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Seneca’s Advice On Nervous Ticks, Embarrassment, and Cringe (Episode 149)
764 Plays2 months ago
Blushing, sweating, stumbling over words - we've all been there. But what if these physical reactions are holding you back from greatness?
In this episode, Caleb and Michael unpack Seneca's advice on handling embarrassment like a Stoic.
(00:46) Embarrassing Introduction
(04:50) Seneca On Blushing
(08:08) Feelings vs Judgments
(10:02) You Are Not A Horse
(13:05) Embarrassment For Learning
(14:52) Caring About What Others Think
(19:24) Natural Bugs
(22:47) Seneca On Nature
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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Seneca's Thoughts on Embarrassment
00:00:07
Speaker
And today we're gonna do a quick conversation on embarrassment. So Seneca has, in his 11th moral letter, he has a few lines on, you know, how to think about messing up, doing something embarrassing. And we want to talk to this letter, see what takeaways we can and glean from it. Yeah, let's jump in.
Public Speaking Anxiety in Roman Times
00:00:46
Speaker
Cool. So the context of this letter is that you know Seneca is talking about
00:00:54
Speaker
blushing while giving a big speech or messing up, stumbling over your words. whatever it is, very common and ah so I think especially worrisome for people like Seneca. you know Seneca was a famous orator speaker and any Roman man who had political ambitions was in Seneca's class would have wanted to be an excellent speaker and avoid
00:01:25
Speaker
going completely red while giving well they're giving a speech um or having their voice crack or anything terrible like that, since people would certainly make fun of them and hold that sort of thing against them. At least that was the perception.
Historical Figures and Physical Reactions
00:01:42
Speaker
And it's probably probably true, I think, in some cases. you know It's just that some Roman figures are able to get ahead by being excellent orators. Others are certainly held back by ah messing up making mistakes and there's that immediate fear of you know doing something doing something embarrassing. We do this now. Seneca is a big deal. right and i think about i mean i think I think about when somebody like Mark Zuckerberg gives a presentation and he's maybe awkward or something like this and then there's all these jokes on the internet about you know how awkward he is or weird he is at public speaking or something.
00:02:18
Speaker
And I always cringe at that because I think, yeah, this is really judgmental. Like I'd hate to be in this person's spot. So is this kind of thing, right? It's like he he's he's a big deal. He gives these big important speeches and he's he's worried about messing up or looking stupid. That's that's what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Worry about messing up or going stupid or it something goofy. So he gives so a few examples, you know, he talks about Sulla famous Roman general.
00:02:48
Speaker
dictator. Famously, he has like some face disfigurement.
Natural Reactions vs. Wisdom
00:02:55
Speaker
And then when he was angry, his face would get noticeably red. ah And he gives some other example, Pompey the Great also had the habit of showing this kind of ah blush in the face of other people. And I think naturally just interpret it as a kind of nervousness, unease, you know, Pompey the great awesome general, but when he's put in the situation of speaking to senators, that's going to be a place where maybe you'll feel you're more likely to more likely to be to be nervous. And I think you can ah take this take this a little broader, you know, as you did than just thinking about the physical phenomenon of blushing, but to... messing up one speech, making mistakes, saying ah too many times, whatever it is.
00:03:45
Speaker
But even the smaller example, like i one thing I do, I shake when I get excited about things, which is great when you're competing in sports because all that energy you know it has somewhere to go. But I feel like when I'm giving you a talk or like about to present, I'm really nervous. ah My body just wants to move. and Another thing I'll do when I'm nervous is I'll sweat. I don't know if anybody else has experienced that. Again, fine for sports. you know Not so great if you're giving a talk in a hot room.
00:04:11
Speaker
more you know ah So the it's this kind of stuff too. So that yeah, there's bigger things, but also just the stuff that you're like, even if you've prepared yourself, even if you feel confident going in those kind of like physical reactions you have to these high stress situations that can be embarrassing like that. Yeah, or going going blank. That's a classic one. It certainly had cases where you have prepared but for some reason, like your mind just does not ah cooperate and everything ah goes empty for some strange reason, you can have that sort of thing.
Acceptance Reduces Embarrassment
00:04:45
Speaker
what does senate what does seneca have just What does Seneca have to say about this? So talking about blushing, one thing he says is wisdom can never remove this habit, for if she could rub out all our faults, she would be mistress of the universe. Whatever is assigned to us by the terms of our birth,
00:05:03
Speaker
and the blend in our constitutions will stick with us no matter how hard or how long the soul may have tried to master itself and we cannot forbid these feelings any more than we can summon them. So I think that's the key passage and I like this because I have some useful takeaways both both were the specific incident of dealing with embarrassing habits, mistakes, ticks, I think especially is is that focus on a lot of these things are just out of our control. They're physical happenings that you know depending on who you are, you're going to get a different bundle of these that you'll experience you know in different different situations.
00:05:59
Speaker
And what Seneca says is that, look, you're just sort of, to some extent, you are stuck with these things. They're out of your control. And what stoic mastery involves isn't you know completely eliminating this kind of thing, but you know rather coming to terms with you know whatever bundle you've been given.
Embracing Reactions to Reduce Anxiety
00:06:23
Speaker
Uh, I think that bundle is a nice thing. It's like, you know, nobody's perfect. You're not going to be born with yeah everybody's going to have problems. You've got your problems except them. And, and, and we don't want to extend that. We don't want to say, well, I'm just an angry person. That's just my problem. That might be pushing it a bit too far, but you know, to be the kind of person that, uh,
00:06:43
Speaker
blanks out in high stress situations or become the kind of person that blushes when they get nervous. That's just the way your body works basically and you've got to learn ah you got learn to accept it, not control it because it's not in your control, which I think is true. Another thing I would add to that is this idea of um What is in your control often is not making it worse, which I think comes with accepting it. I think of ah Victor Frankel has this passage in the second part of Man's Search for Meaning. I think about this all the time. We talked about how he would treat his patients who would get you know very sweaty when they would get nervous. and he says he He teaches them to actually like desire the outcome, which is to say, you know get up there and and think to yourself, I'm going to be the sweatiest person. I'm going to sweat so much.
00:07:28
Speaker
ah you Nobody's going to sweat more than me on stage. and This kind of like radical acceptance of who you are and this like leaning into it, it ironically, you know it has this ah loop of makes you less nervous about it and then it um makes you less sweaty. so it it actually It actually eliminates the thing whereas the kind of resistance creates this feedback loop. you know You're blushing, I don't want to blush. You get more embarrassed while you're blushing and it scales up.
00:07:55
Speaker
So if you can be like Seneca and just be like, hey, I'm just the kind of person who blushes a bit. That's just who I am. Not only are you going to feel better about the fact you're blushing, you're also just going to blush
Differentiating Natural Reactions from Mistakes
00:08:04
Speaker
less, right? You're not going to feed into it. Yeah, yeah. There's a useful distinction here between, you know, physical feelings and then how you the judgments you make about those feelings and how those transform into emotions. And so many of the physical feelings we experience are the kind of thing you can't control, just sensations coming and going and such, but ah you know where you can intervene ah and shape yourself is at the level of
00:08:39
Speaker
ah your judgments. So i did you know I suppose I introduced this by talking about Seneca on embarrassment, and you could say there there are different reasons one might be embarrassed. One might be because you have this tic that's out of your control. And here, I think you know the strategy is focusing on a kind of acceptance.
00:09:00
Speaker
maybe over time a lot of these things, especially if you're and ah working on a newer um and be in a newer area, learning a new skill, these sorts of things can be lessened,
00:09:13
Speaker
but you know they're not this often not the sorts of things one can ah completely eliminate. So that's one kind of reason why I'd be embarrassed, but another reason why I might be embarrassed is because you made a genuine mistake. and and And for that, in that case, if it was if that embarrassment is the result of your of a decision you made, you know that's that's I guess the question there is, you know is is that a legitimate judgment that you know that you made a mistake? And if so, is that negative judgment of finding that thing embarrassing, playing a useful role in
00:09:47
Speaker
ah as the Stoics would say, becoming becoming more ah virtuous. That's where the, I think, ah maybe a different kind of embarrassment that that Seneca is talking about here, and and as such, how one should think about it is different.
Stoic Identity and Physical Traits
00:10:02
Speaker
yeah so don't ah You know, the the kind of embarrassment you feel from blushing because you're the kind of person who has the disposition to blush is very different than the kind of embarrassment you feel or should feel if you were just like just a bad friend or let somebody down or did something careless that put somebody in danger. These are different kinds of things. I think about, I'm going to paraphrase this one, but Epictetus has this wonderful quote.
00:10:29
Speaker
where he talks about somebody owning a horse, and the person's like, oh, I'm so great, my horse is so big, and I'm so great, my horse is so beautiful. And the guy's like, man, these these are you're talking about your horse. You're not talking about you. like you know Show me something that makes you big and beautiful and great, and then I'll compliment you, but you're just describing your horse. You just got a nice horse, but that has nothing to do with you.
00:10:56
Speaker
And so I almost think about that in terms of our body, right? Like, oh, I have this body that blushes, or I have this body that ah sweats, or I have this body that stammers. And it's like the same way you shouldn't be proud of your big, beautiful horse. um You shouldn't be embarrassed by those aspects of your body, not the aspects of your body you were born with, right? It's like, man, that's just your body. That's not, tell me something bad about yourself. Tell me something about bad about who you are. And if the person's like, oh, well, I'm, you know,
00:11:26
Speaker
i mean i I break promises and I lie to my friends and I steal. I say, well, okay, then you should be embarrassed. you know Then you should feel guilty because now you're telling me something about yourself. But if you're saying your body blushes, you're not telling me anything about yourself. Yeah, yeah that's great that's a great point. and I think it's nice nice to bring it to that idea of stoic identity, thinking about what you are. You know you are not
00:11:53
Speaker
your body. you know you know you don't That's not something you have direct control over. Yeah, but often often we often we, I guess we decide whether or not we should be embarrassed based on what other people think and other people will make fun of us and judge us for her things that are both inside and outside of our control and things that are both actually good and actually bad. You know you will be judged If you hang out with teenagers, you that teenagers will be judged for sticking up for the weak kid, you know? And a lesser person will be embarrassed when they go, oh, ooh I just made a... I just stood out from the crowd because ah because I said, hey, maybe we shouldn't say that, you know? And so, I mean, I'm almost making this matrix of like things in your control, not in your control, things that are good and things that are bad, and it's really like... ah Or things that are... um
00:12:46
Speaker
I guess judged. And it's like if it's something that's not in your control, you shouldn't be proud of it if it's good, and you shouldn't be embarrassed by it if it's bad. And that's that and that's that distinction with the body and the distinction with the, you know, the nice horse or the nice house or car or whatever the contemporary example is.
Growth through Learning and Embarrassment
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think um Seneca's, the I think this advice is ah especially useful for when you're beginning a new skill, new job, what have you. Well, maybe jobs a little bit different, but I think especially with skill, you know, trying to learn a new language, exercise more or what have you. to the Having these expectations of discomfort, embarrassment, yeah obvious lack of skill, having that built into your experience, maybe even actively going out and seeking those situations where you flounder a little bit can be something that I think is is really useful.
00:13:53
Speaker
And when I see people who learn things quickly, they're you know they're not afraid to ask dumb questions, be humbled by people who are experts.
00:14:08
Speaker
you know people who learn language often just keep on saying something, even if they're mispronouncing, they're always putting themselves out there, saying something incorrect, getting corrected and so on. And I think a lot of people, ah especially myself too, is but you might be a little bit more perfectionist. You want to only say something if you're sure that it's correct, and but then you're not getting as much practice. right I think that's often often ah some amount of comfort with embarrassment is is really useful for learning just because you are able to get so much more practice. Go go you know go directly to that to that skill you're trying to learn.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, and so, I mean, that that connects to Seneca's line, too, right, about how and everybody's got their bundle of imperfections. I think that was your quote, but we're we're paraphrasing his thing there about, you know, nature is never going to make you perfect. Nature doesn't make anybody perfect, right? Everybody's born kind of messed up in their own ways um across the spectrum of things. And if you if you expect to be perfect, that is kind of an unrealistic expectation.
00:15:19
Speaker
Do you expect to not only master the things in your control and be a great orator, be a great presenter, um be outgoing, be well-liked, but then also not have any sort of physical responses or techs or nervous ah responses? I mean, that's just it's just... It's unrealistic. It's not living in accordance with nature or in accordance with the way things are. And then, as you said, it's also counterproductive right because You almost want to, if you're blushing, you're probably doing something important, you're probably doing something challenging, and you almost want to seek out those things. I want to try to blush as much as possible, if it's for the right reasons, right? not Not because you're doing terrible, awful things, but if you're blushing because you're pushing yourself, you're doing something that makes you nervous, you almost want to get in the mindset of doing that as much as possible.
Embarrassment as an Evolutionary Trait
00:16:09
Speaker
And I almost wonder evolutionarily, because the stoics are stoics are open to these kind of evolutionary responses when when we're describing our physical responses to things. you know They think about us as rational animals. um So what's important is that we have this control over this rational domain, but we're still like embodied, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
And I wonder if if evolutionarily embarrassment is this way of like mitigating downside, which is if you're not embarrassed, you're not standing out from the crowd. And there's a benefit to that if you're going to like be exiled or find yourself unable, like not a part of a community. So you can't, you don't have a job, you don't have friends. Your life is essentially ruined. There's a benefit to having some degree of shame or just being sensitive to people. And like, yeah, not, not when you say, when people say, I don't care what people think, I think people don't understand how extreme it would be to literally be that way. You'd, you'd, the closest you get is the idea isnt that that's crazy. Uh, it's, it's pretty extreme.
00:17:12
Speaker
And so you, but, but I think you need to almost like push yourself through this defense mechanism your body is having to get exposure to the upside is basically what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it can be useful in service. I think it it definitely can be useful to think about your body's reaction as a kind of bug or something that was, uh, you know, programmed.
00:17:36
Speaker
into early humans because it was useful in that situation, but now it should be you know cast aside. um And sometimes people talk about this and in the case of romantic relationships. you Everyone has initially like immense fear over rejection of any kind of romantic advance. And you know maybe if early humans, they were in smaller groups and there was literally only 20 you know, 20 women who you could pair up with in that group. And if you got rejected by one, well, you know, so much the worst for you and also and there are other competitors and we want to be very careful about about that sort of thing. Whereas, you know, you feel that same fear when approaching, you know, someone you see on the subway who you think is attractive, when if they reject you, they're probably
00:18:31
Speaker
yeah no negative consequences apart from you know some initial discomfort. and you know that that kind of maybe i think it It can be useful to think about that kind of fear as a bug and something that just should be clearly ah overcome in that situation. I'm sure there there are others as well.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great example. I never thought of that that before, but yes, you're right. The fear of rejection is like yeah it's proportional to as if it was a really, really big deal. It feels that way all the time, romantic relationships or you know anytime any kind of kind of friendship or rejection. And yeah, you're right. I never thought about
Acceptance of Fears and Quirks
00:19:08
Speaker
that before. It seems tuned to 20 people. and if you if you if you If you approach people in a silly, haphazard manner and four of them reject you, you're not know in a great spot.
00:19:19
Speaker
But that's not the case, as you said, at at the at the bar or the subway or whatever. um Another thing, yeah, and so pushing through it, I totally i totally agree, um recognize it for what it is. And then I think, that but but <unk>t I don't think that's an uncommon statement. I think that other comment that other statement is like,
00:19:41
Speaker
Or the other idea, Seneca's communicating, which I just want to go back to, is that idea of like, yeah, these are bugs pushed through them, but they're also um natural bugs. like don't Don't add this meta judgment of yourself or hate yourself or be like, why do I have this? Why do I fear rejection? Why do I blush in front of people?
00:20:00
Speaker
And just to say, well, yeah this is just the way that I am. This is just my certain my certain set of ticks that I have. And some of them might be in your control. I'm not saying you know don't work on self-improvement. But the ones that aren't, the ones that are very natural are kind of immediate Those are ones that you know you can you can work on eliminating some of those through like exposure therapy or repeated practice. But sometimes we can get pretty far just by accepting it, right? Like I know when I compete in jiu-jitsu, for example, it's not the same thing as embarrassment. We're talking about extreme examples.
00:20:33
Speaker
I always thought like, oh, when am I going to get over these nerves? When am I going to get over these nerves? And it's just like, well, I've just, we're competing enough now. It's like, I just don't get over the nerves. I just learn to deal with the nerves. Right. And that, that is the progress. The progress is not, not feeling anything. The progress is responding to the feeling with, with experience and practice and knowing what you need to do to calm yourself down when your body just reacts that way.
00:20:57
Speaker
And I think that's the second part that that that's really good and gets lost is is don't just push through them, but like, accept yourself, accept for yourself with your little bundle of problems, and then push through it.
Stoicism and Handling Challenges
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. One one perhaps others so for you mean that might be useful in this is Yeah, there's an angle if you speak enough in public, then you'll start feeling less nervous. But there's another stoic angle, which is that if you speak enough, you'll always be terrified, but you'll be more and more confident that you're doing the right thing. And that's what matters and that and you'll be better at speaking. The fact that you are always terrified is sort of becomes irrelevant.
00:21:38
Speaker
um And, you know, that's just, that's just part of it. And you don't actually, you don't, maybe, you know, you don't even need to go seeking for a cure for that. And so, so long as you're, you know, you're, you're doing, doing the right things. Yeah. I agree. Maybe that's a useful framing for some, for some, I think I like that framing. Oh, I like it too. That idea of.
00:22:06
Speaker
your job isn't to feel as pleasant as possible all the time. like ah Like stoicism offers this promise of happiness and it does and it offers this promise of not experiencing a lot of the negative emotions that come with from passions or these like incredibly false judgments, but it doesn't promise us a life without pain.
Conclusion on Natural Reactions and Training
00:22:28
Speaker
It doesn't promise us a life without difficult things. And so yeah, like if public speaking is just going to be a hard thing for you, then maybe the the the way isn't to say like, how do I make it not a hard thing? And but how do I become the kind of person that can do this hard thing because I know it makes me better or I know it's worth it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, we can end with some of the lines from this letter.
00:22:52
Speaker
so Seneca says, that which is implanted and inborn can be toned down with ah can be toned down by training but not overcome. The steadiest speaker, when before the public, often breaks into a perspiration, as if he had wearied or overheated himself, and some tremble in the knees when they rise to speak. I know of some whose teeth chatter, whose tongues falter, whose lips quiver.
00:23:17
Speaker
Training and experience can never shake off this habit. Nature exerts her own power and through such a weakness makes her presence known even to the strongest.
00:23:31
Speaker
Nice. I love that. And and and just, I know we said we were going to end on that, but it's just like, Seneca knows what he's talking about. He's just, uh, he, he's a very important person in Rome. He's not reverse engineering, explaining away his own nervousness. He's, he, he hangs around with a lot of people who do a lot of important things in very public spaces. And so, you know, he knows what he's talking about when he says that nobody really gets over those weaknesses. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:24:01
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks, Michael. Cool. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Stoa conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still search Stoa in the app store or play store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more.
00:24:26
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyer.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.