Story of Stoicism and the Birth of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
The more you try to escape the struggle of life, the more difficult painful your existence becomes.
Nature rewards those who embrace pain and extract strength from the challenging experiences of their lives.
One such brave man was Zeno of Citium. Anything I can write about his wisdom is insufficient to describe his philosophical contributions.
He's the man who founded the philosophy of Stoicism, laying the foundations of the most credible mental health treatment, and gave credit to an accident that took all his fortune.
Let’s relive Zeno's grand journey of founding the Stoic school of philosophy.
A Shipwreck that Gave Birth to Stoicism
Ancient Phoenicians made their fortune by trading a famous purple dye extracted from the murex sea snail. It’s called Tyrian or Royal Purple.
It was used to dye robes of kings but making it was an excruciating task. Thousands of decaying shellfish had to be laboriously dissected by hand just to extract a few grams of this super-expensive dye.
One fine morning Zeno of Citium, from the island of Cyprus, was transporting his cargo of the royal purple dye across the Mediterranean when a storm caught him.
The ship sank, but he survived somehow, washed ashore at a port near Athens. Tragically gloomy, Zeno was left wandering on the streets of a strange city with all his fortune taken away from him.
Sad and disappointed, he visited the famous Delphic Oracle pleading for guidance from God Apollo.
The Oracle said Zeno would have to dye himself not in the blood of dead shellfish but of dead men. Confused and upset, he went back to Athens.
Later, while reading the work of Socrates in a bookshop, he realized what the Oracle meant when she said he had to dye himself with the color of dead men.
His destiny was to study the life and opinions of philosophers like Socrates from previous generations and permanently color his mind with their teachings.
He was so touched by the wisdom of Socrates he jumped to the bookseller and asked him: “Where can I find a man like this today?”
And he replied, “Talk to that guy over there!” Because by chance, the famous Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes was walking right past them.
Zeno trained with Crates and other Socratic philosophers for the next twenty years. He flourished and became famous as a philosopher himself.
Eventually, he founded a school on a public porch in Athens called Stoa Poikile, near the agora where Socrates used to teach. His followers came to be known as the Stoics or philosophers of the porch.
Congruency of CBT and Stoicism
Zeno lived a respectful life after founding his school.
After his death, the Athenians honored him by creating a bronze statue.
Zeno considered the biggest tragedy of his life as the most fortunate incident of his life. During his time in Athens, he always used to say this:
“My most profitable journey began on the day I was shipwrecked and lost my entire fortune.”
This attitude of saying “fuck you” to the mishappenings of life is something that Stoics followed religiously.
Fuck you, shipwreck; I’m on my way to establish a school of philosophy that will be read and distributed by humans for the next twenty-three centuries—that’s Zeno in a nutshell.
No matter how hard the modern human tries to ignore and mock the wisdom of the ancients, Science slaps us on the face of our ignorance.
This is probably why the most statistically credible mental health treatment is just Stoicism in disguise.
Stoicism claims that events that happen in the external world are not in your control, but it’s in your hand how you react to them. There are no painful or rewarding experiences; the human mind makes them that way.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy talks about something similar. CBT claims that counterproductive or unhelpful thinking patterns, called cognitive distortions, cause unproductive behavior and undesired emotions.
Precursors of fundamental aspects of CBT have been identified Stoicism.
"The philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers."
Epictetus, one of the most respected Stoic philosophers, said that one could use logic to identify and discard false beliefs that lead to destructive emotions.
This idea has influenced how modern cognitive-behavioral therapists identify cognitive distortions that contribute to depression and anxiety.
Let’s understand cognitive distortions in a little more detail.
Cognitive Distortions
Our minds can play tricks on us depending on how we interpret events. They can influence us to believe things that aren't true, even if they appear to be rational.
For some of us, distorted thinking is merely a blip on the radar. When we fail a math test, we get upset. Instead of realizing we need to study more, we briefly reason that we're bad at math. However, we usually move on and try again.
Others experience cognitive distortions as a way of thinking that disrupts their lives and relationships.
In these situations, distorted thinking can lead to long-term anxiety, depression, and behavioral issues like substance abuse.
There are different types of cognitive distortions that play devious games with our minds and cause unproductive thought patterns. Some of them are polarized thinking, overgeneralization, catastrophizing. “should” statements, etc. ill talk about them in my next Twitter thread.
Appreciate your patience and dedication to reading this long essay. I am glad that you made it to the end. Hope you learned something new that will equip you to be more persistent when the friction of reality is unbearable.
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fascinating thanks for writing!
Such a good read!