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