Hi ReV! When you described yourself as 'a stoic' I had some reservations, but I read a couple links on /t/stoicism and found them very interesting. I think there's some significant overlaps between aspects of stoicism and certain types of mental health therapies (in particular Dialectical Behavioural Therapy/DBT) that I find very interesting. That being said, I imagine there are multiple routes to happiness.
There are certainly many similarities between stoicism and DBT (and the Buddhist practice of mindfulness which DBT uses) but also some key diferences.
One of them, and probably my biggest gripe with DBT is Radical Acceptance. Stoicism also teaches that we should not fight reality but accept it for what it is. But stoics distinguish between things we can control and things we cannot. The external events are never within our control (though we can sometimes partially influence them) while internal events (such as emotions) are usually within our control since they arise from our expectation of the world and the way we chose to respond to it. This way stoics focus their efforts where they matter by accepting what they cannot control and improving what they can.
Radical Acceptance by comparison seems to passive to me. Maybe I'm not understanding it correctly but if one accepts everything unconditionally here is the incentive to improve oneself? It seems to me like Radical Acceptance would stop a person from improving it's emotions and instead encourage them to settle for a sub-optimal state.
I'm curious what is your perspective on this since you seem to have some experience with DBT.
Oh man, mindfulness is probably the actual biggest component of DBT in terms of time devoted to it according to the standard methods of DBT. There are three main "modules" taught over the course of the year, but mindfulness is taught and re-taught at the beginning of every module.
And that's an important aspect of looking at radical acceptance when it comes to DBT - Radical Acceptance isn't taught in isolation. In fact, it's only one component of the Distress Tolerance module, which is only one module of the main three (four if you count mindfulness as separate). I would say that the way I was taught Radical Acceptance, it's not so much about accepting everything in a passive way OR unconditionally. Rather, Radical Acceptance is an important concept for those who try to deny the existence of either their pain or the conditions that led to their pain. Try to imagine someone who's suppressing their emotions or constantly in battle with the existence of the emotions at all - Radical Acceptance is a method of getting past all that energy being devoted to fighting it. It's also a way to move past the feeling of "it's not fair that this happened to me". (Note that I'm probably missing quite a bit of nuance because I haven't studied it for a while.)
In DBT we were also taught to separate controllable and uncontrollables, though the definitions of the two may differ somewhat from stoicism. For example, many people had to be taught that they cannot control what other people do or say or think. Controllables were mainly focused on one's own actions. This would then incorporate other aspects of DBT such as training to balance self-respect with the ability to maintain relationships with others, and so on and so on. DBT is a very action-oriented therapy in my experience, so when Radical Acceptance is taught, it's difficult to see it as a passive tool. It's included in the Distress Tolerance module as a method for surviving distress until you can change something controllable.
Thank you for elaborating on this. Judging from what you said I don't think there is much difference between stoic acceptance and DBT . The stoic view on control is also similar with what you described: we can control our actions thoughts and feelings but we can't control how other act or what they think about us.
The main difference between the two is in their purpose, DBT is a therapeutically tool that assumes the individual already suffers some traumatic pain or other unwanted emotions while stoicism is a life philosophy that it's supposed to be practiced constantly so it focuses more on preventing that kind of traumatic pain from arising in the first place. Psychotherapy doesn't have that luxury since people are unlikely to seek help before they need it.
In other words DBT is more focused so it's probably more equipped to deal with pain because it's has a lot more practical tools while stoicism is more general so it has a wider range of applications. Stoic methods are just as often used for enhancing positive emotions as in getting rid of negative ones. It also often used in coping with success and and ultimately in leading a life of "virtue" which is stoic's ultimate goal.
If you will allow me one more question about DBT: what it's DBT's view on emotion? Is it something within our control or just something that happens to us and that we have to accept?
Your last question is very pertinent, actually, because I would say DBT doesn't argue that you can control emotion - but it doesn't state that they're completely out of your control either. I don't think anything is actually ascertained explicitly when it comes to how controllable emotions are. I think because people coming into DBT already feel like their emotions are in control of them, to say "no, you can control those emotions that you feel are ruining your life" would only serve to invalidate them and make it more difficult to teach them how to increase their quality of life.
For example, a common metaphor brought up in DBT is the idea of seeing emotions as ships on a body of water. If you try to force ships away from you, they'll often get stuck in a sandbar and no amount of forcing will help (a metaphor for negative emotions). If you try to keep them closer, the ship eventually has to sail away (a metaphor for positive emotions). DBT focuses less on controlling emotions explicitly and more in partaking in actions (mindfulness exercises, distress tolerance methods, visualization exercises, etc. etc.) that will inevitably lead to reducing the intensity of painful emotions. While this may seem like controlling emotions, I think they explicitly don't call it that because of how easily it is to mix that up with suppressing emotions, which is not something they want to encourage with those who require DBT therapy in the first place.
That being said, I'm in no way an expert and I don't have my gigantic binder beside me with all the DBT modules and descriptions, so please take my conclusions with a hefty grain of salt. I'm sure someone who's done a PhD involving such therapies would likely find a ton of flaws in my statements.
You make a very good point about how telling people from the beginning that they can control their emotion could be seen as invalidating by them. I think a mixed approach where you begin by acknowledging and validating the other person's feelings and experience then guide them towards methods of improving those feelings would work best.
The metaphor you used for controlling emotions is very apt. Which is why stoics don't try to control their emotions directly but influence them by changing their cations and perspective. Stoics are opposed to suppressing emotions. The stoic way of dealing with an unwanted emotion is to acknowledge it but not let it control your actions. Then they analyze what they felt try to find the cause of the emotion and change their perspective in such a way that the emotion becomes irrelevant.
It's interesting that you would bring that up, and certainly there are many aspects of stoicism that would fall in line with a therapy designed to help regulate and control extreme and overwhelming emotional responses.
Beyond that however, at least one aspect of DBT, radical acceptance, is about as far from philosophic stoicism as you can get. Stoicism advocates for an impartial, detached, almost zen-like perspective on the life we live while radical acceptance calls for its total embrace, which always struck me as profoundly Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean if nothing else. I remember when I did some DBT work some time back and we got to radical acceptance, especially accepting emotions as neither good nor bad but merely as they are and accepting that it is okay to feel very intense emotions my internal reaction was pretty much "So, Nietzsche. We're doing Nietzsche now. Okay, I can work with this!"
I think you have an incorrect view of stoicism. It does not advocate for detachment from life, and I don't think zen does either (though I might be wrong on this one). Stoicism is a very active and involved philosophy, it urges it's practitioners to go out in to the world and make it a better place.
And the stoic approach to the world is certainly one of radical acceptance, the only difference being that stoics don't extend this acceptance to themselves. The stoic view on feeling unwanted emotions is that they should be acknowledged but we shouldn't pretend they are inevitable. We can change they by adjusting our perspective on the world to match the reality.
The Nietzsche quote you posted in a later reply resonates with me from a stoic perspective (except maybe the part about looking away, I don't think a stoic would advocate looking a way as a way of dealing with reality). But the stoic view that nature is the source of virtue seems quite similar with what Nietzsche says about what is necessary being beautiful.
Well, compared to Nietzsche, particularly his take on the idea of Amor Fati, stoicism is in a certain aspect a detachment from a very specific part of life and that is painful or negative emotions. It's interesting because Marcus Aurelius who greatly admired the stoics also invented the term that Nietzsche would later use to categorize his own radical positivity; "Amor Fati".
In Nietzsche's view, at least the view he expresses here, even negative, unwanted and profoundly painful emotions still fall under the realm of "necessary" and therefore beautiful. Nietzsche was not one to avoid negative and painful emotions, he was one to embrace them and accept them as a vital and vibrant part of life.
I'll completely agree that in a way, stoicism does radically accept a lot of things, but compared the the kind of acceptance that Nietzsche outlined, it's a drop in the bucket.
Regarding the looking away part, I think it would be best to not read that too deliberately. Here I would argue that Nietzsche is saying his only negation will be if he isn't actively looking at something- if you're watching the sunset, you're not looking at what's behind you and he wants that "looking away" to be his only negation. Not that he wants to consciously look away from things he doesn't like.
I'm afraid I don't know very much at all about philosophy, so I find your comment very educational! Yes, while there are some parts of stoicism (from the basic articles I read) that overlap, there are some significant differences. In particular, I think from the one article I read they talked about how emotions come about as a result of our judgements, and we can change our judgements to eliminate negative emotion, which as you said - very different from radical acceptance.
The first part that stuck out to me though was recognizing the differences between what can be controlled by the individual and what can't. That being said, I lean much more towards using dialectics to make my way through life - I don't think stoicism is something I'd be very good at.
Well, just the fact that Marsha Lineham adopted the term "dialectical" to describe her methodology kind of proves to me that the old girl was reading or at least familiar with some philosophy so that's just an interesting aside.
The reason I connect Nietzsche with radical acceptance really boils down to this quote from him -
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
You don't get much more radically accept-y than that you know? And if you break down the quote even more there's a massive tension between this massive "pessimism" (I don't think it's very pessimistic at all, but many probably would) when he discusses the necessity of things. If you read the rest of Nietzsche's philosophy there was definitely a side of him that highly doubted how much control people have outside of external, social, biological, chemical and physical factors, so in a profound way we really don't run our own lives. The other side of this is a truly radical optimism and positive notion in Amor Fati (Latin- Love of Fate). That even what is ugly, painful, hurtful and miserable is still beautiful for no other reason than it is necessary.
It's one of the most life-affirming things I've ever read. Not in the "you are awesome go out and conquer the world!" life affirming that's so in vogue, but actually life affirming as in "Life is fucking beautiful in all its facets, even the painful ones" affirming.
I may or may not have spent way too much time thinking about this before...
You know, when I read your first comment I had a good feeling, which is why I thought I should follow you. You've certainly affirmed it! I absolutely hear what you're saying, minus having any understanding of Nietzsche (except what you've shared, of course). You inspired me to pull out my DBT binder to find the section on radical acceptance, and sure enough, I found the part that really resonated with me:
"Everything should be as it is." I remember this really offending some people the first time they heard it, because to them it said that they deserved what they got. But what it meant was that there was no point in saying, "it shouldn't be this way! This shouldn't have happened!" because every action and choice and coincidence led to the current state in which they found themselves - every aspect of their current state had a cause. There weren't any moral implications or value judgements to the statement, and once that was understood, they could accept what was happening to them.
Of course, key to this is that radical acceptance does not equal passive resignation - as with all things DBT, it was just one tool with which to deal with life.
Hi ReV! When you described yourself as 'a stoic' I had some reservations, but I read a couple links on /t/stoicism and found them very interesting. I think there's some significant overlaps between aspects of stoicism and certain types of mental health therapies (in particular Dialectical Behavioural Therapy/DBT) that I find very interesting. That being said, I imagine there are multiple routes to happiness.
Thanks for sharing some interesting links!
There are certainly many similarities between stoicism and DBT (and the Buddhist practice of mindfulness which DBT uses) but also some key diferences.
One of them, and probably my biggest gripe with DBT is Radical Acceptance. Stoicism also teaches that we should not fight reality but accept it for what it is. But stoics distinguish between things we can control and things we cannot. The external events are never within our control (though we can sometimes partially influence them) while internal events (such as emotions) are usually within our control since they arise from our expectation of the world and the way we chose to respond to it. This way stoics focus their efforts where they matter by accepting what they cannot control and improving what they can.
Radical Acceptance by comparison seems to passive to me. Maybe I'm not understanding it correctly but if one accepts everything unconditionally here is the incentive to improve oneself? It seems to me like Radical Acceptance would stop a person from improving it's emotions and instead encourage them to settle for a sub-optimal state.
I'm curious what is your perspective on this since you seem to have some experience with DBT.
Oh man, mindfulness is probably the actual biggest component of DBT in terms of time devoted to it according to the standard methods of DBT. There are three main "modules" taught over the course of the year, but mindfulness is taught and re-taught at the beginning of every module.
And that's an important aspect of looking at radical acceptance when it comes to DBT - Radical Acceptance isn't taught in isolation. In fact, it's only one component of the Distress Tolerance module, which is only one module of the main three (four if you count mindfulness as separate). I would say that the way I was taught Radical Acceptance, it's not so much about accepting everything in a passive way OR unconditionally. Rather, Radical Acceptance is an important concept for those who try to deny the existence of either their pain or the conditions that led to their pain. Try to imagine someone who's suppressing their emotions or constantly in battle with the existence of the emotions at all - Radical Acceptance is a method of getting past all that energy being devoted to fighting it. It's also a way to move past the feeling of "it's not fair that this happened to me". (Note that I'm probably missing quite a bit of nuance because I haven't studied it for a while.)
In DBT we were also taught to separate controllable and uncontrollables, though the definitions of the two may differ somewhat from stoicism. For example, many people had to be taught that they cannot control what other people do or say or think. Controllables were mainly focused on one's own actions. This would then incorporate other aspects of DBT such as training to balance self-respect with the ability to maintain relationships with others, and so on and so on. DBT is a very action-oriented therapy in my experience, so when Radical Acceptance is taught, it's difficult to see it as a passive tool. It's included in the Distress Tolerance module as a method for surviving distress until you can change something controllable.
Thank you for elaborating on this. Judging from what you said I don't think there is much difference between stoic acceptance and DBT . The stoic view on control is also similar with what you described: we can control our actions thoughts and feelings but we can't control how other act or what they think about us.
The main difference between the two is in their purpose, DBT is a therapeutically tool that assumes the individual already suffers some traumatic pain or other unwanted emotions while stoicism is a life philosophy that it's supposed to be practiced constantly so it focuses more on preventing that kind of traumatic pain from arising in the first place. Psychotherapy doesn't have that luxury since people are unlikely to seek help before they need it.
In other words DBT is more focused so it's probably more equipped to deal with pain because it's has a lot more practical tools while stoicism is more general so it has a wider range of applications. Stoic methods are just as often used for enhancing positive emotions as in getting rid of negative ones. It also often used in coping with success and and ultimately in leading a life of "virtue" which is stoic's ultimate goal.
If you will allow me one more question about DBT: what it's DBT's view on emotion? Is it something within our control or just something that happens to us and that we have to accept?
Your last question is very pertinent, actually, because I would say DBT doesn't argue that you can control emotion - but it doesn't state that they're completely out of your control either. I don't think anything is actually ascertained explicitly when it comes to how controllable emotions are. I think because people coming into DBT already feel like their emotions are in control of them, to say "no, you can control those emotions that you feel are ruining your life" would only serve to invalidate them and make it more difficult to teach them how to increase their quality of life.
For example, a common metaphor brought up in DBT is the idea of seeing emotions as ships on a body of water. If you try to force ships away from you, they'll often get stuck in a sandbar and no amount of forcing will help (a metaphor for negative emotions). If you try to keep them closer, the ship eventually has to sail away (a metaphor for positive emotions). DBT focuses less on controlling emotions explicitly and more in partaking in actions (mindfulness exercises, distress tolerance methods, visualization exercises, etc. etc.) that will inevitably lead to reducing the intensity of painful emotions. While this may seem like controlling emotions, I think they explicitly don't call it that because of how easily it is to mix that up with suppressing emotions, which is not something they want to encourage with those who require DBT therapy in the first place.
That being said, I'm in no way an expert and I don't have my gigantic binder beside me with all the DBT modules and descriptions, so please take my conclusions with a hefty grain of salt. I'm sure someone who's done a PhD involving such therapies would likely find a ton of flaws in my statements.
You make a very good point about how telling people from the beginning that they can control their emotion could be seen as invalidating by them. I think a mixed approach where you begin by acknowledging and validating the other person's feelings and experience then guide them towards methods of improving those feelings would work best.
The metaphor you used for controlling emotions is very apt. Which is why stoics don't try to control their emotions directly but influence them by changing their cations and perspective. Stoics are opposed to suppressing emotions. The stoic way of dealing with an unwanted emotion is to acknowledge it but not let it control your actions. Then they analyze what they felt try to find the cause of the emotion and change their perspective in such a way that the emotion becomes irrelevant.
Our discussion inspired me to post an explanation on how stoics view control: http://snapzu.com/ReV/what-we-control/
You can also check out this blog about the application of stoicism in modern psychotherapy.
It's interesting that you would bring that up, and certainly there are many aspects of stoicism that would fall in line with a therapy designed to help regulate and control extreme and overwhelming emotional responses.
Beyond that however, at least one aspect of DBT, radical acceptance, is about as far from philosophic stoicism as you can get. Stoicism advocates for an impartial, detached, almost zen-like perspective on the life we live while radical acceptance calls for its total embrace, which always struck me as profoundly Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean if nothing else. I remember when I did some DBT work some time back and we got to radical acceptance, especially accepting emotions as neither good nor bad but merely as they are and accepting that it is okay to feel very intense emotions my internal reaction was pretty much "So, Nietzsche. We're doing Nietzsche now. Okay, I can work with this!"
I think you have an incorrect view of stoicism. It does not advocate for detachment from life, and I don't think zen does either (though I might be wrong on this one). Stoicism is a very active and involved philosophy, it urges it's practitioners to go out in to the world and make it a better place.
And the stoic approach to the world is certainly one of radical acceptance, the only difference being that stoics don't extend this acceptance to themselves. The stoic view on feeling unwanted emotions is that they should be acknowledged but we shouldn't pretend they are inevitable. We can change they by adjusting our perspective on the world to match the reality.
The Nietzsche quote you posted in a later reply resonates with me from a stoic perspective (except maybe the part about looking away, I don't think a stoic would advocate looking a way as a way of dealing with reality). But the stoic view that nature is the source of virtue seems quite similar with what Nietzsche says about what is necessary being beautiful.
Well, compared to Nietzsche, particularly his take on the idea of Amor Fati, stoicism is in a certain aspect a detachment from a very specific part of life and that is painful or negative emotions. It's interesting because Marcus Aurelius who greatly admired the stoics also invented the term that Nietzsche would later use to categorize his own radical positivity; "Amor Fati".
In Nietzsche's view, at least the view he expresses here, even negative, unwanted and profoundly painful emotions still fall under the realm of "necessary" and therefore beautiful. Nietzsche was not one to avoid negative and painful emotions, he was one to embrace them and accept them as a vital and vibrant part of life.
I'll completely agree that in a way, stoicism does radically accept a lot of things, but compared the the kind of acceptance that Nietzsche outlined, it's a drop in the bucket.
Regarding the looking away part, I think it would be best to not read that too deliberately. Here I would argue that Nietzsche is saying his only negation will be if he isn't actively looking at something- if you're watching the sunset, you're not looking at what's behind you and he wants that "looking away" to be his only negation. Not that he wants to consciously look away from things he doesn't like.
I'm afraid I don't know very much at all about philosophy, so I find your comment very educational! Yes, while there are some parts of stoicism (from the basic articles I read) that overlap, there are some significant differences. In particular, I think from the one article I read they talked about how emotions come about as a result of our judgements, and we can change our judgements to eliminate negative emotion, which as you said - very different from radical acceptance.
The first part that stuck out to me though was recognizing the differences between what can be controlled by the individual and what can't. That being said, I lean much more towards using dialectics to make my way through life - I don't think stoicism is something I'd be very good at.
Well, just the fact that Marsha Lineham adopted the term "dialectical" to describe her methodology kind of proves to me that the old girl was reading or at least familiar with some philosophy so that's just an interesting aside.
The reason I connect Nietzsche with radical acceptance really boils down to this quote from him -
You don't get much more radically accept-y than that you know? And if you break down the quote even more there's a massive tension between this massive "pessimism" (I don't think it's very pessimistic at all, but many probably would) when he discusses the necessity of things. If you read the rest of Nietzsche's philosophy there was definitely a side of him that highly doubted how much control people have outside of external, social, biological, chemical and physical factors, so in a profound way we really don't run our own lives. The other side of this is a truly radical optimism and positive notion in Amor Fati (Latin- Love of Fate). That even what is ugly, painful, hurtful and miserable is still beautiful for no other reason than it is necessary.
It's one of the most life-affirming things I've ever read. Not in the "you are awesome go out and conquer the world!" life affirming that's so in vogue, but actually life affirming as in "Life is fucking beautiful in all its facets, even the painful ones" affirming.
I may or may not have spent way too much time thinking about this before...
You know, when I read your first comment I had a good feeling, which is why I thought I should follow you. You've certainly affirmed it! I absolutely hear what you're saying, minus having any understanding of Nietzsche (except what you've shared, of course). You inspired me to pull out my DBT binder to find the section on radical acceptance, and sure enough, I found the part that really resonated with me:
"Everything should be as it is." I remember this really offending some people the first time they heard it, because to them it said that they deserved what they got. But what it meant was that there was no point in saying, "it shouldn't be this way! This shouldn't have happened!" because every action and choice and coincidence led to the current state in which they found themselves - every aspect of their current state had a cause. There weren't any moral implications or value judgements to the statement, and once that was understood, they could accept what was happening to them.
Of course, key to this is that radical acceptance does not equal passive resignation - as with all things DBT, it was just one tool with which to deal with life.