotion for the combination of feeling and cognitive content.

Let’s consider an example: if you hear a sudden loud noise in your home in the middle of the night you cannot help but jump. Your adrenaline level has suddenly gone up and you are getting ready to engage in what biologists call the fight-or-flight response. Then you begin to formulate in your mind an account of what’s happening in order to explain the feeling to yourself: “There must be a burglar in the house!” It is at this point that you are experiencing the full emotion of fear, which is made of the combination of the raw feeling (triggered by the adrenaline rush) and the cognitive account of that feeling (the burglar hypothesis).

However, you then see your cat, and remember that he has a habit of jumping on and off the furniture at night, occasionally causing objects to fall to the floor. This new hypothesis (“it’s the cat!”) replaces the previous one and your feeling immediately subsides. You go back to sleep.

That’s how cognitive restructuring works, except that in more complex cases, such as those involving your core beliefs, it takes a number of iterations over time for your feelings to finally yield to the thought-behavior combination.

The Stoic Mind Gym

I often hear that Stoicism is “just” about mind tricks. Well, yeah, I’d say that the whole way we perceive things and think about things is a mind trick, and Stoicism is one of the best on the market.

In a sense, being a Stoic consists in engaging in continuous cognitive restructuring about day-to-day issues, with your long term goals set by the general principle of living according to Nature. Nothing else.

Which is why Stoic daily practice, what I call the Stoic Mind Gym, is very much like going to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Here are some of the most crucial and useful techniques (a fuller treatment here):

(I) Set so-called SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-limited. Don’t just say to yourself “I want to live a better life,” or “I want to behave more ethically.” Be specific about it and say, respectively: “I want to put more effort in developing and nurturing my friendships,” or “I want to reduce my carbon footprint.” Then devise a realistic plan to act on your goals: make a point of inviting some friends over for dinner on a regular basis; eat a more vegetarian diet; and so on.

(II) Keep a philosophical journal: think Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, though you don’t have to aim for that level of philosophical literacy and elegance of prose. Keep track, day by day, of the challenges you face, the progress you make, and the setbacks you suffer. Use your journal as a powerful aid in cognitive restructuring, engage in analytical self-criticism and in reframing things. Remember, it is not things, but how we think about things, that upsets us. (It helps to write in the second person and using non-emotional language.)

(III) Identify a role model: constantly keep in mind someone you look up to and, every time you face a critical juncture or difficult decision, ask yourself: “what would my role model do, here and now?” There is very good empirical evidence that this actually works, as silly as it may sound at first.

(IV) Choose your friends carefully: while keeping a journal and thinking about a role model are powerful techniques, the ability of the human mind to rationalize (as opposed to think rationally) is well documented. Talking to someone you trust and admire—be that a friend, family member, or a therapist—goes a long way toward keeping in check your tendency to rationalize and engage in self-bullshitting.

(V) Engage in reframing, forcing yourself to look at the same facts from a different, more productive perspective. For example, instead of saying “my delayed flight is a catastrophe!” rephrase along the following lines: “my delayed flight is an opportunity for me to catch up with my readings while sipping a nice glass of wine.”

The way to put these techniques to work is analogous to the way we use weights and machines at the gym in order to improve our muscular tone and aerobic capacity. We need to do it consistently and fairly frequently. Moreover, we need to make a lifelong commitment to the approach. There is a reason why it’s called a philosophy of life. That way we may arrive at the end of our life the same way Epictetus recommends:

“You may not yet be Socrates, but you ought to live as someone who wants to be Socrates.” (Enchiridion 51)