How Stoicism Can Cure Anger

one of the most celebrated physicians

and medical researchers of the ancient

world

galen of pergamon wrote a book about

mental illness

called on passions and errors of the

soul

the passion considered most dangerous by

galen and by other writers

is anger that’s because anger is in a

sense the most

interpersonal of emotions it poses a

threat

not only to the angry individuals

themselves

but to others around them and even to

society as a whole

galen’s most striking case study franger

is that the emperor hadrian who had a

violent temple tantrum one day because

an

unlucky slave did something to annoy him

hadrian was writing at the time and

happened to have a stylus in his hand

the roman equivalent of a fountain pen

and in a moment of madness he stabbed

the slave right in the eye with it

blinding him

later when hadrian had come down and was

feeling highly ashamed of himself

he summoned the man and asked what he

could do to make amends

the slave was silent for quite a long

time but eventually he found the courage

to speak frankly to the emperor

all i want he said is my eye back

the consequences of anger are often very

destructive

sometimes they cannot be reversed even

the most powerful man in the world may

be

unable to undo the harm he’s done in a

fit

of violent rage now galen is famous in

his own right

but he also happens to have been court

physician to an

even more famous historical figure the

roman emperor marcus aurelius

you might have seen mark surely as

portrayed by richard harris the actor in

the ridley scott movie gladiator

although that’s going back a few years

now

marcus is well known today though as the

author of one of

the most influential self-help classics

of all time

a book which we call the meditations

he was the last famous stoic philosopher

of antiquity like galen the stoics also

believed that anger is one of the

biggest psychological threats that we

face

in fact marcus mentions overcoming anger

in the very

first sentence opening sentence of the

meditations

and it’s one of the main themes that

runs through the rest of

that much love book the stoics agreed

with galen that we should take care to

contemplate

the dangerous consequences of anger

picturing them in our mind’s eye as we

get older and hopefully wiser

we can look back in our lives in this

way and learn from her

from our experience what have been the

consequences

of our own anger in the past how his

anger of others

affected our lives and the lives of

those we care about

the stoics also like to discourage anger

by contemplating its consequences closer

to home

how it can torts our face anger is ugly

and in a sense

unnatural because as though in a trance

we seem to abandon reason

when we’re in the throes of rage we’re

thinking creatures

and yet when anger takes control of us

we become mindless and we

stop thinking but therefore less

human when enraged that’s what the

stoics found most

unnatural about it anger hatred and the

desire for revenge

potentially turn us into animals

one of the most famous stoic slogans

says that anger

does us more harm than the things about

which we’re angry

we eat our own hearts when we give in to

anger as philosophers used to say

it’s self-destructive the consequences

of our

anger might harm others but we also harm

ourselves modern research in cognitive

psychology has shown that

people who are very angry tend to

underestimate

risk for example for that reason they

often expose themselves to danger

anger makes us vulnerable in other words

that’s why muhammad ali tried to provoke

george foreman for instance during the

rumble in the jungle

by taunting him in the boxing ring ali

realized that anger was foreman’s

greatest

weakness when foreman became angry he

became

reckless through too many punches tiled

himself out

lit his guard down and made himself

vulnerable as a result he

underestimated the risk of exhausting

himself

early in the fight the consequences of

yielding to her anger can be harmful as

george foreman he ended up flattening

his back handing a knockout victory to

ali

and the heavyweight championship of the

world however the stoics were

actually concerned about an even deeper

kind of injury

the harm that anger does to our very

character

they called anger temporary madness

and they were right in addition to

causing us to underestimate risk

strong emotions such as anger introduce

many cognitive biases into our thinking

we start to make sweeping

generalizations we jump prematurely to

conclusions

we struggle to empathize with others or

to understand their motives accurately

and our problem-solving abilities are

seriously

and dramatically impaled

even in the ancient world there were

those who tried to argue

that in moderation anger could be useful

most notably the followers of aristotle

believe that anger sometimes helps to

motivate us to do good things

such as addressing genuine injustice in

society

we call this righteous anger the problem

with this idea

is that every tyrant every brutal

dictator

believes his anger is justified

and righteous on the other hand we can

all think of examples of individuals

such as gandhi

who achieved social change through

peaceful means

without giving way to feelings of anger

anger clearly

isn’t necessary as a form of motivation

anything anger can do love and reason

can arguably

do better for instance a soldier

motivated by

anger might fight very courageously

against an enemy that he hates

however so may one without hatred in

anger who fights only to defend

the country and kinsmen that he loves

even if you believe that anger can

sometimes be helpful

it’s clearly not the only option and the

motivation it provides

comes at a terrible cost anger

blinds us and makes us stupider by

undermining our ability to think

clearly and make rational decisions

about complex

social problems people who say that

anger motivates them remind me

of the internet meme that says drink

coffee do

stupid things faster and with more

energy getting angry motivates you yeah

sure

but it does so by making you do stupid

things faster and with more energy

we can’t think straight when we’re angry

that’s why we make mistakes and end up

doing things we regret later

look at it this way if you’re trying to

fix a leaking tap say

and you bang your thumb with a spanner

you’ll maybe get all angry and

frustrated

suddenly it becomes ten times harder to

do it should be a really simple repair

job

if you don’t take a break and calm down

you perhaps end up losing your temper

completely and throwing the spanner

across the room

we can’t even fix a broken tap when

we’re angry

how much more difficult though is it to

fix a broken

relationship or a broken society

the most difficult problems we face in

life are the ones involving

other people and that’s where being

motivated by anger can become

particularly dangerous the fact is that

very few

complex social problems throughout

history

have ever actually been solved in the

long run

by angry mobs that’s because anger

seriously impairs

our ability to engage in rational

decision making and problem solving

worse anger has a tendency to escalate

people who end up losing their temper

and regretting it

almost always started off by thinking

they were on safe ground

indulging in feelings of moderate anger

they’re playing with fire because anger

loves to deceive us into thinking that

it’s under our control

but we all know how quickly it can

spiral out of control once it gets

started

so what do the stoic philosophers think

we should do about

it well of all the schools of ancient

philosophy

stoicism is the one that placed the most

emphasis on

self-help and psychotherapy although

many people assume that psychotherapy is

a modern concept

that’s just plain wrong the stoics

thought of philosophy

itself as a form of therapy therapeutic

in greek therapy for the soul or psyche

psychotherapy they wrote influential

books in a subject such as the

therapeutics of chris ipis the third

head of the stoic school

most of these books are sadly lost today

nevertheless we do

have many scattered references to the

therapy techniques

and even an entire book by seneca called

on anger which describes the in great

detail

stoic psychotherapy for this particular

problem

and its stoicism was the original

philosophical inspiration for cognitive

behavioral therapy or

cbt the leading evidence-based form of

modern

psychotherapy now the stoics describe

many techniques for managing anger lots

and lots of them

at one point marcus aurelius actually

gives a list of 10

different strategies and they often get

a striking resemblance to methods found

in modern cognitive behavioral therapy

for example one of the best known and

most fundamental stoic techniques

is very simply to remind yourself it’s

not things that upset

us but rather our opinions about them

this is the basic idea that cognitive

therapy

inherited from stoicism and in modern

psychology

we call it the cognitive theory of

emotion

it says that our emotions including

anger are shaped

largely by corresponding underlying

beliefs angry beliefs when a therapy

client alive

arrives for the first session they’ll

often spend a while describing how

negative feelings like anger are causing

them problems in life and making them

really miserable

they explain that anger is ruining their

health um

affecting their work damaging their

relationships and so on

as they’re listing all of the problems

caused by their anger

it seems glaringly obvious why they

would be desperate to change

finally though in total frustration

they’ll say look i know my anger is

causing all these problems and

it doesn’t make any sense but i can’t

help it it’s just how i feel

so they’re stuck there’s nothing they

can do to help themselves or so it seems

a good cognitive therapist would lean

forward smiling at this point though and

say

yes but it’s not just how you feel is it

it’s also how you think

that’s important because most of our

thoughts are

propositional meaning they’re either

true

or false once we recognize that our

feelings are caused by our thinking

we gain more control we can question the

evidence

for and against the thoughts that are

making us angry uh check them against

the facts of our experience

highlight the contradictions in our

thinking and look for alternative

perspectives on the same events

uh ones which might be more rational

realistic and helpful

in other words when we really understand

the cognitive theory of emotion it

suddenly opens up a whole toolbox

of cognitive therapy techniques for us

that’s a big deal because it often seems

difficult or even impossible

to change strong emotions such as anger

directly

however it can be easier to change angry

emotions

indirectly by learning to question our

angry thoughts and beliefs the thoughts

and beliefs that

underlie our emotions it’s not other

people who make us angry therefore

but rather our opinions about them

especially our strongly held value

judgments

marcus aurelius tends to describe this

as separating our opinions from the

external events or people to which they

refer

the stoics like to follow this by then

asking themselves how someone else

someone wiser

and more patient would respond to the

same situation

they actually asked themselves what

would socrates do

we might ask what would marcus aurelius

do

however the stoics realize that in many

cases it’s already difficult to think

clearly

once we’re in the grip of a violent

passion such as anger

so they recommend postponing our

response until we’ve had time

to calm down this is actually a very

ancient technique which goes all the way

back to the

pre-socratic philosophers maybe as far

as the sixth century bc

the philosopher’s known as the

pythagoreans in modern anger management

we call this the

timeout strategy if you can walk away

from an argument for example

and wait until you’ve settled down again

it’s easier to

think things through more rationally and

make better decisions about

how to respond whether that’s in the

flesh or

in response for example to trolling on

the internet

for marcus aurelius as for other stoics

the most important thing

was a sense of connectedness humans were

clearly built for cooperation he says

like

pairs of feet or hands or eyelids or

jaws working together

acting against another’s interests is

contrary to nature he adds

and it’s against nature to become angry

with our neighbor or to desert them

stoics were ethical cosmopolitans in

other words

who saw the whole of humankind as fellow

citizens of the same cosmos

when we’re angry though we alienate

ourselves from other people

the stoics tried to conquer anger

precisely because they wanted to restore

our sense of oneness