My journey with stoicism has been useful and powerful at every phase, but for future and fellow walkers of this path I leave advice:

You you a mindful stoic or a dissociated one?

I'd argue dissociation, at least in the short term, is a critical part of the process. To not let the gut reactions carry you away. You do often need to realize, those reactions are still often happening. You body does it's own thing and you need to be mindful when it does that. Fear, shock, anxiety, elation, they all happen even if you keep a clear conscious mind. The in the situation, the work is in correcting for the biases they give.

In the medium term, if you aren't going back and holding the emotions you set aside, you are doing it wrong. Stoicism sells as "magical no emotion land" but you are flesh and flesh has emotions. Both reasonable and unreasonable. You job is to manage and integrate them effectively.

Stoicism is a good toolkit for managing and analyzing emotions, but if you don't add going back and feeling those emotions to the tools, you are just a timebomb running an emotional debt and dissociating from it. I've done that, and watched others do the same. Odds are this message won't actually change things if you are there right now, but maybe it will nudge you in the right direction.

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randomtoast 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> In the medium term, if you aren't going back and holding the emotions you set aside, you are doing it wrong. Stoicism sells as "magical no emotion land" but you are flesh and flesh has emotions. Both reasonable and unreasonable. You job is to manage and integrate them effectively.

I think it's helpful not to identify with your emotions. You may experience emotions, but you are not your emotions. That's the difference between saying "I'm angry" and "I feel anger arising within me."

	▲	nathan_compton 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I guess what I don't get about this is: couldn't you apply the same mode to other internal states? "I understand this," vs "I feel understanding arising in me?" Maybe that is good, now that I write it out. I think "understanding" is actually a pretty dumb mental state to invest a lot in.
	▲	blamestross 39 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That is a dissociating mode, a more mindful one, but still intentionally distancing yourself from your experiences. It works great for improving your perception of yourself and being mindful. Its a meditation. It also isn't really available in a crisis, in the moment. All our long term work is really to train the anxious idiot part of ourselves who runs the show most of the time how to cope with what the world and body are doing right now. That person is very much connected to their emotions, no matter what story we make up about it. You need practice being that person feeling those emotions as well as practice analyzing them.

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Y_Y 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> but if you don't add going back and feeling those emotions to the tools, you are just a timebomb running an emotional debt and dissociating from it

What would that entail? I can't imagine e.g. taking some time on Sunday afternoon to feel that panic I suppressed from the crisis on Monday.

	▲	blamestross 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I can't imagine e.g. taking some time on Sunday afternoon to feel that panic I suppressed from the crisis on Monday. Almost literally that. Revisit the moments that made you "suppress" things. Think of it as a post-mortem. It won't be the same, an echo distorted by time and distance, But pay attention to what you set aside. Suppressing emotions is the short term hack. The ideal is to be able to have them and still be centered. Only way to get better at that is practice.