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My Experience Using Stoicism With Anxiety | WhatIsStoicism · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, listeners, of the Stoic Handbook Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're wondering who this unfamiliar voice is, my name is Alan and I'm the host of the What is Stoicism Podcast, and I run the blog of the same name at what is stoicism.com.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very happy that John has invited me onto his podcast today.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm here is to introduce an interview I did with John recently for my own podcast, where we talked about using stoicism to deal with anxiety and discuss details of John's excellent stoic anxiety mastery course.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: As you'll hear in this episode, I've taken the Stoic Anxiety Mastery course myself, and I highly recommend it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, here's my interview with John Brooks.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: John Brooks, welcome to the What is Stoicism Podcast.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to have you here.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate you taking the time.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Alan.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder if you could just kick us off by explaining a little bit about how you got started with Stoicism and what the motivation was behind creating the Stoic Handbook.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I guess I I had been interested in sort of self-improvement and reading about ways we can improve our life from a pretty young age, as a teenager.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I remember reading Darren Brown's Tricks of the Mind when I was 14, and that had magic and skepticism and things like NLP in it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I got interested in NLP, which means neurolinguistic programming.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: They had a book on persuasion that I that I read, and I never used any of it, but I just found it fascinating when I was in my late teens.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're reading about self-improvement, you do hear about stoicism and ancient philosophy.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: But at the time I just wasn't ready for it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I didn't really have a strong reason to look at it, right?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: When you're young, life is busy and exciting, and you have other things to worry about.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened is I had braces in my early 20s.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: They told me that uh I needed to correct an underbite.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if I had braces, they would last about two years, and then I'd get the simple surgery, and I'd be on my way, and everything would be great.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: But as it turned out, the braces lasted about five years, and the surgery became a simple surgery into a double jaw surgery, uh, which was you know, essentially both of my jaws broken and uh anesthetic and screwed back into a different place.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this came at the end of a five-year wait.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when you're in your early 20s and you're wearing braces, things can get, at least they did for me, uh, difficult, you know, like I lacked confidence, I had different kinds of insecure thoughts.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I I felt like I was on this waiting list, you know.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't so much that I was stuck this way, I was just stuck this way until I don't know when, right?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Until I get my braces off, or until I have the surgery.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was quite painful.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And even though I definitely felt withdrawn and unhappy at times and miserable, I always had this kind of spark of hope and I guess this drive, you know, to not give up, to not give in.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember I always kept training in the gym.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, was always interested in weightlifting, and so I got into that, and that was a good source of meaning and happiness and I guess development.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I always kept a reading habit, and I stumbled across a book by Alanda Botan called Consolations of Philosophy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's uh an amazing book.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Each chapter features a different philosopher and how that philosopher can help us live.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a chapter on Stoicism, Seneca, uh, I believe, and it told the story of Seneca's death and how he was so equanimous, even though he was, you know, sentenced to death by his student, Emperor Nero, the psychopathic Emperor Nero, um essentially for no real reason.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was like this horrific death that he faced, and he handled it without getting flustered, and I was really impressed by that.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then Alain de Botan also gave examples of how the Stoics dealt with frustration.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was really inspired by that, and I knew there was something in this uh because I, even though I love self-improvement and self-development, I'm also a skeptic at heart.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I like evidence, you know, I don't want to just believe anything and get sucked down into different kinds of rabbit holes that don't lead me uh to the right places.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I read The Wisdom of the Ancient Stoics and I started digging into that, I I felt like these guys were like me.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like they they're not gonna make claims that they can't back up or they can't argue.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they would also be open to changing their beliefs and their strategies if you provided them with different evidence or different reasons.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that the ancient Stoics would have clung irrationally to their techniques if you showed them a different way or a more optimal way, and I really like that about them.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that seems to be a common theme maybe of peop people finding stoicism when they they really most need it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the versatility of it is sort of what makes it appl applicable in many different scenarios.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose today we're probably focusing mostly on the issue of anxiety.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that will become clear in the later later questions.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um just for context, maybe we could have a brief description of you know what anxiety is and and what causes it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, from what you've you've found from your your own research.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that I like to explain what anxiety is is by contrasting it to fear.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times we kind of lump them into the same thing, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like fear and anxiety are the same, right?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're actually not the same, and they've they've discovered this because they've given people anti-anxiety medication that has improved their anxiety, but actually doesn't cure simple phobias.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when someone has like a simple phobia of um, let's just say like spiders or falling or something like that, if you give them um an anxiolytic drug, it doesn't get rid of that, but it might actually increase their anxiety.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this there's a similar but slightly different brain mechanism at play.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And to summarize, anxiety is often a fear of what is.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's this belief that something terrible and dangerous is about to happen, and you only have partial evidence for that, and that's where the it becomes difficult because you only have partial evidence.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that anxiety motivates you to do is to get more information.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we see something that could be dangerous in the distance, anxiety kicks in as a mechanism to make you learn, right?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it actually dangerous?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it, look, look deeper into the situation, get more information.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem is that we live in a society where, say, for example, you have uh something that goes wrong with your body and you Google it, you get like 500 different kinds of diagnoses and that can actually jack up your anxiety.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So too much information can actually be just as bad as no information when it comes to anxiety.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So anxiety is this preoccupation with a future scenario that is likely to be terrible, whereas fear is a rational response to immediate danger.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if a lion or a scary dog walks into my living room and looks really aggressive, it's natural for me to be afraid in that situation.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't want to not be afraid in that situation, too, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because that actually helps me, helps me deal with the situation.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so to summarize anxiety, you could say is the combination of a worry and uncertainty.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the uncertainty that causes us a lot of issues.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're lacking information and you're feeling anxious to close the information gap, what we can sometimes do is get stuck in this anxious thought loop where we're just trying to like think ourselves to more information.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what worrying is, right?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever worried about something in the future, like you have to give a presentation or you have a job interview, a part of you is trying to get rid of that uncertainty.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so you try to do it by thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and going through all these different situations.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually a very unpleasant thing to do.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a great description.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as you say, that you're trying to fill an information gap there, and it's that sort of thing that causes us to probably to imagine things where they don't exist or exaggerate things that do exist and make them worse than than what they really are.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So in terms of problems and antidotes, what what makes stoicism so effective in dealing with anxiety?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well stoicism uh is really effective, I think, because it's very realistic.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh the stoicism was developed in the arena of life.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it wasn't something that was developed uh separate from the flow of daily life.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like the ancient Stoics, the individuals who developed Stoicism had troubles, had difficulties, had had deaths and exiles and all of these different challenges that they used to refine Stoicism, the techniques.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really good that it's actually been battle-tested.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not just some theory like, oh, go try this theory that we don't and we don't know if it works.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: The ancient Stoics tried these things and refined them and argued about them and reasoned about them until eventually they they found a system that actually helps.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but what what I found really useful when it comes to Stoicism is that it's holistic.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Stoicism is a philosophy of life.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so even though they have techniques, and some of these techniques have been taken and used by positive psychology and and other kinds of authors and self-development writers, the Stoics ideally wanted you to live a virtuous life, you know, a rich life full of meaning and wisdom, to live according to our nature, to use reason to better society.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the times with dealing with anxiety now, people come up with specific interventions, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like single interventions, like, uh, oh, you need to use trauma healing, or you need to use CBT, uh, or you need to use breath work.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And these things definitely work, but my belief is that the Stoics would say, well, use them all, right?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like use anything and everything, any perspective, any reframing technique, any technique that helps you, use it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and they had this very inclusive approach to using techniques, which I love.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they, you know, one of my favorite techniques from the Stoics is to make comparisons to others in a way that helps you feel grateful for the situation that you're in.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so like you know, recognizing that there are people worse off than you.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about, you know, someone could criticize that and say, well, isn't that kind of pitying other people or looking down on other people?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the Stoics would say, Well, it's not, you know, it's not about that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like if this technique has the outcome, like the clinical cold outcome of making us more virtuous, more compassionate, and happier, then why would we not do that?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Give me the reason why we wouldn't do that.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that's why I I really like Stoicism.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's this inclusive philosophy of life that doesn't leave things out.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned things like CBT there because um I don't know if you've read Donald Robertson's book, The Philosophy of CBT.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, but a lot of these therapies obviously originated or have their roots in Stoicism and take a lot of, you know, their practices from you know 2,000 years ago, and even if they hadn't necessarily given credit for doing that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, CBT is is like something that I do daily.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I love CBT.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it like I also spoke to Don Robinson and asked him, you know, summarize the difference between CBT and Stoicism, and his response was that CBT is a specific intervention for a specific problem that has like a time frame.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Stoicism is a philosophy of life.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know it's something that you have always, you know, from now until the day that you die.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even though they have similarities and CBT has taken a lot of techniques and ideas from from the Stoics, CBT nobody could claim is a philosophy of life.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's there's a lot of power or comfort, maybe, in having a philosophy of life, isn't there?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh something that you can implement as a foundation, I suppose, uh you know, and build upon.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can add things like CBT and other other therapies to your your sort of grinding in your philosophy of life, which is you know a very powerful thing.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: You talked a little bit earlier about um you know your your experiences having braces and the operations you went through and and things like that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And are there any other experiences that maybe led you to start applying stoicism as a response to anxiety, or maybe not as a response, but you know, as something that would prepare you for for anxiety in the future?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there was one you know very fateful uh event that happened in my life when I was 18 years old.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a band, played guitar, and we had a new bass player, and everyone got along well with the bass player.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: We knew that this bass player had a bit of a dark and troubled past, but you know, that didn't show up in practice, and everyone got along well, and everything was fine for a couple of months.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: But one night this uh musician got high on Valium and Vodka in the back of my car and fell asleep at night when I was driving home.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they woke up in a delirious, aggressive, confused, dreamlike state and pulled a knife out on me and put it to my neck when I was driving.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this you know was a person that had been to jail for violent acts.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this was not someone who, you know, this this was not completely out of character, you could say, but they were making no sense and they were slurring and threatening to stab me, and um I couldn't reason with them at all.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like there was no way of negotiating.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I would offer a solution, and that solution would be used as fuel to increase the aggression.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'd offer a different solution, and that would also be used as fuel to increase the aggression.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I realized in the moment that I couldn't reason with a person, and the only way out would be to physically get out somehow.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I emergency broke my car, slipped my head out of the seatbelt, jumped out of the car.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed to happen in a flash, but I got out of the car and he was so out of his mind he couldn't even get out of the car.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, this is this is not someone you want to have a knife to your neck, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because they, you know, they just couldn't even get out of the car.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was off with this person, and the police were called, and you know, there could have been serious charges and things like that.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but after it, I I I felt like I was fine, I felt like everything was okay.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to university, I went to study filmmaking at university, and someone said a story about a nugging that involved a knife.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like as if that trauma that happened that night suddenly teleported to this to the place that I was and was now with me, now in this city that I was in.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so very quickly I started to develop hyper-vigilance, you know, being on edge, walking around at night became very difficult.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who looked threatening, I would have to cross the road and avoid.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I went from being very social, gregarious, you know, a good connector, bringing other people together, um, a leadership position in my filmmaking class, uh, got a new girlfriend when I was in university.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everything felt like it was gone on an upward spiral.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then when anxiety kicked in, suddenly this new stress is on the relationship.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to do things at night anymore because I'm feeling too panicked and scared.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Social anxiety starts to creep in, you know, and anxiety sometimes snowballs, you know, like I didn't want to go to sleep sometimes until the sun came up.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I would go to bed at 5 or 6 a.m.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then that wrecks my sleep cycle, which makes me unhealthy and doesn't do anything for my mood.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then I show up to class with that mood.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so going from this amazing upward spiral to now going on this downward spiral, um that that event, even though it was very difficult and traumatic, that event I believe is also like an amazing event because it forced me on this journey to learn about trauma and anxiety in my mind.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started reading everything because I really wanted to fix myself.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that and that was uh that was really the start the start of my um love of reading.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I said I was reading to make myself better, to heal myself, um, to overcome a problem.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the best kind of reading when you have a specific purpose for for reading something.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well thanks for sharing that.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's amazing that you were able to kind of use that adversity or difficult situation and in a very stoic way, obviously turn it into a challenge and you know, a grounds for for self-improvement and you know a way to handle future difficult situations too.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's good that you're able to share it so openly too, to help others who may experience similar things.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Alan.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so one of the ideas that I that I took on board is this sort of anti-victim mentality.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you could say that I was a victim in that situation, and that would be accurate, you know, like actually accurate.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you could say that it's a distortion to put complete blame on any one thing, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like life is messy, chaotic, there's various reasons why any one thing happens, and you know, life is a learning process.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I could say, oh, I was a victim in that situation, and not many people would say, Oh no, you weren't.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't have to call myself a victim, identify as a victim.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can kind of refuse that label if I want to.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that to be very liberating and helpful.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And almost like, you know, don't call me a victim, you know.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like I you you can say that in that context I was, but I'm not a victim, period.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a victim right now, you know.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm someone that can turn uh adversity into an advantage.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to really take pride in that way of being.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the Stoics again would say, well, does it work?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like be pragmatic.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Does the anti-victim mentality work for you?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make you happier, more resilient, more of a problem solver?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And for me at least, it did.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: It did do those things.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And presumably that mentality came through in your creation of the course that we're going to talk about here.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's Stoic Anxiety Mastery.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just share a little bit about what the course is and and what's included in it?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the title Stoic Anxiety Mastery, it might sound like a you know a very epic uh kind of title, you know, Stoic Anxiety Mastery, but it's actually a title that was carefully chosen.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was important for me to have the word mastery in it.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've always been drawn to the path of mastery.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's important for us as human beings to have something that we strive toward, you know, that we consider to be a path of mastery.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Many people, if you ask them, you know, like, what is your path to mastery?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: What are you, you know, what is a lifelong aim or a vision or something you're trying to learn?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes people say, like, I don't know, nothing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so this anti-victim mentality pushed me to, instead of seeing anxiety as a burden, as this terrible affliction, to actually going, hang on a second, what if overcoming anxiety, not just overcoming it, but kind of flourishing on the other side of it, what if this path became a path of mastery?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what if overcoming my anxiety became sort of like a video game where I used my body and my mind to kind of hack the system and correct the things that have gone wrong?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and kind of you know, see my inner demons and struggles as like you know bosses in video games.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so yeah, I as much as possible, I always try to take on that frame of seeing difficulties as an opportunity.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, always trying to find the silver linings or the reframe that can help me.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, if you're struggling with anxiety, I do believe that you can have an amazing experience overcoming it, you know, really meaningful experience.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you listen to addicts who have overcome their addiction, many of them will say that they are really glad that they were addicted to that thing because they found the path of recovery.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and the path of recovery has taught them so many things and has brought them so many amazing people and insights.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that is actually something that I have heard from people in things like Alcoholics Anonymous and things like that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: The course itself, Stoic Anxiety Mastery, has a heavy stoicism frame.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And a CBT framing as well, you know, because CBT has a lot of wisdom on specifically treating anxiety.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also quite holistic as well.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I believe that the Stoics were open to innovating, and the ancients did innovate as well.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you look at the founder of Stoicism, uh Zeno, his version of Stoicism was different from Epictetus's version of Stoicism.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are certain emphasises and uh things that are smaller and changes are made.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Stoicism as a philosophy of life, yes, it does have this kind of bedrock, bedrock source of knowledge and wisdom, but it is also open to interpretation and innovation.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And why wouldn't we use modern science and understanding and neurobiology and synthesize it with stoicism to help us live a better life?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've tried to synthesize things like trauma healing and exposure therapy and CBT with ancient stoicism.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's essentially my best attempt at creating a holistic approach to overcoming anxiety, because I think that is the best approach.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think when we have anxiety, the best way to deal with it is to try lots of different things and to attack it from all different angles.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh we're we're going to maximize our chances of eradicating anxiety.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, as you know, I I have taken the course myself and I found it incredibly useful.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've said in other places, it's something I've been continually returning to uh pretty much every day since I started taking it or since I first took it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And a big part of that obviously is the fact that there's a great practical focus to the course.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some courses obviously you'll find it'll be mostly theory and some exercises, but you know, after the initial theory section of the course, it's basically all practical stuff that you can do yourself and you know, but then the answers are specific to you, you suppose, or the results are specific to you, because you're doing your own journaling and your own meditations and contemplations.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um how how important did you find that focusing on the practical side of things was?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and do you think that was something that was missing from a lot of modern stoicism content?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so on the on the practical side of things, it's it's it's vital.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm one of my biggest passions aside from stoicism is martial arts.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in fact, today I competed uh in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in a in a tournament.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's again really good practice to work with feelings of nervousness and anxiety, and um, you know, I and it's also like a testament to this work, you know, once upon a time being terrified of confrontation and now volunteering myself to have confrontation with other people in uh in a sport setting.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um by practicing Presidian Jiu Jitsu, it's a it's a very much like a knowledge-based martial art where if you have knowledge, you have an advantage.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's similar to chess, except you can keep learning new pieces with more knowledge.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're not you're not limited to the pieces on the chessboard.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can keep adding more and more pieces through knowledge.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I realized is that I could learn a technique in a class one day, and I could understand it and it would make sense, and I could tell you how it worked, you know, and I could drill it with someone.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe later on that day or a week later, I would try and do it against a resisting opponent, and I would just fail.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't remember it in the moment, my mind would go blank, I didn't know the right steps.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, hang on a second.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is this what we're doing when we reach Stoicism?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are we or any kind of self-improvement work?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are we reading uh these books or listening to these podcasts uh in the same way that I would be learning a new Brazilian traducer technique?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then when it matters most, when it counts, not being able to recall it and remember it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's that that was like a light bulb moment, you know.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of us learn with this illusion of mastery.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I've read Seneca's letters, I've read the meditations, like am I a stoic now?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, it depends.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a stoic when you're facing catastrophe?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a stoic when you have grief or loss?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a stoic when you have anxiety?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are the things that help us know like how far we've come on the journey.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And many of us just don't practice in those moments.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: We can revert back to whatever we would have been doing beforehand.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, the practice is is essentially like the martial art version of the training.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you learn the move, you understand the move, and then you've got to spa, you've got to practice with that move under different degrees of stress.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually, the aim is to be able to perform that move perfectly under maximum resistance from an opponent who knows what you're trying to do and you can still do it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's mastery of a move.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always thought, you know, why don't we do that with stoic techniques?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's what uh what I'm aiming for with the practice.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that without my martial arts background and my love of learning, I wouldn't have had that epiphany and I wouldn't have placed as much emphasis on it as maybe other stoicism writers do.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's a really great example again of sort of the versatility and how it's not just one discipline, it's uh essentially a framework that can be applied to to other areas and you can draw inspiration from other areas to to apply it in different ways too.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought we touched on this briefly before too, but um what are the advantages of being taught this material by someone like yourself with first hand experience of anxiety and how could it complement more common treatments that maybe would be delivered by say a professional who who didn't have that first hand experience or couldn't really empathize with or truly sympathize with what you're what you're going through?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so you know there it there is a case to be made, uh like a kind of um an ad hoin case, you know, where like ad-hominum essentially means that you you criticize a person's argument based on the personal characteristics of a person.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I do want to say that it is totally possible that someone who's never experienced a shred of anxiety in their entire life could reasonably recommend an anxiety intervention that works.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I don't want I don't I don't believe that to be the best personal trainer you have to have the best body, to be the best hairdresser, you have to have the best hair, and to be the best uh anti-anxiety coach, you need to have had crippling anxiety.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think you know good arguments and good protocols are good uh whether or not the person giving them has had anxiety or not.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: With that said, as a teacher, it's a gift uh when I'm working with people, and that means like working with them uh either live or in a podcast or writing or in a course video.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that my message connects more.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it helps me maximize my teaching potential and helps me essentially just express uh the lessons and help people understand the techniques in a much deeper way, because I've used them when I needed them and I've felt many different types of anxiety in many different situations.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're looking for you know someone who can just speak in a way that just lands for you, like if what I'm saying for you now, if you're listening to this, if it just kind of resonates, if it connects, it's connecting because I've experienced it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's connecting because of what I've gone through in life.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there's an art to teaching, and I think that having gone through the material myself and how and because I've experienced trauma and anxiety, I think that will help my students really take on the lessons in a much deeper way, and and you know, ideally they stick and they they practice them with more discipline.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as a teacher and a coach, it really helps that I that I've been through it.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that was one of the things that sort of stood out for me in taking the course was that you could really talk about these things with uh great authenticity and experience.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as you said at the start, it maybe justifies not seeking out one single solution for a problem, you know, simply based on who's delivering it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you can get a range of of good advice from different sources.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, totally.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Always being you know open to learning and looking at different sources.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um one thing I can say about stoic anxiety mastery is that I have recommended this course to friends and family members who I know are struggling with different types of anxiety, like social anxiety or maybe some you know, like insomnia like anxiety that wakes them up in the night.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel so good about it, you know, and that's a super nice, you know.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I haven't just created a random course on anxiety and just sort of, you know, I can imagine certain individuals they might go like, oh I I should create a course on anxiety, I'm just gonna like add what I think should be there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't really believe that it works.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: I genuinely uh you know believe and have seen evidence that if someone actually does the work that I recommend and it's all systematized and step by step, I just can't see how that wouldn't have a significant effect on their levels of anxiety and the way that they relate to themselves.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so just having that confidence really helps me as well.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I it's it's it's kind of easy to be authentic and to talk from the heart when you know that you know the things that you're giving are actually useful, you know, there's no need to be inauthentic then.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I've been very happy to recommend it myself as well, just based on what have I what I've experienced from it and from using it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I said previously somewhere else that you know if I was creating a course on anxiety myself, it it would be this one.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the reason why I feel so comfortable recommending it to other people.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly people who I have recommended it to have have seemingly got a lot out of it too.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always good to hear.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So is there one specific stoic idea that has been particularly eye-opening and say reframed your relationship with anxiety?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something that has sort of kickstarted everything else?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there are many different ideas that are you know fantastic and ill you know eye-opening, illuminating.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the one that you know was I I guess the most profound and the most deep, and one that I keep coming back to and and finding different variations of is the idea of pre-meditation of adversity.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this idea that when we actually turn towards our anxiety, we actually look at it and face it.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, it can actually make the anxiety diminish.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, what if you've never heard that before, at first it can just be like, how does that work?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: How can making myself more anxious by thinking about the things that I'm anxious about make me feel better in the long term?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't make sense, and I think that's why it's amazing that we have things like CBT and science and research, because it shows that actually you know it does work.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: The the name for it in in psychological interventions is cognitive flooding, where you psychologically flood your mind with the thing that you're afraid of.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And even though your anxiety might go up a little bit in the exercise, in the contemplation, and again, this is not worrying.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is important to note that this is not worrying.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is a conscious voluntary contemplation that you do.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It does diminish levels of anxiety.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember experimenting with this when my anxiety was was bad.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when your anxiety is is potent and strong, you don't you you just want to avoid it, you don't want to think about it, you want to push it away constantly, you want to get rid of the feeling.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself doing these daily meditations where I would sit and I would bring to mind voluntarily the things that would that would cause me stress and anxiety, and I would investigate them and I'd sit with them and I'd explore them and I'd increase the intensity and I'd make it worse in my mind.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And little by little I could sort of calm myself down and I could see like, oh, actually, it's not as bad as these unconscious fantasies were telling me it was.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I actually sit with this, like, oh, that's actually not too bad.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: I could cope with that, I could cope with that, and and you're kind of developing this kind of emotional resilience or mastery over the situation that causes you anxiety when you do that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was a really big one.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you could do it physically, you know, you can physically lean in towards the things that cause you fear.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I have various kinds of challenges that gradually intense with sorry, I have various kinds of challenges that gradually increase with intensity, but I I'm also a really strong proponent in cognitive flooding, like mentally facing your fears.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's some really good uh journal templates in the in the course for that, and uh I think a good guided meditation as well on that topic.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: For for that one, and I suppose for any any of the practices that you come across in stoicism, how how important is repetition?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that people can start these things and maybe feel making a little bit of difference at the beginning and stop doing it, and obviously that wears off a little and you don't you don't maybe make as much progress as as you expected to make, but you know if you if you keep at it, obviously it's it's gonna get easier and and the effects are gonna compound, I suppose, over over time.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: So your question about repetition, another approach that I have when it comes to learning stoicism is instead of seeing it as just this body of knowledge, to instead see it as a set of skills.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: So in martial arts, you have knowledge, but the aim is not to just get knowledge, right?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just to read a book on martial arts and to sit around talking about it.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: The aim is to turn the knowledge into skill, like actual physical embodied skill.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's huge for me when it comes to stoicism.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, can anyone learn anything without repetition?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, can you learn a language?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Can you learn how to play the piano?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You learn how to drive.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have to practice, you have to practice daily.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there was uh there was an example a while back.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I made a few meditations with some stoic techniques, and I had a friend who tried them out because all of the stuff in stoic anxiety mastery has been tested on people over a long period of time, you know, different aspects of it I've both used myself but also given to other people to test and to improve on.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I gave some guided meditations to someone who was struggling, and they said, Wow, when I was doing these, I felt so much better.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do like two months later when the anxiety comes back?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and I said, like, so how many times did you do these meditations?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: And how often are you bringing to mind the principles that I discussed in those meditations in daily life?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, Oh, I haven't.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, I'm sorry, but like life just doesn't work like that.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do one driving lesson and then two months later complain when you crash your car.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to actually do the practice, it has to become automatic.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: You you know, it has to become part of who you are.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, um, seeing it as a as a skill and my guided meditations, yes, initially I want people to use them as guided meditations, but the end goal with them is they take the ideas and the principles into life.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the thoughts, the maxims, the principles just show up when they need them.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a great explanation.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: So for people who are considering getting started with this, with these practices, maybe haven't tried them before, maybe skeptical of how much progress they can make in mastering their their anxiety, what would you say are the the earliest signs of progress in mastering your anxiety?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: So so the earliest signs of progress when it comes to mastering your anxiety, you know, we could say that, oh well, the earliest sign of progress is that you just feel less anxious on a daily basis, which you know you couldn't really argue with that.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's definitely a sign of progress.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, it actually goes deeper.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I teach, and it's fundamental in stoic anxiety mastery, is investigating our relationship to anxiety itself.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of us we carry around this idea that anxiety is toxic, is this terrible part of ourselves that we want to essentially like cut out, remove, get rid of.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we hate this anxiety, we feel ashamed of it, we just wish it didn't exist.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when we do that, it creates this like inner war, and we're always warring with ourselves.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So going through life, feeling anxiety, hating the anxiety, trying to stop it, it doesn't work, it comes back stronger.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're arguing with ourselves, we feel this conflict, this tension constantly.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you feel this constant tension and you don't feel at ease with the anxiety as a starting place, you're just you're not gonna be able to make progress.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: The analogy I use is is a guard dog, right?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that you are alive right now listening to this is massively helped by the fact that you've had anxiety.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have a three-year-old son.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's stopping my three-year-old son from running down the stairs, you know, or going near fire?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's trepidation, it's anxiety.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's stopping my three-year-old son from just jumping into the deep end of a pool?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's anxiety.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's oh, I don't know.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I he doesn't really know what's going to happen, but he has, you know, a bit of oh, what could happen, you know, how deep is it?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this anxiety keeps him alive, keeps us alive.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing emotion when it's working.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Just like having a really good guard dog makes our house a lot safer.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: But somewhere along the lines, you know, whether that's through trauma or negative experience or things that happened within our nervous system, or just lessons or habits, you know, anxiety can also just be a simple habit that we picked up that can be easily changed, like a cognitive habit, a way that we're thinking about things.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever the case, we've learned this way of being, this way of relating to our anxiety as this terrible thing.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the first step of progress is actually starting to appreciate our anxiety and see it that like it is actually an amazing thing.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it might not be amazing for us right now, but when a in the analogy, when a guard dog is barking too much at anything that passes by, yeah, it's annoying.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a part of us wants to tell the guard dog to go sleep in the garden.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not actually going to solve the problem.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: What's going to solve the problem is retraining, uh, you know, showing compassion and love to the guy, showing better ways of being, interrupting the patterns.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's massive progress when you can start to see your anxiety as this amazing part of you, this part of you that needs to be listened to and loved.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, it does need retraining as well.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I never really want to see people talk about their anxieties as if it's just like a terrible thing.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like your anxiety is the reason why you're alive.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a it's a super sophisticated part of being a human being.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we need to appreciate it, have gratitude for it, and you know, use that as the starting point before we start trying to uh retrain it.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a certain acceptance needed there, really, isn't there?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that's been a bit eye-opening for me.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an acceptance where you're passively saying that I have anxiety and then I feel bad about it, but it's more of a an acceptance that it's doing something for you and which is a better grounding for you know moving forward and actually learning to master it, I suppose, as as we've been talking about.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's really the final question I had.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: John, um the only other thing I wanted to say was for anybody thinking of checking out Stoic Anxiety Mastery, I would really encourage you to do so if you're struggling with anxiety, anxious feelings, or even if you're not really, it's it does help you understand better um what can cause anxiety and and how to really process it and and even stave it off as votes.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there anything else you would like to say, John, about about the course or anything else?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate the questions, Alan.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I you know I know that you've spent a lot of time working through the course and actually using it as well, which has been you know amazing to see and the feedback that you you're given is is awesome.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And also Stoic Anxiety Mastery is is uh is not a course that is over.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are new modules being added.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a living document that I'm always updating.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you join, you're gonna periodically receive new modules and updates to the course um as you get lifetime membership from it.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for the awesome questions and you know going through the course and helping me refine it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, really appreciate it, Alan, and hope we can do this again soon.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, John.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your time.