Stoic Reflections: Dealing With Anxiety
Musings from Epictetus’ Discourses — Week 16
April 18th, 2024
Where he has skill, then, he has self-assurance too; bring any layman you please in front of him and he won’t be concerned; but where it is a case of something that he doesn’t know and has never studied, there he feels anxious.
Anxiety is then related to the unknown.
When do you feel the most anxious?
If I think about myself, my anxiety was always highest before a big test at school or when I was meeting someone new or about to make an important decision.
All of these have an element of the unknown.
I used to look at anxiety as something that was bad. That something was wrong with me for feeling anxious. However, it seems to be a naturally occurring part of life. To have no feeling regarding the unknown seems to be unnatural.
Once you understand the relationship between anxiety and the unknown, you’ll be able to handle it much easier as you’ll be expecting it the next time you have something important going on in your life. Like an old friend, it will come and like always, it will go away and you’ll realize you were overthinking or making a big deal out of nothing.
April 20th, 2024
Zeno was thus in no way anxious when he was about to meet Antigonus;* for Antigonus had no power over the things that he valued, and the things that Antigonus did have power over were of no concern to him. Antigonus for his part did feel anxious when he was about to meet Zeno, and with good reason, since he wanted to please him, and that lay beyond his control. But Zeno had no desire to please Antigonus, any more than any other expert wants to please a layman.
Another element of anxiety is its relationship with things that are beyond our control.
Here anxiety about our future comes into play.
We want to map our future perfectly but that’s not how life works. Because so many things are out of our control, people tend to feel anxious when thinking about what is going to happen. That anxiety can lead to inaction.
The best remedy is acceptance. You have to be able to accept that some things won’t go your way in order to make big life decisions. Similarly, you have to accept that not everyone who comes into your life will like you or will stay.
It seems as if we only have a handful of choices in life to deal with a myriad of issues.
Accept that too.
Originally published at http://learnedlivingorg.wordpress.com on April 23, 2024.