Reddit reviews Build Your Resilience: How to Survive and Thrive in Any Situation

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>Are there any areas where you feel CBT or Hypnotherapy have significantly added to or expanded the ideas and techniques of Stoicism?

Yes. This is such a vast issue that it would take a very long time to answer this question properly, so I'll try to just make some brief comments. Modern psychological therapies are diverse and continually expanding, there are hundreds of books on CBT alone, so that in itself means there's always more and more scope for new comparisons with Stoicism. The Philosophy of CBT describes many points of comparisons between Stoicism and CBT, REBT, and hypnotherapy. In all of those areas, modern approaches and Stoicism offer different but perhaps complementary perspectives, and practical techniques. CBT practitioners certainly don't just "do Stoicism" with their clients, they use a vast array of different concepts and strategies, most of which would be of interest to Stoics. One difference is that CBT tends to focus on clinically-severe problems, diagnosable mental health disorders, which naturally leads to a different emphasis from ancient Stoicism. However, there's now more interest in applying CBT to "resilience-building", improving the overall wellbeing and resistance to stress of the normal population, and that's an area where the aims coincide more closely with the focus on traditional Stoicism. Stoicism has a fairly limited repertoire of practical techniques, which modern therapy has vastly expanded. We also have a fairly incomplete picture of Stoicism, unfortunately - only a tiny fraction of the ancient Stoic literature has survived. There was obviously a lot more to Stoicism than we know about. Chrysippus was one of the most prolific authors in the ancient world and yet virtually nothing of his remains. We could draw a huge list of CBT techniques that would be relevant to Stoicism but it would take time to explain them all. You probably want one or two examples, though, so here goes:

• Imaginal exposure. The discussion of premeditatio malorum ("negative visualization") by William Irvine and others seems very simplistic to a modern therapist and very lacking in terms of links to current research on similar techniques. The most robust finding in the field of psychotherapy, in this regard, is that anxiety (and sometimes other feelings) tend to "habituate" or naturally wear off during repeated, prolonged, systematic exposure to the stimulus (when certain factors are controlled). Clearly, if the Stoics repeatedly visualized misfortune one of the things modern psychology tells us is that their level of anxiety will tend to naturally abate, whether or not they directly attempt to challenge their thinking - and in some cases too much verbal rumination might actually prevent the natural process of habituation from happening. So most anxiety specialists would probably advise Stoics to learn a bit more about that process in order to engage in premeditatio malorum, and that the procedure should probably be prolonged beyond the point at which most people would normally stop, i.e., for about 15-30 minutes per sitting, or until anxiety has reduced by at least 50%, in order for lasting habituation to occur.
  
  
• Worry/rumination. In recent years there's been growing interest in the notion that traditional CBT may have placed too much emphasis on disputing the content of negative thoughts and not enough on managing the whole process of thinking, particularly learning to stop and interrupt prolonged episodes of worry (chains of thoughts about future catastrophes) or rumination (chains of thoughts analyzing past events). I'm sure the ancient Stoics make many passing comments that suggest they were "against" disputation or self-analysis being allowed to turn into prolonged worry/rumination. However, they don't give very clear and explicit advice on spotting and interrupting chains of thinking, which is perhaps a particular problem, an "occupational hazard", for philosophers! Again, tricky to be concise here, but learning to spot typical early-warning signs of worry/rumination spirals and then practicing postponing further thinking until a pre-specified time of your choosing is a common behavioural strategy (called the "stimulus control" method) for managing worry/rumination - although there are now many other methods being used for these issues.
  
  
• Learning to gain "psychological distance" (or "defusion") from thoughts rather than engaging in disputation of them seems particularly important in this area, something hinted at in the Handbook of Epictetus but not often brought up in discussions of Stoicism because it's a concept most philosophical commentators don't seem to be familiar with, although it's very important in modern CBT and behaviour therapy. Epictetus appears to say that the Stoic should spot disturbing thoughts and remind himself that they are mere appearances before attempting to dispute them. There's now some evidence to suggest that "cognitive distancing" (or "defusion") may be more powerful than previously assumed and perhaps more important in many instances than trying to question the evidence for thoughts or beliefs. There are lots of studies in this area now and we're learning more all the time about the factors that are relevant and the value of different techniques of distancing thoughts from reality.
  
  > What, if any, practices of Stoic life do you feel should be added to the general practice of CBT, to enhance its effectiveness?
  
  Good question. I'd have to start by explicitly saying that this is speculative and that I wouldn't recommend introducing treatment components to CBT in clinical practice until they've been tested. (Although, incorporating some Stoicism might often just mean making the sort of slight "tweaks" to established techniques, which nobody would think it's necessary to run a clinical trial before doing.) Some suggestions?
  
  
• Values clarification is absolutely integral to Stoicism, i.e., contemplating the nature of the good and acting with virtue. This wasn't really part of CBT, although something similar is now very central to Positive Psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which both evolve out of CBT. Being clear about what you value most in life and trying to act more often in the service of your values (or the virtues) is something that seems to mitigate against and depression and possibly generalized anxiety. It seems to me that expanding this aspect of CBT raises some of the best opportunities for explicit dialogue with philosophers, particularly Stoics. (See my book Build your Resilience for a detailed discussion of values work in behaviour therapy, with links to Stoicism.)
  
  
• Distinguishing between things under your control and things not, which I would call "control appraisal". Obviously that's fundamental to Stoicism; Shaftesbury even calls it the "sovereign" precept of Stoicism. There are traces of it in CBT, especially in a recent protocol (Dugas' method) for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) but we could probably develop that concept and techniques derived from it much further in certain forms of CBT.
  
  
• The "view from above", as Hadot calls it, isn't a common strategy in Stoicism. It's not clear how it would function in terms of CBT theory but it's a very popular meditation and I think it deserves to be studied more systematically. It can be done simply by listening to recording, which is "gold dust" in therapy because it makes it extremely easy for clients to do it for ten minutes or so each day, with minimal training or preparation. (It also makes it much easier to do research on a technique if it can be administered with a standard recording: there's a complete script for this at the back of The Philosophy of CBT.) I've used this technique with hundreds of people over the years and almost everyone reports a sense of serenity that comes from it, and a shift in perspective. Technically, it may contribute to "cognitive distancing" but we need to be careful it's not misused as a form of "experiential avoidance", or a way to avoid confronting unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
  
  Moreover, there are lots of aspects of Stoicism beyond "technique" that add something of value, as I tried to emphasize in the introduction to Philosophy of CBT. The beautiful literature, the broad philosophical perspective, the sense of community with fellow Stoics - are all important things we don't really get from CBT.
  
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I'm a cognitive psychotherapist and what you're calling rumination (which perhaps sounds more like what psychologists now tend to call "worry") is one of my special areas of interest. (Rumination is usually defined as being about the past and involving "Why?" questions; worry about feared "What if?" scenarios, catastrophes, in the future.)

The issue you're talking about is well-documented in the research literature. It seems paradoxical at first that worry/rumination is harmful but visualising catastrophes can be helpful. However, picturing the worst-case scenario (called "imaginal exposure") is one of the most well-established techniques in the whole field of psychotherapy. It's linked to very basic psychological mechanisms, which are actually not the ones Irvine describes. Irvine's rationale for the exercise also isn't very faithful to the Stoics, who appear to think about it in a way that's more consistent with the use in modern CBT.

The Stoics knew, and we now know, that anxiety tends to abate naturally when someone is exposed in reality (or in imagination) to the feared situation for long enough, and repeatedly enough, as long as other complicating factors are controlled. Worry/rumination would be a major complicating factor here. The difference is that it's typically a verbal process rather than a predominantly visual one, and also that it tends to skip around rather than "sitting with" the scene patiently. Typically, imaginal exposure involves picturing a scene for quite a while, about 15-30 minutes, every day for a week or two, in order to be properly effective. It's crucial that any form of avoidance is dropped during these exposure sessions, and that includes verbal worrying or rumination because there's evidence that suggests (ironically) that it actually functions as a form of subtle avoidance of the feared event. (For example, physiological measures of anxiety are surprisingly low among chronic worriers compared to phobics who are presented with their feared object.)

I've written about worry/rumination and Stoicism in several books on the subject. The main one is probably my book called Build your Resilience, which combines modern research on emotional resilience with some discussion of Stoic philosophical practices. Here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/Resilience-2013How-Survive-Thrive-Situation-Yourself/dp/1444168711

I could maybe email you the chapter if you're interested.

Donald Robertson

The Philosophy of CBT is an interesting book, but I think it is of most interest to those versed in the CBT already and is a touch academic. Robertson's other book Build Your Resilience is a great practical introduction to some modern forms of CBT (the acceptance/mindfulness strand) with frequent comparisons to aspects of Stoicism, so I'd recommend that first.

CBT is useful in providing simple techniques to challenge and replace irrational patterns of thinking, such as examining cognitive distortions and cognitive restructuring. That aspect isn't covered so much in the Resilience book, but will be in any standard CBT book (however that link covers most of the ground). I think CBT is an especially useful tool in support of Stoic practice where there are engrained problems such as anxiety, because of its stepwise practical nature. However Stoic practices, including the simple ones in Irvine's book, are aiming beyond what CBT aims for; CBT helps lay groundwork but I don't think it overlaps well with the ideal of the "Stoic sage". CBT is more accepting of "normal" emotions in certain situations where the Stoics would have seen a "passion", or negative emotion.

u/SolutionsCBT, a regular contributor here, has a couple of relevant books as well: The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Build Your Resilience.

Give them the benefit of the doubt. They may just be having a bad day and it's not your fault, you just happen to be the person they are taking it out on.

She may have a million things to do and quotas to meet and is just annoyed she is ringing up "one" thing so the effort doesn't seem worth it. That doesn't mean she hates you. That means she hates her job. People that enjoy their job don't act like that.

But also consider what expression you have when you have social interactions. Do you approach girls in an awkward way? It's easy to identify this if you pay attention to whether you approach girls differently than you approach guys.
Are you expecting or hoping for something? Girls can get creeped out immediately if you have a smirk or look like you want to strike up a conversation. Don't say anything unrelated to the current transaction. Don't be overly thankful or gracious, that's weird too. Listen carefully for and consider your expectations before every interaction for the next week and question your assumptions. If you walk up to a cute girl who is a cashier with the thought, "Jesus I am lonely and she is the prettiest girl I have ever seen, maybe somehow I could ask her out" she is going to smell that from twenty feet away and recoil in horror. That would be a legitimate reason why her instant response is, "Fuck of asshole!"

But if that's not you, remember there are options when you think they are taking things out on you unnecessarily.

Speak up. Ask, is something wrong? Be assertive in interactions like this by asking for information.

Tell their manager. Stand up for yourself when someone acts inappropriately. Walk over to another employee and say can I speak to a manager? It's ridiculously easy. Then stand with your back to the offending employee and explain what happened.

Skills like active listening help with this. It allows you to be articulate and find out more information without getting angry or being rude.

> service people, waitresses, cashiers and random people

Why is this class of people so high on your radar? Do you have thoughts that you are better than them? Do you secretly wish people who are beneath you would shower you with affection because you're so amazing? You might have some "class snob" predispositions or fantasies. Have you always fantasized about having sex with the maid or a servant? It's ok! Don't beat yourself up about it. We're all freaks in our own way. But if it's eating us up then it needs work.

Keeping a thought diary can help suss these things out. You don't have to write a lot, just what persistent thoughts are you having when it comes to certain social interactions. Listen and pause when some good information comes up and write it down. If nothing really obvious seems to be coming out, write every thought for a few days and then give it a day or two. Then go back and re-read your thoughts. That can sometimes help make the right things pop out at you.

You don't have to write every day, just when you need it. It's meant to work for you and enhance your introspection, not to be a burden. When you get agitated about something start writing your thoughts, feelings emotions. Take time, let yourself cool down. Then go back and reread it to reflect.

Work on not taking small slights personally.

> What other people think of me is none of my business.

Repeat this to yourself like a broken record until it sinks in. You don't have time to make everyone like you. Remember too, if we accomplish something that is amazing there will still be people who hate it. So live your life, follow your dreams, and don't let miserable people bring you down.

Some people get really angry when they hold the door open for someone and they don't say thank you. This is a waste of time. Same with small slights. Don't let the world eat you alive. Work on your resilience and lower your social anxiety.

Therapy helps and you don't have to take meds. It can just be very helpful to talk to someone face to face for a few sessions who is trained to help people deal with life's challenges. If you get some stuff written down in a journal or notebook you can take it to your sessions as a memory aid and also use it to write down the therapist's recommendations. Be especially kind to yourself the next couple of weeks while you're working on it. Hang in there!

> I started trying to meditate recently by closing my eyes and trying to focus only on my breathing for 10-20 minutes.


That's good. Now, technique aside (and technique does matter a lot), I'll approach the duration of the practice. You might want to pace yourself in the beginning. When I first started, I used techniques that were based on MBSR, such as 3 minutes mindfulness of breath every hour or every time I felt anxious plus 5-10 minutes formal sit every day.


You can add those 3 minutes mindfulness of breath to your formal sit of 10-20 minutes, and, perhaps, add another formal sit at night.


You might also increase your formal sit duration every week or every other week in 3-5 minutes increases. Meditation is like bodybuilding, and you have to keep training and pushing your brain a little further in order to actually rewire your brain.


> they said that they do open eye meditation in order to "form a better connection to the world" or something like that.


Yeah, I don't think that's such a great idea. Sure, there are many types of meditation. However, if you're going to direct attention to your breath (anapanasati), it will be helpful to eliminate unnecessary external stimuli - especially in the beginning of the practice. I sit in a semi dark room to meditate.


> They also said to focus on exhaling.


You should focus on the sensations of your breath as much as you can and increase the vividness and details of sensations progressively over the months. Exhaling is actually a bit harder because of the warm air. Try focusing on inhaling, exhaling and, perhaps later, on the pause between the two.


> I was a little disappointed to hear that their opinion is that meditation helps people accept who they are, rather than actually change them a lot.


I actually think it can do both. You don't get tangled in unnecessary mental drama anymore, and you can see more clearly what you need to change. I all depends on what you want to cultivate in your mind after a certain point.


> I really (selfishly) want to focus on self improvement - to really improve my concentration and decision making, NOT accept the way I am now, improve society or join a community.


Oh, boy. I'll just leave a link to Absolutus' archived AMAs. To call it over the top would be a massive understatement. However, you may like it.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/66u7f7/absolutus_ama_archived_posts/
  
  
  Maybe, you'll also be interested in this book, which is not on meditation. However, I believe it may help with goals, values, problem solving etc. It's worth noting that it is based on ACT (a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that uses mindfulness as well):
  
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Resilience-Survive-Situation/dp/1444168711
  
  
  > How should I learn?
  
  
  I like "The Mind Illuminated" model the best. Another commenter has already suggested it. It's a great book, and it will give you comprehensive guidance throughout your progress. It also has too much information, and it may be necessary to talk to someone about your doubts concerning the practice. In that sense, you might benefit from the really great community based on the book: /r/TheMindIlluminated/
  
  
  You might also want to check out the program on stream entry. I think that at some point, you should try metta meditation. I sense you'll hate the idea of doing loving-kindness meditation, but you'll see that it will make your progress much faster. Check it out:
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/wiki/beginners-guide
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/wiki/breath-practice-basics
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/wiki/twim-crash-course
  
  
  They've also linked "With each and every breath" free book, which is a great book on mindfulness of breath:
  
  
  
• https://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html#eachandeverybreath
  
  
  > What is the best technique specifically to improve cognition?
  
  
  After having seen many accounts, it seems to me that people who join attention/concentration (samatha) and awareness/insight (vipassana) practices get the most cognitive benefits. That is actually the TMI model, and it seems to be Absolutus' as well. However, it seems to me that people start getting the real big benefits after reaching 1st jhana, around stage 7 of TMI.
  
  With all that said, I urge you not to quit on meditation. I think that you'll have to fix your technique (actually fixing the technique is an ongoing process for everyone), and keep on practicing. There are studies that show brain changes after 8 weeks of meditation (MBSR). However, it is not an overnight change, and, if you stop, you'll lose your gains. There's no free lunch, and you get what you have invested in meditation.
  
  
  Also, you'll have to quit things that might hold back your practice, such as: masturbation, drugs, bad sleep habits, internet addiction etc. It will make a big difference in your practice.
  
  
  Hope that helps. Good luck!

I have had problems with this my entire life. You could be me but a bit younger than me.

The one thing that has worked for me is realising that other peoples opinions of me don't really matter to me if I am doing a good job of living my life to my standards.

Other peoples opinions of you are just their opinion. If someone is criticises you and you know for sure they are wrong then you can just say to yourself. "Thats your opinion and I don't agree with it"

Similarly you can change your opinions of yourself. After all you can change your mind on practically anything. It does take a lot of work but you can do it.

Two books I can really recommend are both by Donald Robertson. Stoicism and the art of happiness and Build your resilience They are both based on the Greco-Roman philosophy philosophy of Stoicism. If you have gone through CBT or DBT you will be familiar with a lot of the material already as these therapies are both based on Stoicism.

I have read on the Internet from people that they were depressed and had thoughts that fit those distortions, but they knew those thoughts were not true and they attributed them to the depression, not themselves. They would say things like "that is the depression talking" and perhaps evaluate the thought rationally (maybe a bit like wondering if what someone else said has any validity).

A while back I had depressive moods. I knew about cognitive distortions, and I had meditated before. Still, I totally had those thoughts. Especially the feeling that the low mood would go on forever (I call this "eternalizing", don't know if I read that somewhere or if it's original), though I knew from experience that the mood would never last even a whole day. I think knowing not to believe those thoughts helped a lot.

The way (or one way) I think meditation helps is that during meditation, you can experience thoughts as something that is happening to you, rather than something that you do. When I think about what write in this post, the thoughts are clearly something I do. But during meditation, you can see that thoughts often pop-up out of nowhere. When someone says "Caspar, Melchior,..." you will most likely think "Balthasar". And this thought is clearly something automatic, not something you do.

I've read this self-help book based on ACT. I think what I described is what in ACT is called cognitive defusion, were you do not try to change your thoughts, you try to change your relationship to them.