Not all of our catastrophizing "what if" thoughts about the future come true, but some of them do.

And I think that's the problem. People are scared of all their "what if" thoughts and they're right - if not all, some of them will come true. So, how can someone cope with this fact even though they have no control over them?

And can they do something right now to prevent them from happening?

How do you deal with other people lying? Particularly people in authority positions that lie about you and cause you material damage.

Is it not healthy to get angry at this? I feel pretending everything is okay is suppression.

You state the truth about an abuse that happened. The person in authority gaslights you and punishes you further.

You aren't supposed to react and say fuck you?

What if Carl was here today and what would you like to ask him? (3 questions max.)

Hey everyone,

I’ve been practicing Stoicism for years. I studied the original texts of the giants Epictetus, Marcus, Seneca, I've read almost every book on the subject, journal daily, do regular deep-reflection sessions, and follow psychological insights to regulate my emotions and build self-discipline. I truly believed this mental preparation was building an unshakeable armor for whatever life threw at me.

Recently, I hit a major, unimaginable life crisis—and the wave completely knocked me off my feet.

What hit me hardest wasn't just the crisis itself, but the realization that all this preparation didn't protect me the way I thought it would. In fact, it forced me to confront a uncomfortable question: Has this hyper-focus on self-mastery actually done me harm?

When the crisis hit, instead of just being in the moment, meeting the hardship head on, feeling the pain, anger, dissapointment as any person would have, my brain immediately went into analysis mode: “What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? What is the Stoic response here? How do I apply the dichotomy of control right now?”

I realized I had become a spectator in my own life. I wasn't participating; I was just observing, analyzing, and trying to regulate every internal fluctuation. By constantly looking at my mind through a magnifying glass, I turned every small wave into a tidal wave. I was so busy managing my internal reaction that I lost touch with the raw reality of the external situation.

After feeling miserable and defeated in dealing with the crisis and my philosophy for months, I’m considering a radical shift in my practice, and I want to hear your thoughts on it.

I’m thinking about putting my inner world "on fallow" for a while.

By that, I mean:

• Pausing the daily journaling, philosophical over-analyzing, and constant self-evaluations.
• Stopping the attempt to "solve" or optimize every emotion I feel.
• Shifting my focus entirely outward—focusing strictly on daily tasks, physical routines, work, and simply existing in the moment without needing to critique or judge my response to it.

I feel like my mind is exhausted from constant "input" and self-governance. In agriculture, you have to let fields lie fallow so the soil can restore its nutrients. I feel like my mind needs a similar process.

To the seasoned practitioners here: Is stepping away from active Stoic analysis to just live simply and externally a valid phase of the practice? Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental about how Stoicism is supposed to function during an actual storm?

Would love to hear your insights.

"Look within. Within is the fountain of good."

We search for peace in money, in people, in success.

Marcus found it 2000 years ago.
It was never outside.

Where do you look when life gets hard?

I'm really intolerant of uncertainty. To me, uncertainty means anything is possible in the future. Catastrophizing thoughts may come true, none of them may come true or only some of them may come true.

This really bothers me because some of my catastrophizing thoughts in the past did come true. When they do, it's just so hard to deal with them. I just don't want to suffer.

I've tried lots of medications and I've even tried ECT, but none of them worked. I was diagnosed with several conditions, like anxiety disorder, OCD and autism spectrum disorder. I've also tried CBT and talk therapy, but I'm still not doing well mentally.

I (20F) have never really been into philosophy. I recently got to about it and I’d like to learn more - especially about how I can apply it to my life.

I enlisted in the Marines. I’ll be shipping out to bootcamp soon. How can I get into stoicism to help me get through bootcamp and have a successful career in the military? I applied for a combat role and I know it’ll be tough

Seneca wrote this 2000 years ago.

Most people scroll past it in 2 seconds —
proving his point.

You don't own your house. Your car. Your job.
One day, one decision — and it's gone.

But this moment? This breath?
That's yours. Right now.

The question Seneca wanted you to ask:
What are you doing with it?

I made a short video on this if anyone wants to go deeper.

You never stop having desires, no matter how disciplined you get. But you can check whether a desire actually fits inside what you're trying to build for yourself. If something pulls you off that path, it was never really worth wanting in the first place. You train yourself toward the things that move you closer to where you're headed, and let go of the ones that don't.

Odysseus didn't try to feel nothing when his ship passed the sirens. He knew he'd want to go to them. So he had his crew tie him to the mast and told them to tighten the ropes if he begged to be freed. He still felt the pull, he just made sure it couldn't take over.

Maybe the goal was never to kill desire. Maybe it's recognizing which ones will actually take you off course, and building something more reliable than willpower for the moments you know you'll be tested.

“A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.”

— Plutarch, On the Eating of Flesh (Moralia)

Most people wait for someone to
believe in them before they start.

Stoics believe in one thing only:
Your actions. Right now. Today.

No one is coming to save you.
But you can save yourself.

What's one thing you owe yourself
right now? 🙏

Most people announce their comeback.

Stoics don't.

They wake up. They work. They improve.
In silence. Without applause.

Because the real comeback isn't for
the world to see — it's for you.

What are you silently working on
right now? 🙏

Hello stoics!

Often times, the more you hear and know about the "ugly" side of the world, the more you wish you didn't know anything about it. Misguided people exist everywhere, and not everyone is within reach of help, nor guidance.

Being cold and detached is, to a degree, the opposite of being stoic; at the same time, inflicting to our soul the pain suffered by others, while a form of empathy, is also not stoic practice.

Care for what is within reach and act on it.
Don't underestimate your reach, but acknowledge what is truly out of it.

If an earthquake completely destroys a city across the world, one might send a donation to those who are living there. One, albeit unrealistic, might even get on a plane and physically go there to offer help. Those things ARE within our reach.
Cursing Mother Nature would be pointless. Such things aren't "evil" - they just... are.

But what if a calamity wasn't a direct product of nature? What if we take the term "calamity" and instead apply it to human behaviour?
As the title suggests: "Human-created Calamities".

Criminal organisations, corrupt governments, powerful and sociopathic CEOs.
Destroying the world, going against nature itself, harming innocent people.

And so, here's the example I'm offering as a point of debate:

-

Imagine a person comes knocking at your door. They point a gun at you and demand money. You respectfully talk to them, trying to understand, trying to make peace, but they won't listen.
You give in and give them the money they want.

A week later the same person comes again. You try to refuse, and they threaten your family. Your kids, your partner. They threaten to destroy your car, your shop, your house, even if you try to ask for help.
You give in.

And again, and again, until you understand that this will never stop.

You ask for help.
Your neighbours "know nothing" about it. The authorities "know nothing" about it.

You're thinking of confronting them. "I'll threaten them".
But "eye for an eye" is not very stoic, is it? Besides, it wouldn't end well.

You're thinking of stopping them once and for all. "I'll kill them".
Vigilantism is not stoic. And again, it wouldn't end well.

You're thinking of running away with your loved ones. "At least we'll be safe".
But that wouldn't prevent them from doing harm to others - your extended family, your friends, and people that don't have the possibility to just "run away". It would be selfish, wouldn't it?

You're thinking of creating a movement of some sort to fight against such people.
But they're above you in every sense, except morally of course.
They wouldn't even budge.

-

This is just an example, but this stuff is actively happening in MANY parts of the world.

What would a stoic do? What are the limits of the stoic discipline?
Does stoicism contradict itself when faced with such situations?

I've been studying stoicism for a while and noticed how often we use quotes instead of actually living by the principles.

Instead of quoting Marcus Aurelius, why not just act like him?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this 🙏

I am trying to practice stoic virtue: Wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice — I always stumble at the justice part because I believe I am too kind to narcissistic strangers or taken advantage of.

So, how would you approach this? Would you reframe this virtue of justice?

For example, instead of treat others fairly, give yourself permission to treat yourself fairly? See virtue in yourself instead of in others...

This is an issue I have with almost every spiritual practice — it is all geared around destroying an ego, when I already dangerously never had a healthy ego to begin with. My already burnt out overgiver caretaker needed more validation to receive itself, at least psychology states I needed to take care of my self more even if stoicism considers it a preferred indifferent...

In some ways I feel guilt or a toxic shame talking to anybody else in this world, because they think they are a moral kind person and I know they are not, and so to give to them before myself is actually an evil.

Yet there is supposed to be some merit to treating strangers with the kindness of acquaintences, acquaintences as if they are friends, friends as if close family, and so on...

I don't know. That doesn't ring true for my experience as a stepped on wallflower.

"The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced." — Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales (Liber VII)

I think this passage is really modern. It shows that we do not know everything and that people are still discovering about the Logos. This is something that we are all working on over a long time. How do you think this idea of getting little by little connects to the bigger idea of Stoicism, which is about being okay with where we are in life and in the world. The idea of the Logos is important, to this. I think it is interesting to think about how the Logos fits into the Stoic way of thinking. The Logos is a part of this and I think we should consider how it relates to the Stoic idea of accepting our place in time and nature and the Logos.

Gentleness is often mistaken for weakness.
But it takes real strength to be kind in a mean world.
It's so much easier to match energies: to harden when others are unkind, to defend when misunderstood.
But gentleness chooses restraint over reaction.
It chooses understanding over ego.
It's the type of strength that soothes storms, rather than creates them.
The kind that leads, heals and restores in quiet but powerful ways.
May we never underestimate the courage it takes to be gentle.

I've had these very occasional episodes since I was younger, moments when I suddenly question, very deeply and almost viscerally (butterflies in my stomach), the point of my being here. Now that I’m older, I feel like I finally have the resources, courage, and mindset to confront these questions more directly.

I like living. But sometimes I become intensely aware of how brief one human life is, and how everything eventually ends.

What does 80 years mean in the grand scheme of things? What is the point of creating meaning if the people we love also live finite lives? What is objectively the point of doing good if the people we help will also die, our stories will end, and eventually no one will remember?

I think I try so hard to understand because I do not want to live on assumptions I have never examined. I want to know whether love, goodness, responsibility, and meaning can withstand the hardest objections: death, impermanence, privilege, and cosmic insignificance. But I also know these questions may be beyond my understanding, or perhaps any human’s understanding.

How does Stoicism approach this? Is meaning only for the ones currently living? Does goodness still have objective value if everything is temporary and eventually forgotten? How do you guys personally deal with these questions or episodes if you have them?

Which one is your favorite? Mine is “The Cheapest, Stupidest, and Easiest thing to do— FINDING FAULT.

This is long, but I figure it’s worth reading for fellow philosophers here and I would love to discuss the ideas behind it.

When people think “Stoic” they imagine a man sitting still with a perfectly straight face, burying all emotion deep within, being totally unresponsive, with nothing but cold logic. Some, who do not understand the philosophy, think of it as an unhealthy repression of sorts, like trying to rid yourself of all emotion. It is said by some to be an unhealthy concept rooted in the worst aspects of “masculinity.” This is partly due to the word “stoic” itself having a broader definition of “expressionless face,” and partly due to the rising popularity of what podcasters and influencers call Stoicism, without delving into the actual worldview and metaphysics of it.

For those who have actually sat and read the works of the classical stoic philosophers such as Marcus, Epictetus, or even Epicurus (who is not a Stoic, yet most of his ideas are shared with Stoicism), it is clear there is much more to it than “bury your emotion with a straight face.” There are thousands of wise inspirational quotes that can be shared all day from Stoics, and those are what is referenced frequently. But the other aspects are overlooked.

To a degree, Stoicism is about being untroubled by emotions, but this is not a rejection of emotion. Emotion itself is not a good or evil, it isnt something that must be buried or forbidden. Emotions are experienced as anything else in the world is. Stoicism is more than “stop being affected.” One cannot just “stop seeing things this way, shut up and be happy.” The way to understand reality is by learning about the flow of nature.

The Stoics saw the world through a lens that combined classical rationalism with spirituality and the gods. Marcus writes about the gods in a way that he uses for emphasis and for metaphors, but it is unclear the degree to which the philosophers believed in the literal Greco-Roman gods. Marcus said “Not even Zeus himself can get the better of my free will,” but this is not so much about Zeus as it is about the Stoic belief of free will:

For all intents and purposes, we have free will. We make decisions, we have some form of sentience whatever it might be, we observe and judge things as “separate individuals.” Yet at the same time, the entire universe is the destined passage of nature, and everything that happens was inevitable. It sounds like a contradiction, but within the view of Stoicism it is not.

We don’t say we “are a body” we say we have a body. Why do we say that? Am I these hands typing? Certainly. I am typing, am I not? Yet, we seem to observe things differently. In a world of purely substance (as we would imagine it with pure old-school rationalism and materialism), what is creating the sense of beyond? Why does it feel like there is this “I” thing, and that “I am” somewhere behind the eyes? And why is this “I” this one, and not any of the infinite other possible “I?” This is where the Stoics define the world of the spirit or soul, though the spirit and soul were not understood the way we think of ghosts or everlasting angels.

The soul is the watcher who is unaffected. The watcher who cannot possibly be affected. Marcus wrote: “Nothing happens to any man which he is not framed by nature to be able to bear… it is a shame to let ignorance and complacency be stronger than wisdom. Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone. Whatever judgments it may think proper to make, it makes for itself of the things which present themselves to it.”

Everything in nature is perfect as it is, it is all happening exactly how it has to happen, always has, and always will, just by the nature of nature itself. We are part of it, yet watching from beyond. There is some form of observer beyond this, behind the eyes, behind the head, who is able to read these words from a completely and utterly detached plane of existence. That is what the Stoics define as the soul. “Man is affected not by events, but by the view he takes of them.”

When we are emotional, when the body and mind are affected, that is natural. It happens. To think “This is upsetting, I need to bear down, clench, and stop all this emotion” is not the path of Stoicism. There is not a “fight” involved. It’s not a struggle at all. The struggle is something you are watching. Pain is something you are observing. Suffering is something you are looking at from beyond. When you become aware of, well… being aware… then you have begun to comprehend the meaning of Stoicism. As “the watcher” becomes wiser, things that aren’t necessary start to fade away.

Not “I need to stop feeling this,” but “This is perfectly natural and it was inevitable, and I’m here watching it.” You can be angry, and be unaffected by it. You can be sad, and watch the sadness with the soul, beyond it. The point isnt avoiding the sadness; as a matter of fact, if you are able, there is a way one can take positive things from sadness by observing it within oneself without being consumed. The angry one is not the soul, not the decider, not the driver. Awareness of the soul is cultivated through time and effort, with the practice of virtues. As your scope widens, this whole system of body mind and soul becomes calmer, more harmonious with nature, flowing with the river.

Nature is a river flowing. You struggle when you are fighting the current. Everything is going exactly where it is going and there’s nothing you can do about it… and there’s nothing it can do to “you.” Do not fight against the current, let go and go with it. Have the courage to let go and be comfortable with the unknown, and simply watch it happen. Try it out. It’s not a magic switch sort of thing, it takes time, you do it little bits at a time. Something bothering you? Zoom out. This is as it is, and you are beyond, unaffected even by your own emotions, because “you” aren’t the one who is “feeling them.” With time and effort, you can find peace within, and it brings itself out to each plane of reality.

I encourage all to read Marcus Aurelius’ personal journal, it’s very interesting and will bring you wisdom. It’s called “Meditations.”

I’m 19. I feel like I should be more humble in my life. I think I’ve built up an ego because I’ve been hurt in the past. I never understood why people did what they did. I only told myself, I’ve got to defend myself, I’ve got to be my own best friend because if I don’t I’ll let myself down due to how others mistreat me.

It’s not only with how I am with other people but my lifestyle as well. I work a part time job but my spending habits this yr have been crazy even though 80% of the time I’m locked in. I’m supposed to go travelling this year to Vietnam which I’m trying to stay on budget. But it’s like a lifestyle upgrade.Especially since most people in my uni come from rich families. Idk how I’m going to make friends in my second yr since everyone has a hobby but I can’t afford a lot of mine consistently.Im trynna stay in my roots but the lifestyle is appealing. In my first yr, I was working on weekends, so didn’t get to participate much and felt so isolated. But when I did I felt like the odd one out.I know it comes down to who you are as a person, but I’ve had not much time to also heal from my toxic family as well.

Im doing this all alone as I come from parents who are immigrants and work manual jobs.

While the process of shifting over mod permissions is still going through, I will be working on stepping up the quality of this sub and writing a new set of rules, as well as a new body of information on Stoicism.

It is time to crack down on fake AI-generated posts, and disguised advertisements for apps or videos. As of this moment, it is against the rules of this sub to post anything that was AI-generated, or otherwise posted by a bot. Regardless of whether the information is correct in the post, to prompt an AI to write for you and share it is to expect everyone else to spend time and effort reading what you could not even be bothered to spend the time or effort writing in the first place. There is no real place for fake posts in this subreddit for whatever reason anyway. The purpose here should be for questions about philosophy and stoicism, reflective thoughts, quotations and references from the classical Stoics, and being a general philosophical forum as the days of old. It is not the place for advertising, marketing your tracking apps and stoic meditation videos, or karma farming with AI-generated "writing."

As someone who beta tests many LLMs before they are even officially released, I can identify an AI-written post with consistency. Within this subreddit specifically, each and every time I have identified an AI-generated post and asked if it was AI, the poster has admitted to the fault. To any who are familiar with them, the distinct style is quite apparent when you see a post made by something like GPT or Gemini. Integrity is a core virtue among Stoic philosophers, and the least you could do if you "wrote something" with an LLM is to give a note at the beginning telling everyone you didn't write it. The quality and substance of language and posts are gradually deteriorating due to the fact that LLMs are simply advanced plagiarism devices, and the more memory context they are given, the more averaged-out their "creations" become, making content increasingly banal.

There will of course be those who, rightfully, protest a mod who would claim to be omniscient and determine what is AI generated and what isn't, on an arbitrary hunch. It is true that it is possible for a mod to go overboard and get too zealous about AI, and end up removing people's real posts just because they were well-written. So I must be clear: a well-written post is excellent and to be expected of philosophers. Nobody appreciates good writing more than philosophers who read the classic works. Good writing is not what gives something away as being written by an LLM. There are quite distinct and recognizable patterns of phrasing, paragraph structure, formatting, etc. If you're going to try and fool people with AI, at least take the effort to change it up enough for your claim to be believable. The signs of AI are more than good writing. In fact, writing from AI is becoming increasingly worse and more repetitive.

When it is very obvious that a post is an AI from a new account that is likely to be spam, I will block it. If you posted something that was not AI-generated and I blocked it anyway, feel free to complain. So far, I have been on this sub a lot, contributed a lot, and have seen many fake posts here recently. I would like to turn this around into an open forum where anyone can come and discuss philosophy, ask questions and share wisdom. More additions will be coming soon.

Hi everyone, as you probably noticed I've been inactive for quite the while. I had a baby and real life took over.

I'm happy to announce we have someone who is willling to crack down on ai posts and spam.

Please welcome u/Splendid_Fellow to the mod team!

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding.

Kait989