Zeno coined the Stoic technical term phantasia kataleptike to refer to this Stoic way of viewing events objectively, separating value judgments from facts. Pierre Hadot translates it as “objective representation,” which is the term we’ll use.29 However, it literally means an impression that gets a grip on reality and thereby prevents us from being swept along by our passions. It anchors our thoughts in reality. Zeno even symbolized this concept by the physical gesture of clenching his fist—we still talk today of someone who looks at events in a matter-of-fact way as “having a firm grip on reality.” Epictetus explained that a Stoic might say someone “has been sent to prison,” but they should not allow themselves to go on about how awful it is and complain that Zeus has punished that person unjustly.30 As an aspiring Stoic, you should begin by practicing deliberately describing events more objectively and in less emotional terms. Epictetus tells his students that if they can avoid being swept along with false and upsetting impressions, they will remain grounded in the objective representations they initially perceived.31
Sticking to the facts can, by itself, often reduce your anxiety. Cognitive therapists use the neologism “catastrophizing,” or dwelling on the worst-case scenario, to help explain to clients how we project our values onto external events. They turn the noun “catastrophe” into a verb to help clients remember that viewing events in this way is actually an activity they’re engaged in. Catastrophizing is also a form of rhetorical hyperbole, or exaggeration. An event like losing your job is not inherently catastrophic; we don’t just passively perceive how bad it is. Rather, we actively catastrophize it, turning it into a catastrophe by imposing a value judgment upon it that blows things out of proportion.
In cognitive therapy, we learn to take greater ownership of or responsibility for the catastrophic value judgments that distress us. Modern cognitive therapists advise their clients to describe events in more down-to-earth language, like the Stoics before them. They call it “decatastrophizing” when they help clients downgrade their perception of a situation from provoking anxiety to something more mundane and less frightening. For instance, Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, advised that clients suffering from anxiety should write “decatastrophizing scripts” in which they describe distressing events factually, without strong value judgments or emotive language: “I lost my job and now I’m looking for a new one” rather than “I lost my job and there’s nothing I can do about it—it’s just a total disaster!” Think about it: when you’re distressed, don’t you tend to exaggerate and use vivid, emotional language to describe things, both to yourself and other people? Decatastrophizing involves reevaluating the probability and severity of something bad happening and framing it in more realistic terms. Beck asks his clients, “Would it really be as terrible as you think?” Catastrophizing often seems to involve thinking, “What if?” What if the worst-case scenario happens? That would be unbearable. Decatastrophizing, on the other hand, has been described as going from “What if?” to “So what?”: So what if such-and-such happens? It’s not the end of the world; I can deal with it.
Another common method of decatastrophizing is for cognitive therapists to ask clients repeatedly, “What next?” Mental images of feared events often rapidly escalate to the worst, most anxiety-provoking part and then remain glued there as if the upsetting experience were somehow timeless. In reality, though, everything has a before, during, and after phase. Everything changes with time, and experiences come and go. Anxiety can often be reduced simply by moving the image past the worst point and imagining, in a realistic and noncatastrophic way, what’s most likely to happen in the hours, days, weeks, or months that follow. Reminding himself of the transience of events is one of Marcus’s favorite strategies, as we’ll see in later chapters. One way of doing that is to ask yourself, “What, realistically, will most likely happen next? And then what? And then what?” And so on.
Beck’s original cognitive therapy approach for anxiety was derived from something known as the “transactional” model of stress, developed by Richard Lazarus.32 Imagine a seesaw, with your appraisal of the severity of a situation—how threatening or dangerous it is—on one side. On the other side is your appraisal of your own ability to cope, your self-confidence if you like. If you believe that the threat outweighs your ability to cope and the seesaw tips toward danger, then you’ll probably feel extremely stressed or anxious. On the other hand, if you reckon that the severity of the threat is low and your ability to cope is high, then the seesaw will tip toward you, and you should feel calm and self-confident. The Stoics, like modern therapists, tried to modify both sides of this equation.
Normally, therefore, once you’ve arrived at a more realistic description of a feared situation, you will consider ways that you could potentially cope and get through it. Sometimes this involves creative problem-solving—brainstorming alternative solutions and weighing the consequences. The Stoics liked to ask themselves, “What virtues has Nature given me that might help me deal with the situation better?” You might also consider how other people cope so that you can try to model their attitudes and behavior. What would a role model like Socrates, Diogenes, or Zeno do? We can also ask “What would Marcus do?” if faced with the same situation. In modern therapy, clients model the behavior of others and develop “coping plans,” which describe how they would deal with the feared situation if it actually happened. Considering what another person would do or what they would advise you to do can help you formulate better coping plans, and that will typically lead you to decatastrophize the situation and downgrade your appraisal of its severity. That means going from thinking of events as “totally unbearable” to picturing realistic ways you can bear them and deal with them. The more clearly formulated your coping plan is and the more confident you are about putting it into practice, the less anxious you will tend to feel.
When their friends were struggling emotionally, Stoics sometimes wrote them letters of consolation, helping them to view events in a less catastrophic, more constructive way. Six consolation letters written by Seneca exist today. For instance, he wrote to a woman called Marcia who had recently lost her son. Seneca’s consolations to her include the argument that death is a release from all the pain of life, a barrier beyond which our suffering cannot extend, which returns us to the same restful state we were in before we were born. Moreover, Epictetus told his students that one of the Stoics he held in particularly high regard, Paconius Agrippinus, used to write similar letters to console himself whenever any hardship befell him.33 When faced with fever, slander, or exile, he would compose Stoic “eulogies” praising these events as occasions to exercise strength of character. Agrippinus was truly a master decatastrophizer. He would reframe every hardship as an opportunity to cope by exercising wisdom and strength of character. Epictetus says that one day, as Agrippinus was preparing to dine with his friends, a messenger arrived announcing that the Emperor Nero had banished him from Rome as part of a political purge. “Very well,” said Agrippinus, shrugging, “we shall take our lunch in Aricia,” the first stop on the road he would have to travel into exile.34