Seneca on managing emotions

Three Movements of Emotions

Another great strategy for managing emotions is to break down emotions into smaller parts to see how and when they occur. Seneca described three movements in our psyche that lead us to experience strong emotions. The first movement is the proto-emotion, which is kind of like a knee-jerk reaction. If you hear a sudden loud noise behind you, you will probably be startled. There’s nothing you can do about that; it’s just an instinctive physical response.

But the second movement is crucial. After your instinctive reaction, you then consciously decide whether to follow through on that proto-emotion or whether to change course. So if you jump at a loud noise and then realize it was just your cat knocking something over, you know to calm yourself down. There’s no need to be scared or worried about that. In this case you had the initial proto-emotion, but you decided it wasn’t worth following up.

But let’s say you feel yourself becoming angry because someone just insulted you. Most people will follow up the proto-emotion by allowing themselves to get angry; after all, they think insults are worth getting angry about. The Stoics call this “assenting” to the idea that an insult should make you angry. Once you assent, you are well into the third movement, which is getting carried away by the emotion.

But we actually have another choice: not assenting to the idea that we should get angry. You don’t have to get mad just because someone insulted you—you can ignore them or laugh at them instead. If you decide it’s not worth getting angry about, the anger stops right there. You have the power to stop negative emotions in their tracks.

Two Ways of Managing Stress and Emotions

Some people believe our psyche is split into different parts such as reason and emotion, or they might see the soul as separate from the body. But Stoics don’t see it that way. In line with current psychology research, we the mind as arising from physical sensations within the brain and body. Our brains are the command center for our bodies, and our minds and bodies are part of the same whole.

This means we have two helpful paths to managing stress and emotions. One path is to focus on changing our beliefs about what is good and bad for us. Once we recognize that our happiness is based on our internal qualities like character and mindset, we know that outside things can’t truly harm us. As Marcus Aurelius says, “Do away with the judgment, and the notion ‘I have been harmed' is done away with; do away with that notion, and the harm itself is gone.”

The second path is to focus on changing our physiological responses. When we get stressed or angry, we experience physical symptoms like an elevated heart rate and fast, shallow breathing. Because of the mind-body connection, if we can slow down our heart rate and breathing, we send a signal to our brains that we are safe and can relax. By physically relaxing, we enable ourselves to make better decisions and respond to difficult situations with calm and ease.

I hope you find these paths helpful in managing stress and challenging emotions. Thanks for watching. We wish you well.