There’s a tendency, ironically, for people struggling with anxiety to try too hard to control involuntary aspects of the emotion while neglecting to take control of the voluntary aspects. We’ve already discussed how the Stoics acknowledged that our initial emotional reactions are often automatic. We should accept these as natural, view them with indifference, and accept them without a struggle rather than try to suppress them. On the other hand, we should learn to suspend the voluntary thoughts we have in response to these initial feelings and the situation that triggered them. In the case of worrying, perhaps surprisingly, that’s usually just a matter of noticing we’re doing it and stopping.
One of the leading researchers on the psychology of worry, Thomas D. Borkovec, carried out a groundbreaking study on “worry postponement.” He asked a group of college students to spot the times during a four-week period when they began to worry about something and to respond by postponing thinking about it any further until a specified “worry time” later in the day. Using this simple technique, the subjects were able to reduce the time spent worrying by almost half, and other symptoms of anxiety were also reduced. Worry postponement is now a central component of most CBT protocols for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a psychiatric condition characterized by severe, pathological worrying.12 However, we can apply the same approach to ordinary, everyday worries like those of the students in the research study.
The steps to follow in worry postponement build upon the general framework that should be familiar to you by now:
1. Self-monitoring: Be constantly on the lookout for early warning signs of worry, such as frowning or fidgeting in certain ways—this awareness alone will often derail the habit of worrying.
2. If you are unable to address your anxiety immediately using Stoic techniques, postpone thinking about it until your feelings have abated naturally, returning to the problem at a specified “worry time” of your choosing.
3. Let go of the thoughts without trying to actively suppress them—instead, just tell yourself you’re setting them aside temporarily to come back to them later at a specified time and place. Cognitive distancing techniques can be helpful in this regard. You can also write down a word or two on a piece of paper to remind yourself of the thing you’re worried about, then fold it up and put it in your pocket to address later.
4. Return your attention to the here and now, expanding your awareness through your body and your surroundings, and try to notice small details you’d overlooked before. Worry goes chasing after future catastrophes and therefore requires inattention to the present moment. Become grounded in the here and now instead: “Lose your mind and come to your senses!”
5. Later, when you return to the worry, if it no longer seems important, you might just leave it alone. Otherwise, visualize the worst-case scenario or feared outcome that’s making you anxious, using the technique of imaginal exposure or premeditation of adversity.
6. Use cognitive distancing by telling yourself “It’s not things that upset me but my judgments about them.” You can also decatastrophize by describing the feared event in objective terms, without emotive language or value judgments. Remind yourself of its temporary nature by asking “What next?” and considering how things will move on over time.
Stoics tell us to be constantly mindful of our actions and look out for disturbing impressions, automatic thoughts, or images that pop into our stream of consciousness. Instead of giving our assent to them and allowing ourselves to be swept along by them into worry, we should tell ourselves that they are just impressions and not the things they claim to represent. In this way we gain cognitive distance from them and can postpone evaluating them until we’re in a better frame of mind to deal with them. Chrysippus reputedly said that with the passage of time, “emotional inflammation abates” and as reason returns, finding room to function properly, it can then expose the irrational nature of our passions.
In this chapter, we’ve looked at ways Stoics cope with worry and anxiety, with a focus on the Stoic reserve clause and premeditation of adversity. Many of the other techniques we mentioned in previous chapters are useful for coping with anxiety, but Marcus mentions two in particular that allow us to focus on the transience of upsetting events: cognitive distancing and decatastrophizing. We also looked at how the modern evidence-based technique of worry postponement resembles coping strategies described by the ancient Stoics.
Indeed, Stoicism provides some very powerful ways of overcoming fear and anxiety, which often resemble those supported by research on modern CBT. Remaining grounded in the present, spotting worry when it begins, and gaining cognitive distance from worry are healthy and effective ways of coping. We can also take advantage of the natural process of emotional habituation by patiently facing our fears in our imagination long enough for our anxiety to abate. This is an inevitable benefit of the Stoic technique called “premeditation of adversity,” but we can also help ourselves do this by employing verbal decatastrophizing and describing the feared event in very calm and objective language, suspending the value judgments responsible for our distress.
After decades of training in these and other Stoic techniques, Marcus was able to go calmly and confidently to the defense of the empire. The majority of people in Rome were thrown into total panic, fearing an impending catastrophe at the hands of the barbarian hordes invading Italy from the north. As emperor, Marcus faced one setback after another, and he must have felt out of his depth at times. However, he calmly persevered in the face of great adversity. Slowly, with his trusted generals Pompeianus and Pertinax by his side, Marcus began to gain the upper hand over the northern tribes.
The more warlike Zanticus replaced King Bandaspus of the Iazyges, but as the war turned against him, he finally surrendered and sued for peace in June 175 AD. Marcus was shortly afterward acclaimed emperor for the eighth time and granted the title Sarmaticus, conqueror of the Sarmatians. It’s reported that 100,000 Roman prisoners were freed as a result of the victory. Marcus resettled many thousands of the Germanic tribesmen and women in Italy rather than kill or enslave them, albeit with mixed success. This wasn’t an option with the nomadic and warlike Sarmatians, though. Instead, Marcus conscripted eight thousand of their horsemen into the Roman army, forming an elite auxiliary cavalry unit, most of whom were sent to garrison the Roman forts in Britain. He wrote in his notes that men who take pride in capturing Sarmatians as though they were fish in a net are no better than thieves or robbers.13
However, Marcus had to rush the final stages of the First Marcomannic War and the ensuing peace negotiations with the Sarmatians because an even greater threat suddenly loomed on the horizon. The Stoic precepts and practices that Marcus had honed during the First Marcomannic War were about to be put to the test once again. Far away in the east, a rival had staked his claim to the imperial throne, and that could mean only one thing: Romans were about to be divided by civil war, which threatened to tear the empire apart.
7. TEMPORARY MADNESS
May 175 AD. A nervous courier hands over a letter to Gaius Avidius Cassius, commander of the Syrian legions and governor general of the eastern provinces. It contains only a single Greek word, which to his consternation reads emanes (“You’re mad”—you’ve lost your mind).
Cassius is furious and tears it to pieces. He’s not someone to be trifled with. In fact, his brutality has become notorious. One of his favorite punishments is to chain men together in groups of ten and let them drown in the middle of a river. Rumors circulated that he once had dozens of the enemy bound to a pole nearly two hundred feet high and set it ablaze so that for miles around their countrymen could watch them burn alive. Even by the brutal standards of the Roman army, that was considered horrifically cruel. He was renowned among his own troops as a strict disciplinarian, sometimes to the point of savagery. He cut off the hands of deserters or broke their legs and hips, leaving them crippled. Letting them live on in misery was his way of warning others against disobeying his orders. However, Cassius was also a distinguished military hero. Next to the emperor, he was the second most important commander in the Roman army, perhaps even the second most powerful man in the whole empire.