How Learning Stoicism Helped Me In The Age of Anxiety

It hasn’t been a long time since I started learning about stoicism. Before that, I never heard its name nor practised it. It was ex-pat life which brought unbeknown feelings to me in a scale that I haven’t experienced before. The Life I started in Germany started as awesome then transformed into ‘not so awesome’ and then into ‘Can I go back now?’.

Getting adjusted to a new culture, learning it and practising it was fun but after a while things get mundane and there are not so many new things to discover around. I realised this when I wanted to stay home to cook backkartoffeln instead of going outside to discover the city :)

When the ‘high’ feeling of adventure and discovery fades away, being an ex-pat shows its real face. Reality is all your loved ones are back in your country and you are alone here. Even though having freshly cultivated friendships do exist in your ex-pat city, it is nowhere going to be like what you had with your true friends and family. At least that’s what I was feeling.

It is a known fact that feelings of Loneliness fuels anxiety. From the beginning of humanity, we have been tribal creatures which means we are biologically wired to be together with our tribe and look after each other. It makes lots of sense when you think about the life of our ancestors a million years ago. They were basically spending their days running away from Lions and trying to find food at the same time. When resources are scarce and threats are numerous, you need to have the support of your tribe for your survival. To me, that is the reason, why feeling lonely contributes to anxiety. Our modern brain has still some ancient parts which think that being lonely will cause its destruction. Therefore it generates anxiety about survival.

A Million years fast forward, in today’s world lions and predators are not hunting us on the streets. Food is plenty and available at stores. There are shelter and security. So why the hell my brain is going into overdrive and gets anxious about all kinds of worst-case scenarios?? Is it broken? I needed answers and I needed them fast. So as millennials do, I googled it :)

Enter Stoicisim

Seneca, an important figure of Stoicism While reading and researching about my quest to finding answers about anxiety, I came across to stoicism. An ancient philosophy from ancient Greece which was widely popular around that time but in today’s world largely forgotten.

I started reading quotes from famous Stoics like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and It just clicked with the answers I was looking for.

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” — Seneca.

The paragraph above is giving in a very important aspect of the stoic philosophy:

You are NOT in Control:

According to the stoics, you had to make sure of one thing for an anxiety-free and happy life; leave the illusion of control at the door and enjoy the ride. Stoics were strong advocates of the fact that the one and only thing you can control is actually what you think in your brain.

Corona Epidemic started and you are anxious that you will lose your loved ones to the virus? Well, you certainly can’t control the virus that is going to affect millions but you can control what you think of it.

You are free to choose that thinking about all the horrors that can bring you with this epidemic or you can think about how to make use of the extra time that you have now.

While I was reading stoicism, I realised something else. Problems of a Roman Emperor was not so different from ours. Have a look at the famously stoic and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’s quote:

Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside. — Marcus Aurelius

So even though Marcus lived nearly 2000 years ago, his feelings of anxiety are not so different from ours. He found the solution in being a stoic and changing his behaviour about how he looked at things including his own thoughts.

This made me think, anxiety is not something that only happened to me. It happened thousands of years ago to people and they have come up with defence mechanisms and way to teach their minds. So why wouldn’t I use this? That’s was the start for me reading more books and learning a little bit more each day about stoicism.

Since my first encounter with stoicism, it really helped me a lot. I have to say only reading about the philosophy is good but it didn’t help me until I started practising and reminding myself the quotes that I read each and every day. To be able to make it work, I had to put the actual work into embedding the thoughts deep into my brain. How so? By journaling. I used pen and paper to reflect on the anxious ideas and also take notes of the stoic quotes that was relating to the idea.

If stoicism sounds like it can help you I can recommend few resources that helped me:

1. Using affirmations to re-programme beliefs and thinking structures. It helped me massively and I am currently working on a technique called Self Repetition Therapy with Onur Solmaz. Join our Discord! or Learn about Self Repetition Therapy

2. There are many more beautiful quotes and time tested pieces of advice from stoicism. If this little teaser made you interested in it, I can recommend the book by Ryan Holiday The Daily Stoic.

3. Check out the app store for stoic journalling, there are many :)

Have a good day and a good life ✌️