Stoicism’s Greatest Flaw: When to Analyse or Accept Emotions
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.
Alan Watts
The Stoics emphasised the common belief that what feels good or bad should not be depended on. Paraphrasing Tacitus, we can be fulfilled despite adversity if we face our issues bravely. Likewise, we can be unfulfilled with material wealth and status if we do not appreciate or contextualise it. Stoicism teaches us we have the power to create painful or calm responses to reality, meaning reality itself is independently neutral to us.
This is great for understanding the nature and utility of our emotions. With this, we can apply an objective foundation of virtue, giving us direction in our actions. The problem appears in the grey area of whether we should understand our emotions with analysis or let them flow unchallenged. Too much of one, and we become lost in rumination or risk leaving emotions unprocessed to build up. Furthermore, when we are overwhelmed with an emotion, we cannot meet emotion with rationality, so Stoicism seems incapable of answering this.
This article understands Stoicism’s biggest flaw in processing emotions and distinguishes between analysing and accepting them. Balancing analysis with acceptance calms both internal and external conflict. This is a pendulum that must be harmonised to achieve both wisdom and presence.
When To Analyse Emotions
The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state… Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
James Allen
When we understand the nature and causes of our thoughts, we can begin deconstructing harmful and untrustworthy habits we built up from our past. Negative circumstances cannot come to fruition without our negative thoughts creating that perception. Therefore, we can also cultivate and nurture positive emotions, and our relationship with reality will mirror that. If we only see the negative in the world, we sharpen our focus to find only that.
Modern therapy’s main benefit is unwrapping our emotions and understanding why we react a certain way to relationships, ourselves, or reality. Understanding the ‘why’ creates an alternative pathway to thinking. We can unhook ourselves from an identity if it does not logically or emotionally bring us happiness. Old habits of thought may harm more than help, but any habit can be learned or unlearned with direction and perspective.
Stoicism focuses on the transient and misleading nature of emotions rather than understanding their traces. Since emotions are temporary, comfort-seeking, and unpredictable, we must sometimes live independently of them to reach true fulfilment. Discipline means doing something when we don’t want to, which will reap our greatest rewards. Analysing the nature of our thoughts develops the appreciation that it is our relationship with reality, not reality alone, that generates our emotions.
When To Detach (Accept) Emotions
Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.
Marcus Aurelius
A new body of research from Abigail Shrier shows that analysing our thoughts, labelling our struggles, and consistently attaching to them can actually cause more harm than good. If we do not let a negative thought heal, we risk dissociating ourselves from reality further and intensifying its effects on us. Stoicism’s strength lies within the detachment side of emotional wisdom.
The stoics had their own mantra to think less and act more to prevent overanalysis. Marcus Aurelius journaled to himself, “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be; be one”. Buddhism shows us negative emotions are like holding a scolding hot rock in your hand. There is no benefit in keeping hold of it because this delivers no justice; only further harm to yourself. Deserving the pain is also an untrustworthy and subjective reason to keep hold of it. Simply letting the rock go is the only path to forgiveness, acceptance and peace.
Allowing emotions to exist without attachment or judgment will feel confusing and uncomfortable. The practice is trusting past this initial fear barrier and letting the emotion dissipate in its own time. Observe emotions rather than attach to them. When we do not judge an emotion, we are relieving ourselves of its power over us. Stoicism does not directly appreciate this part of human nature, but patience and being a better friend to ourselves are Stoic teachings.
When to Analyse Or Detach
The distinction between analysis and detachment depends on whether you are healing or harming yourself from analysis. If the emotion intensifies and you spiral, then detachment and alignment with your happiest self is a far better solution. Detachment is the key to presence, but you may build up emotions that need to be understood more in the long term. The pendulum has each on either end and must be balanced for long-term happiness.
If you live true and happier with the thought, then nurture it; if it creates the opposite, that in itself is your answer. Happier does not mean gaslighting yourself. If you believe something did not happen and that makes you happier, this is not the objective alignment we should look for. The distinction will lie between mastering or living to your emotional comforts if we apply this incorrectly.
Focus on what widens your perspective emotionally and accept things exactly as they are. We can never flow against life, but we always have the choice to flow with it, and flowing with it long enough, gives us opportunities to begin diverting it in our favour. Putting down the scolding rock takes time, but if you put in the effort to loosen that grip, you have more energy to begin building your own happiness, action by action.
This is an overview of this concept; I am writing in-depth pieces on understanding the relationship between thoughts and our circumstances (James Allen’s ‘As A Man Thinketh’) and the deeper understanding behind meditation and detachment (Buddhism).
