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Social Anxiety (Episode 125)
948 Plays8 months ago
What advice do the Stoics have for managing social anxiety?
In this conversation, Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay talk about Epictetus on anxiety – and how his advice for dissolving anxiety can be applied to social situations.
(03:29) Epictetus On Anxiety
(13:13) You Will Not Have Anxiety If You Do This
(23:42) Learning From Experience
(26:36) Epictetus On How To Make It Happen
(34:40) Why Is It Weird To Treat Social Skills Like A Craft?
(38:34) Focus On What Is Up To You
(47:14) Summarizing Epictetus On Anxiety
(48:22) Epictetus's Two Handles
(51:35) Learning From Negative Feelings
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Transcript
Introduction and Power Dynamics
00:00:00
Speaker
But Caesar has the power to take my life. Saying, look, this is not writing my name. This is whether or not I get executed in Rome, right? But Caesar has the power to take my life. And Epictetus says, then tell the truth, you wretch. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:00:22
Speaker
And today we're going to be talking about social anxiety, starting with some ideas, quotes from Epictetus.
00:00:33
Speaker
Yeah, the reason for this episode, well, I just think it's such a common fear.
Social Anxiety: Commonality and Impact
00:00:40
Speaker
I didn't actually look this up beforehand, but my dad likes to say that there was this study where they did the greatest fear of human beings, and I think number one was dismemberment, and number two was public speaking.
00:00:54
Speaker
like it's like so anxiety is right up there it's uh with things that you know affect people's lives affect the quality of your life and your ability to kind of do things you want to do or be the person you want to be everyone has that experience of being awkward at a party or maybe you want to talk to you know a guy or a girl maybe ask them out and you can't do this or you want to be more confident at at work and just the kind of
00:01:19
Speaker
This kind of sabotage that comes into your own mind around social anxiety, you know, that kind of fear. And the other thing that I think is really interesting about, about it is it's one of those things that you feel like you should be able to work your
Stoicism and Social Anxiety: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Relevance
00:01:34
Speaker
way out of. Like you, once you're an adult, you should have lived enough life to be like,
00:01:38
Speaker
Well, nothing bad is going to happen to me if I flub my public speaking a bit here. Nothing's going to be bad to me if somebody turns me down if I ask them out. But we can't seem to, at least myself, I have trouble sometimes having the confidence regardless. So I wanted to turn to see what stoicism had to say about it. And in this case, we're going to go to a specific passage from Epictetus, which is called about anxiety. It's about social anxiety.
00:02:07
Speaker
And it's a fun one because it's got some particular examples. And it's also about people that are about to leave Epictetus' school and go to Rome. And they're talking about the anxiety that comes with having a political life and talking to Caesar and things like this.
00:02:22
Speaker
I mean, not Julius Caesar, but whoever's the ruling Rome at that point. So it's this similar kind of context of people being like, well, I'm worried if my boss is going to, you know, if they're going to think I'm being awkward or if something's going to come back to bite me when I enter these spaces. And it's all very relatable. But then, you know, 2000 years old kind of grounded in that wisdom of the Stoic tradition. So.
00:02:46
Speaker
structure for today's episode. We're going to talk about Epictetus's passages on anxiety, connect those with his stoic
00:02:56
Speaker
really his stoic system, something we've talked about before, but his, is this the discipline of desire, primarily one of the main areas of stoic progression transition there to some practical advice. So, okay. So what does Epictetus say about why social anxiety happens? And then what can we do about it? And then the last part, we'll, we'll save some time Caleb for you and I to just share our reflections on, you know, do we agree? Do we disagree? What would we, what will we add to Epictetus his picture here? Um, does that sound good to you? Anything you want to add before we jump into
Epictetus on Desire and Anxiety
00:03:25
Speaker
it?
00:03:25
Speaker
Awesome. No, that sounds great. Let's do it. Cool. Um, so I'm just going to kick things off with this. So in Epictetus's discourse, this is book two chapter 13. That's on anxiety. And I'm just going to kick things off with a passage that Epictetus or example that Epictetus uses that gives us some lessons about anxiety.
00:03:48
Speaker
And the first lesson here is that social anxiety is, in terms of why it happens and how we can diagnose it, it's the result of desiring something that's outside of our control. That's what Epictetus is going to say. It's actually a problem with our desire. And here's the example he gives. And this is a quote, when I see someone in a state of anxiety, I say, what is it that he wants? For unless he wanted something that was not within his power, how could he still be anxious?
00:04:18
Speaker
That is, why a liar player feels no anxiety when singing on his own, but becomes anxious when he enters the theater. For he wants not only to sing well, but also to win the approval of his audience. And that is something that lies beyond his control. So, connecting it right back to the dichotomy of control, a very clear distinction.
00:04:40
Speaker
If you want something that's up to you, you can desire it, but you can't feel anxiety. The anxiety is the experience of desiring something, I guess, that is vulnerable, that you might not get and you might not achieve. And so whenever, not just social anxiety, but any kind of anxiety, everything says, whenever I see any kind of anxiety,
00:05:01
Speaker
I know that's because you desire something that's outside of your control. So you're kind of vulnerable in that sense, because you might get what you want, you might not. And that vulnerability leads naturally to a state of anxiety, a state of concern. And so he looks at anxiety as a kind of sickness. And here's another quote from the same chapter.
00:05:19
Speaker
Whenever you see someone who's pale from anxiety then, just as a doctor infers from somebody's complexion that man is suffering in his spleen, you should declare likewise that man is suffering in his desire and aversion. He is not well at all. He is feverish.
00:05:35
Speaker
And so the point there is that this is a anxiety, again, it's an affliction of desire and aversion. It's an affliction about our regulation of what we want and what we think we need to be happy or what we think we need to avoid to be happy. And when we start to put that on things outside of our control, that's when we start to get anxious. And that's anxiety in general. And then social anxiety would be,
00:06:00
Speaker
doing that for in social situations right applying desiring other people to like you desiring that you come off a certain way desiring that other or maybe fearing if other people dislike you right fearing if other people think you come off looking silly or weird or whatever you're concerned about or you know
00:06:20
Speaker
Immature or in professional or whatever your concern happens to be and then Epictetus uses this really great example of Well, what does the stoic in action look like who's not anxious?
Stoic Techniques for Managing Social Anxiety
00:06:31
Speaker
It tells the the the story about Zeno the founder of stoicism and he had a meeting with Antigonus who was the king of Macedon and Antigonus or sorry Zeno wasn't anxious at all. He was just like hey, you know, how's it going? Nice to meet you
00:06:46
Speaker
I assume. He doesn't say that. But the king was anxious in front of Zeno. And the king was anxious because he wanted Zeno to like him. He wanted Zeno to think he was intelligent, impressive. So you had this person who has all of this kind of external powers, the point of the story.
00:07:04
Speaker
But he ends up anxious in the social situation and Zeno doesn't because Zeno doesn't want anything from Antigonus. But the king wants something from Zeno. He wants Zeno to like him. And so even though there is this inequality in power, one person has social anxiety and one person doesn't.
00:07:23
Speaker
So just cutting straight to the chase then, Epictetus frames social anxiety as a lesson about desire and aversion. We've talked about this a lot, Caleb, about desire. There's the discipline of desire and stoicism. That's something Epictetus talks about as the first part of your progression as a stoic is to understand and take control over what you desire.
00:07:47
Speaker
and what you are averse to, what you want to avoid. And what that means is that stoicism is it means desiring the things that are up to you, namely your quality of your character, the quality of the choices you make, and not desiring the things that aren't up to you, externals, wealth, property, reputation. And so when we're diagnosing this problem, we diagnose it squarely in that first area. It's a problem in the discipline of desire.
00:08:12
Speaker
And so I think it kind of cuts through, I think, the noise in this situation. It gets to the core of the matter. You can talk about social anxiety in a lot of different ways. You would say, well, maybe you can almost go pragmatic, like, well, that person can't actually
00:08:33
Speaker
Uh, maybe you're overestimating it or you're underestimating or you're making some sort of factual judgment, but it just kind of, I like it because approach. You just cuts through the noise and goes, look, you've got a problem with your designer diversion. You're putting them onto something that's not up to you. It's of course, it's going to make you feel anxious. Um, what do you think about that?
00:08:51
Speaker
Well, first, that's just, I think, a great example from Zeno, Zeno of Sitio. One thing it gets at is that anxiety, especially social anxiety, doesn't always map onto physical reality. It was powerful, came as a versus who would, in all reality, be a lowly philosopher type.
00:09:19
Speaker
But their hierarchy in terms of experiencing anxiety is reversed from what one would expect. So that's a great story, I think.
00:09:32
Speaker
something to add on the definition of anxiety. So the Stoics, they were great taxonomers and had their definitions of different mental states, both positive and negative. And one way to describe the
00:09:51
Speaker
anxiety from the early stoa would be it's a kind of distress that's a result of fear that a danger is present. So the thought would be someone's anxious because they're afraid of say something in the future or perhaps they might be a hypochondriac. They're afraid that they are sick and that's dangerous. What's a danger to? A danger to their
00:10:21
Speaker
body. And I think, of course, Epictetus is following in this tradition and just pointing out that what's the danger to it's something that's out of your control in the hypochondriacs case
00:10:39
Speaker
the body in the case of social anxiety, your reputation or what others believe about you and so on. So I think it's, it's a, it's, I suppose another connection one can make to the early, earlier definitions of anxiety from the, from the Stux. Yeah. I always think that's something that's interesting about desire and aversion is it's kind of like,
00:11:03
Speaker
They're kind of two pieces of the same coin. That's what I was thinking from that. Like if you desire something, well, there's obviously a danger. There's a risk, the risk not getting the thing you desire, right? Suffering like the opportunity cost or, you know, again, if you're dating and you want somebody to like you, the risk then is, that's not just something good happens or nothing happens. Our minds at least, we frame it as, well, something bad happens. I didn't get to the good thing.
00:11:32
Speaker
and so that's the because i guess the the i that was what i was taking your point to be killed because there's that idea of
00:11:41
Speaker
If you desire a good thing, why do you feel anxious? Why don't you just pursue it? Why don't you just, why isn't that just motivating? And you feel the anxiety because you're afraid of not getting it. You're afraid of missing your chance, right? You're afraid of screwing up or, and then that becomes a bad thing, which is just the, I guess the opportunity cost the risk that connects it with that, the, that old stola definition. Right, right.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yep. I think it also connects it with some modern definitions of stress.
Personal Growth and Stoicism
00:12:13
Speaker
Occasionally you'll come across the idea that stress is just the experience of something that matters, being at stake and the thought.
00:12:23
Speaker
There is just that, you know, people feel the discomfort of stress when something important is on the line. Things are happening quickly. There's a lot of pressure, you know, all these facts have to do with there being something you care about that is in a way under danger and that's and then again here you can introduce the ideas.
00:12:44
Speaker
of both desire and aversion. Something important is at stake. That means, in some sense, you care about it. You have desires with respect to it. And then, of course, you're going to be averse to any risks, any loss involved with this. And in this case, this is going to be, you know, this is going to be, we're thinking about social experiences, desiring someone's approval, friendship, love, and then fearing the opposites of this.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, that connects really well with the second point. So I'll jump into the second lesson I take from this chapter by Epictetus. So the first lesson was that, look, what is social anxiety? It's desiring something social that's outside of your control. So usually that is how people think of you, right? Like what impression you give off, whether or not they like you or don't like you.
00:13:40
Speaker
The second lesson then is that you will not have social anxiety if you have mastered desire and aversion. And so one quote from Epictetus from this passage is the context being somebody entering a social situation says, no good man turns pale and trembles and says, how will he receive me? What sort of a hearing will he give me? He'll act, you slave, as he thinks fit.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I put in notes, ouch. It's very mean to people that are feeling anxious. But the idea there is that the stoic sage does not, as he said, does not tremble, does not afraid and thinks, oh, what will he think of me? Oh, what will, you know, what happens if he doesn't like me? The sage does what he thinks is right and what he thinks is fitting. And now this is an important distinction. And we've made this one a lot.
00:14:35
Speaker
But I think it's important returning to here. The Stoic ideal is obviously that you act, you do what you think is right in each situation, and that shouldn't be based on desiring or fearing something the other person can give you. Because if you think what's right depends on desiring or fearing what somebody else can give you, that's not a Stoic conclusion. You've made a mistake. You think the quality of your life depends on things that are not up to you.
00:15:00
Speaker
It's also important to clarify that desire and aversion here are technical terms. We did an episode on reading the handbook and we go over the desire and aversion Epictetus in that episode, but desire is not just the thing you
00:15:17
Speaker
feel towards something you want. You don't desire, and some people might desire ice cream, but most normal people wouldn't desire ice cream. And using the stoic technical terminology, they might want it or feel an impulse towards it. Desire is this idea of I need to get this. I need this to be happy. And aversion is the opposite. It's the very extreme reaction of if this happens, I'll be unhappy. My life will be ruined.
00:15:42
Speaker
And so because you talked about that idea about stress is the idea that something important is happening or something that matters is happening. And then it immediately sounds like, well, can a stoic never be stressed? Like how could a stoic ever do well if they don't get a little bit stressed before, uh, giving a presentation or they don't get a little bit stressed before, um, talking to somebody new, making a good impression.
00:16:05
Speaker
And I think the distinction here, the key distinction is that you want to feel the right amount of stress, and the right amount of stress is a recognition that you would prefer things to go a certain way, but your life doesn't, your happiness doesn't depend on them going a certain way.
00:16:23
Speaker
And so you're still paying attention. You're still conscious of the, you're still putting effort into the situation. You're not nonchalant. You know, you're going on a first date. You're not like, Oh, who cares? Like, whatever. I'm not going to dress up. I'm not going to ask them questions. I'm just going to be my, like, yeah, you still care. You still put energy in.
00:16:43
Speaker
But when you start to feel anxiety is if you start to actually over exaggerate and you go into what they would say is desire and aversion. But what we might say is like thinking, thinking your life depends on this or making that kind of mistake.
00:16:55
Speaker
So, I put it in my notes, it's fine to want to impress people, but that kind of social courtesy, that kind of social awareness doesn't bring anxiety. Putting effort into social exchanges is not social anxiety. Social anxiety is overvaluing. It's feeling desire and aversion, as the Stokes would say, instead of just an impulse, instead of just preferring things to go a certain way.
00:17:22
Speaker
the appropriate amount of stress, right? And there's that idea in sports psychology of that kind of curve of stress, too little is bad, middle, like just enough is good, too much is bad again. And I always think in the stoic sense of kind of hitting that curve of like, I would prefer this to occur. So I'm hitting that kind of middle level of stress. This matters, but it matters only ever like a reasonable amount. And that kind of inappropriate amount of stress would be if I start overvaluing it.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, what do you think about that? No, I think that's exactly right. And a related idea here that we talk about fairly often, but it's also worth bringing up, I think, especially in this case, is that there's a distinction between the impressions that someone receives and their considered judgments about a given situation. Or to put that in modern terminology, there's a difference between
00:18:16
Speaker
feelings, initial feelings, and then one's emotional state, one's entire emotional state.
Practical Stoicism: Real-Life Applications
00:18:25
Speaker
So the stoic may have many feelings around nervousness,
00:18:32
Speaker
particular thoughts, you know, running through their head before giving a public speech, that sort of thing. That sort of thing is entirely normal, natural, even. And neither Epictetus nor any of the other Stoics think that, you know, that's where the problem lies.
00:18:53
Speaker
lies within someone who loses their composure as a result of responding to those feelings in a particular way. And that's plausibly going to be caused by the deeper desires that this needs to go right, otherwise I will be ruined or something of that nature.
00:19:19
Speaker
Jitters before a public speaking event, that's natural, normal. Not sleeping three days before, well, something's gone wrong and we want to try to correct that as much as possible. I'll give a personal example for myself. I was going to speak at the largest conference I'd spoken at that point when I was doing my PhD.
00:19:42
Speaker
Um, got one of my papers accepted to present an international conference. And I was just, I had never been to an international conference and I was just really, really nervous. I was like really worried about what other people would think of me. They would think I was smart. If they would think my ideas were good. I was really, really nervous and I couldn't get myself out of it for a number of days.
00:20:03
Speaker
uh you know this was would have been a week or two before i presented it was really really getting to me and my girlfriend at the time said something that i still always use to help my nerves now which is like she was just i think she was getting frustrated and she said you know has this ever gone poorly in the past
00:20:23
Speaker
Like, have you ever, have you ever engaged in a, like given up talk or done something social and like thought your life has gone substantially worse after that moment? And I was, I just thought about it and I was like, no, I don't ever feel that way. I don't ever feel even the worst talks I've given or even the worst, even when I get public speak and it's kind of, it's not great. I never feel like my life, I just feel like, oh, that wasn't as good as I could have done. I never feel like my life is worse. And it was kind of.
00:20:52
Speaker
I think this also speaks to why stoicism is a practice and you have to go out and do the things that are challenging because my previous social interactions had given me a pool of evidence to show myself, oh wow, to convince myself of what the stoics were saying all along, which is that your happiness doesn't depend on
00:21:10
Speaker
You know, being really impressive and doing a great job at that public speaking event because I had had some ones where I'd flubbed and had some ones where it didn't go as well as I wanted. And I was like, I'm still happy. My life's still going well. So I had to kind of like built up this pool of evidence. Um, and that's just, that's just the desire and aversion exercise, right? That is just the, as the discipline of desire, that reflection of like.
00:21:31
Speaker
You're putting a lot of pressure on this. You're acting like it really, really matters. But like when you've messed up in the past, has it ruined things? Has it ruined your week, let alone your day? And the answer was no. And that just like that really, really helped me. And it's something that I still use to this day. Does that resonate with you at all? No, I think that's a that's a great example. And.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like your girlfriend at the time had some stoic knowledge, as it were, really. Yeah, it was a great perspective. And it was so simple too, right? Which is the very stoic way of being. Yeah, yeah. I think it also does bring out that you can have these experiences, but it's important to
00:22:15
Speaker
see them in the right way, learn the right lessons from them, and whether that's a comment from a friend, a book, a podcast, I think part of why I try to talk to other people, learn from others,
00:22:35
Speaker
read some of these ancient texts is to try get that sense of being shown something that in some sense I know is true, but it's still weak. I haven't quite seen the right thing. At least the way I'm imagining that scenario you're in is you just needed someone to remind you of that fact. In some sense you already knew, but it wasn't internalized as deeply as it could have been. And there are so many things in our life like that, I think.
00:23:04
Speaker
The lesson was there, the bad metaphor I want to use. The painting was on the wall. I just needed to look at it. The information was inside of me, but it was just a bit of philosophical probing to draw the right conclusions from it. I think that's profound. One of the best parts of engaging in philosophy is
00:23:29
Speaker
not a priori coming to these conclusions in your armchair, but like giving yourself a different way to recontextualize the things you've already lived and the things you've already done. Totally agree with that.
00:23:42
Speaker
Right. One other reaction here, just connecting it to social anxiety in general, experience matters so much for so many of these different things. We get anxious about public speaking, talking to strangers, and dating and so on, where there's something about just encountering the situations over and over again with these lessons in mind that does make
00:24:07
Speaker
Things easier and I think one heuristic I've had before that's been somewhat useful when one quick One-liner as it were is that when I you know fail to put myself out there then I'm sort of robbing myself of
00:24:25
Speaker
Uh, these kinds of experiences that, uh, you know, whether it's selling, selling something, it's always uncomfortable to do if you're in different positions, if you haven't done it before, if you're not an experienced salesperson. Um, but if you, whenever you pass up those opportunities, come up with some excuse, some rationalization why this person isn't a good fit.
00:24:45
Speaker
then you're robbing yourself of experience that you can use to make yourself a better salesperson, someone who has more confidence in their skills and their social encounters. That's a heuristic that at least I found useful before is that if you need some additional push to put yourself out there, there is something
00:25:07
Speaker
valuable in these kinds of experiences.
Social Skills as a Craft
00:25:11
Speaker
And if you're like me at all, sometimes you might rationalize a way, oh, you know, I don't need to talk to that specific person at this time, and so on.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think we had an episode about anti-fragility not too long ago, but this idea of putting some skin in the game, which is to say like it should sting a bit, not too much, but you want to find that kind of thing that you care about that makes you a bit uncomfortable and then kind of force yourself to do it many times because if it's uncomfortable and you force yourself to do it, you're almost more likely to take a lesson from it, right? If you're not paying attention, you don't care at all.
00:25:49
Speaker
I might entirely forget what happened. But if I if I'm uncomfortable and I push myself, then not only am I going to build up that, as you said, like that kind of well, that repository of lessons that I can reconceptualize or think about, but I'm also I'm just going to be much more, I think, like attuned to what's going on. I think that's maybe I'm maybe what I'm saying is something to do with like levels of so like maybe I'm comfortable talking to my best friend, but I'm nervous talking to a stranger.
00:26:19
Speaker
And it's like, well, if you want to continue to improve socially, you should then pursue the things that still make you a bit uncomfortable. And yeah, that's great. Just put yourself out there. Absolutely. Don't deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn. So those were two pieces of practical advice from us. Let's pull it back to Epictetus and what his practical advice is. And I think some of it's similar and I think it's really good.
00:26:43
Speaker
So I wanted to share that. So two pieces of advice from Epictetus about how do we decrease our social anxiety. The first one is to learn social rules. To quote Epictetus, he says, where he, which is the liar player he was talking about earlier, that person who was comfortable playing their instrument in private but gets nervous when they go on stage, where the liar player has skill, then he has self-assurance too.
00:27:13
Speaker
bring any layman you please in front of him and he won't be concerned. But where it is the case of something he doesn't know, this is where he feels anxious. So what does this mean? That he doesn't know what a crowd is, or he doesn't know the applause of a crowd. And what Epictetus is pointing out is that
00:27:34
Speaker
We feel comfortable when we understand things, when we get the rules of things, when we conceptualize what something is. So the person who's mastered their instrument, they don't feel nervous playing guitar. They could do the, you know, he's talking about, you know, play Wonderwall around the campfire with some regular people. He knows how to play Wonderwall around the campfire.
00:27:58
Speaker
What he doesn't know is how to play the big stage in front of 5,000 people, doesn't understand what makes them applaud or what makes them boo. So when we're anxious about something, when we care about doing, we're anxious about social things, when we care about doing well, but we don't fully understand the rules of the game. We don't fully understand how to succeed in these social situations or what the social situations
00:28:23
Speaker
There's often unwritten rules in these kinds of social situations. So another quote from Epictetus, this is a student talking first about why they shouldn't put themselves out there. But I'm afraid I'll lose my composure. Epictetus responds, if you were going to write the name Dion, would you have that fear, the fear of losing your composure? Not at all, says the student. Why not? Isn't it because you've studied how to write? Exactly, says the student.
00:28:50
Speaker
What then, if you're going to read, won't you be in the same position? Just the same. What is the reason then? Why, it's because every art brings a certain strength and confidence within its own field. Haven't you studied how to speak?
00:29:04
Speaker
And just to translate that into common English, everything says, would you be nervous how to write your own name on a piece of paper? And the student says, no, it's silly. Of course not. Well, that's because you've practiced writing your name on pieces of paper thousands of times. You're nervous about public speaking. You're nervous about going out to talk to that stranger. You're nervous about talking to that person you think is cute because you haven't practiced it. You don't, you haven't mastered, um, the, you know, the rules of the game or the craft, so to speak.
00:29:34
Speaker
So Epictetus is making a comparison here with social interaction with any other craft. If you want to be less socially anxious, you could care less. There's that desire and aversion thing, but you can also practice the craft of socializing. You can become the artist that understands the crowd.
00:29:50
Speaker
So I think the piece of advice here is that you want to consider social areas that make you nervous as kind of sub disciplines or sub specializations. So whether that's large groups of people like parties, is that strangers? Is that small talk? Is that your boss? Is that dating? You want to consider these sub disciplines and then learn the craft for each of these.
00:30:13
Speaker
In my own life, as a personal example, there's this series of YouTube videos. I think they're called Charisma on Command. And it sounds cheesy, but it's honestly just like, it's not about dating or anything. It's just honestly, they'll pull up a celebrity and be like, why is this person come off as charismatic?
00:30:31
Speaker
Well, because they have this kind of body language or when somebody asks them a question, they'll ask them a question about themselves. And it just kind of explicitly pulls out the rules of social engagement. And I found that to be like really helpful because I think a lot of the time when we're socializing, it's something we grow up doing, but we don't learn explicitly, not all the time, or we don't conceptualize it as a craft. And if we just give ourselves permission to say, yeah, I would be nervous
00:30:59
Speaker
to play soccer in front of people. If I didn't know how to play soccer, of course I'm nervous or I'd be nervous just doing anything I'm not good at. Of course, I'm nervous about socializing if I haven't mastered that craft yet. What do you think about the craft analogy?
00:31:13
Speaker
Oh, the craft analogy seems on point to me. If I were to describe what I take away from it, it's first this idea you can improve at the craft and you can think about social interaction like any other craft where it's important to get experience, feedback.
00:31:33
Speaker
have a conceptual model about what the different rules are. You said learn the social rules of the different sub-disciplines or different kinds of circumstances you might find yourself in. That's always key.
00:31:51
Speaker
And then I think one other important part about this framing is that it puts the focus on something tangible, concrete that you can treat as a target that almost has a side effect of
00:32:09
Speaker
removing or decreasing social anxiety, where really the purpose of social interaction isn't to decrease anxiety as such, it's to be excellent in social situations. And how do you do that? By improving your skill by treating these kinds of interactions as a craft.
00:32:33
Speaker
with the additional thought that I want to be excellent. You have some pictures of what it looks to be good in these different kinds of circumstances as well. So I think that giving the process a Talos purpose outside of just reducing anxiety is also another useful part of this advice.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah, I love the way you've put it, right? It's not just like, care less about it. You know, like, why are you worried about so much? That's, that's dumb. It's like, no, people get nervous about things they suck at. And like, if you don't understand how to talk to a crowd, a crowd of people, if you don't know how to give a speech, you're going to be nervous. If you don't know how to walk up to a stranger and make small talk, you're going to be nervous. As you said, treat it like give yourself a positive goal, a telos and ends to work towards. And then ironically.
00:33:30
Speaker
Not only will you feel less nervous because you'll understand what's going on, but you'll also decrease the downside because you'll actually be better at what you do. The terrible situation of really flubbing the encounter. Because we think about, I'm trivializing those worst case scenarios, but there are some worst case scenarios.
00:33:52
Speaker
uh, flub a sale, you lose a job because you do a bad work on interview. There's somebody that you could have romantically hit it off with and you've terribly offended. Uh, you go to a new place and you have trouble making friends. There are like really serious downsides to, um, I guess struggling socially. And that's why we feel anxious, not because it's not.
00:34:18
Speaker
It's an evolutionarily adaptive thing to care about how we come off to other people. There are consequences to being bad at this, and just being told, oh, just don't care as much. Yeah, not that helpful, even if it's true sometimes.
Mastering Social Dynamics
00:34:33
Speaker
But being said, well, you'll feel better about it if you get good at it, and giving yourself permission, I think, to treat it like a craft.
00:34:40
Speaker
Like I think nowadays, especially in dating, there's that negative connotation. And I think for good purpose, you don't want to gamify social interactions too much, right? You lose the genuine connection if you treat it like a script or treat it like a game. But you also can tell the difference when you talk to somebody who's good at conversation. And when you talk to somebody who is uncomfortable and you can feel when somebody else is uncomfortable, there's just, it's just a thing you can get better or worse at. And so giving yourself permission to treat it like that and say, there's nothing
00:35:11
Speaker
weird or wrong about treating it like any other craft. It's probably one of the most important crafts. I think that's nice. And I think most people, I guess I'm just trying to explain why that, that this advice is unintuitive. It wouldn't be unintuitive for, for soccer, basketball, painting. Like, yeah, obviously you're nervous about painting because you're not good at it yet. You got to paint a bit first, but it almost feels unintuitive when it comes to interacting socially, but just giving yourself permission to say, Hey, I can like.
00:35:38
Speaker
Analyze myself. I can build those skills. I can practice them. It's almost like a wait off because it's not like, oh, you're either born socially good or not, or you're either an outgoing person or you're not. It's like, no, these are things that can develop. These are things that are flexible.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, it is interesting that to some extent performing well socially involves some opacity about what sorts of skills you have or what your maybe intentions or training was to some extent. Just to try to put that more simply.
00:36:14
Speaker
you know you can have conversations with people where it feels like oh they're just repeating my name because that's something they read and you know how to make friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie or something or they're you know asking the rope
00:36:29
Speaker
a number of questions. You sometimes see this in job interviews. If you have the experience of interviewing people often at the end of interviews, you'll ask people, do you have any questions for us about the company? And you'll get a list of the top three questions that come up from a Google search on what to ask people at the end of the interview. And there are some sets in which that reflects negatively on a candidate. At the same time, that's not that much different from
00:36:55
Speaker
many other crafts that have this mix of explicit technique with more intuitive aspects. Many people who are good at a given craft have come to it by learning explicit rules and then
00:37:15
Speaker
shedding those rules in certain ways or learning when what situations these rules actually apply and what they don't. I think probably social interactions is just like that as well. There's such a thing as over applying certain kinds of advice and certain social generalizations are correct and you'll see that they're correct, but they're just that generalizations that are going to have cases where they don't apply and so on.
00:37:45
Speaker
So what I, what I'm taking from that Caleb is, you know, anybody listening, if you ever meet Caleb, don't, don't say his name. Don't look in the eye. He'll reflect poorly. But, um, um, but no, I think you're absolutely right. Right. Like it's like.
00:38:03
Speaker
the rules of thumb and you get a certain art to it that matches with your personality in the context that you're in. If you over apply the rule, it doesn't work just like any other craft or field. That's practical advice number one from Evictetus. Learn the rules. You wouldn't be nervous to write your name because you know how to write your name. You wouldn't be nervous to go to Roman court if you knew how to socialize in that setting, if you practice socializing that setting.
00:38:31
Speaker
So learn the rules, practice, put yourself out there. The advice number two, which I think is it's a bit more of the.
00:38:39
Speaker
just suck it up kind of thing. But as a stoic, it has to be said. And I think the piece of advice number two is just, at the end of the day though, you have to focus on what is up to you. You have to pull that attention back to yourself. You're not going to work your way out of anxiety by just becoming so socially. I'm sure the king that was talking to Zeno, I'm sure he's pretty socially good, but you can't work your way out of anxiety just by focusing on the external. You got to pull it back and focus on the internal too.
00:39:06
Speaker
So one of Epictetus's, sorry to contextualize this quote, Epictetus's student pushes back against the craft analogy and says, well, it's not like other crafts because the social craft is the most important one. It's the one that has the highest consequences if you flop. And so here's the quote again, starting with the student. The student says, but Caesar has the power to take my life.
00:39:30
Speaker
saying, look, this is not writing my name. This is whether or not I get executed in Rome, right? But Caesar has the power to take my life. And Epictetus says, then tell the truth, you wretch. He's rough. And instead of bragging as you do, don't claim to be a philosopher and don't fail to recognize who your masters are. But as long as you let them have this hold on you, place yourself at the beck and call of everyone who is stronger than you.
00:39:59
Speaker
And so what Epic Tita says is, look, like, yeah, you're right. If you're the kind of person who doesn't believe in stoicism.
00:40:07
Speaker
If you're the kind of person who thinks a happy life depends on what other people can give you, then there's only so much building social skills can get you. At the end of the day, you're still going to be anxious because human beings are anxious when they think something matters. When they have desire or aversion for something, and as long as you have desire or aversion for something that Caesar can give you, you're going to be anxious when you're in front of Caesar.
00:40:30
Speaker
You know, as long as you, as long as you covet, you know, as long as you covet something that somebody else can give you or take away, they're your master. This is a classic Epictetus argument. They're your master. They can control you. You're not free. You're the real slave. And Epictetus, who was a slave, he's making that kind of joke to these rich young students. You think I'm a slave. You're the real slave. These are, you actually have a master. These powerful people in Rome, they control you.
00:40:58
Speaker
So if you're not willing to learn the craft or even if you are willing to learn the craft, if you can't also practice desire and aversion, you're never going to fully escape social anxiety. And at that point, you basically you aren't a stoic, right? You're admitting that there's something that you desire that's outside of your control. And in that case, you're condemned to a non-stoic life, right?
Freedom and Autonomy in Stoicism
00:41:20
Speaker
You're condemned to a certain amount of anxiety.
00:41:23
Speaker
And that's just the, that's just the way the world is. You will have a master. And I guess Evictetus's point is, you know, either fix that or don't complain about it. Right. Except, except it's the way things are and do your best not to make Caesar mad at you. Right.
00:41:38
Speaker
Right, right. Can you imagine Epictetus's student evaluations? He's a virtuous teacher and knows his stoic theory. He continues to call students, retches and slaves. Everyone's dropping out of the Zoom call. This is the cameras off classroom with Epictetus. Maybe an argument against student evaluations, perhaps.
00:42:06
Speaker
And I mean, I think that's, I think it's rough. I think it's intense. I mean, that's what, that's the joke you're making, but I think it's at the end of the day, it's right. Which is that like, look, if you don't agree with stoicism, you can't get out of anxiety. It's it is the life. If you place value in things, not up to you, it is a necessary part of life. And you just, I guess, have to, to maneuver it as well as possible.
00:42:28
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I suppose at the end of the day it comes down to this idea of stoic freedom. You know, Caesar has the power over the student's life.
00:42:43
Speaker
in a real sense if they have this non-Stoic attitude because he has this power over their happiness. And we're not talking about happiness in the sense about whether they merely feel good or so on, but whether on reflection they think they've lived a good life or the life they want to live, their sort of ultimate aim they have for their life.
00:43:13
Speaker
I think if you need motivation to accept this stoic idea, it does come down to being self-sufficient, being free, not having others, their whims, virtuous or not, be your master, determine the course of your life. Yeah. It's just like, as you said, it's about freedom. If you genuinely think you're not free, like if you acknowledge that Caesar is your master or your boss or
00:43:44
Speaker
I don't know, you know, the cool person in your social group. If you acknowledge these people, your masters, they have control over your life, then you're naturally going to feel the human reaction of anxiety. So it's about, we don't, the stoic thinks that's not good and not true or doesn't have to be true. And so you should strive for that stoic freedom. It's a high bar to reach. You know, lots of, I would be nervous in front of Caesar. It's not, it's not me giving a, it's not a,
00:44:13
Speaker
It's not playing your instrument in front of a crowd. It's a high bar, but it's the, I guess in that way it makes it clear that social anxiety is not, it's also not something trivial, I guess. It's not just like, oh, you shouldn't feel nervous about this. It's like, yeah, social anxiety connects with all of our other kinds of fear.
00:44:35
Speaker
And until you are the sage, there are going to be social situations that make you nervous. There's going to be social situations that make you anxious. What you want to try to do is you want to try to practice your social skills to minimize the social component of that. You know, if I'm afraid that Caesar's going to kill me, well, have your fear be about death, not have your fear be about how well you speak, you know, try to practice your skill to minimize the social part about it. And then just continue practicing desire and aversion, continue practicing that discipline.
00:45:06
Speaker
And then if you can get those two things right, you're in a pretty good spot. One of those pictures is negative, care less or care more about the right kinds of things, less of the wrong kinds of things. And one of those pictures is positive. Build your skills, build your craft. And yet mean to call everybody wretches, but I think it's a pretty compelling picture. Yeah, no, yeah, I think so. I think it's certainly compelling.
00:45:30
Speaker
I suppose it reminds me of the Invictus poem, you know, I'm the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. And that's sort of the aspiration. And of course, feelings of anxiety might be natural in this picture. You know, you're not even here, Epictetus is in counseling.
00:45:53
Speaker
being unfeeling like a statue. Instead he's pushing against these considered judgments people have, their reactions to their feelings. The fact that these anxieties can end up running people's lives, as it were.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. A sustained, the kind of sustained feeling that really changes how you live. Not some, not some jitters or butterflies, right? Yeah. Or even just perhaps even in an assumption, something that's unstated, I think is something many of us have noticed before. It's just part of the part of the background. You know, like the Caesar example is a good one. You know, Caesar is the power to take your life. That's terrible. You ought to make sure he likes you, that sort of thing.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, the, the, the social, the social dynamic. It's this context that pulls out the unstated desire that somewhere else. Right. So it's like, well, I want my boss to like me. Why? Well, because I, I, I really care about my social status and my money that comes from my job. And so you think, well, is that a social issue or is that actually, um, an unstated desire that comes from somewhere else? Right. And so yeah, there's that kind of connection there.
00:47:14
Speaker
So that's a summary of Epictetus on anxiety. So look, anxiety is about desiring something that's outside of your control. And so the sage, the perfect stoic, isn't socially anxious because they've mastered designer version. What should you do about it? Well, first you should learn the craft of socializing.
00:47:36
Speaker
It's natural for humans to be uncomfortable with things they don't know how to do well. Give yourself permission to learn that craft. And that connects to the things we were saying about put yourself out there, practice, learn from your failures, learn from, you know, doing social things that scare you. And then the other thing, the other piece of advice is to, in these situations, focus on what is up to you. In these situations, try to limit the amount of power other people have over you by controlling your desire and aversion.
00:48:07
Speaker
That's that's every TSM anxiety at a high level.
Epictetus' Two Handles Analogy
00:48:11
Speaker
Last part of this, Kayla, we were going to chat a bit about what we think or anything we changed. I've done a lot of talking. I know you have some notes here. Did you want to jump in with any reflections on that as a whole?
00:48:23
Speaker
Well, it connects nicely with a previous episode of ours on the two handles, I think, where if you're thinking about a given social situation you're nervous about, you have the sort of non
00:48:39
Speaker
Stoic handles those interpretations we have that we've been talking about that may be exaggerating the harms of social failure or seeking social success regardless of what it does to your character and so on.
00:49:00
Speaker
And then on the other side, you have that thought, let go of that handle. Those sorts of things are not up to you, they're not virtuous. But then you have the positive picture of grasp onto these ideas of improving your social skills, seeing social ability as a craft.
00:49:26
Speaker
in particular, a way to perform your roles well. So you have that positive vision too. So I think this is an application of that other analogy we have from FATS. You have those two handles you can grasp, reject these false
00:49:47
Speaker
beliefs about social anxiety and its harms, and then pick up those more positive interpretations. And I think there are different spins for different people here, but the central stoic one is that ultimately focused on being the kind of person who is excellent in social interactions. And that's the target to aim for. That's both
00:50:17
Speaker
as a matter of who you are concretely as a particular person embedded in
Anxiety as a Growth Signal
00:50:22
Speaker
all of your relationships, but also in the abstract sense, you know, where all humans were rational creatures and social creatures, of course.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah, and can I add that back to the episode? I think it fits perfectly, but there's that kind of third choice we talked about, which is not picking up either handle, which is that rejection, and just the importance not to do that. Socializing scares you, or not just socializing. Yeah, you could have generalized social anxiety about any kind of social interaction, or it could just be performing scares you,
00:51:01
Speaker
talking to strangers scares you but don't just like don't don't just walk away you know take as you said take like take it up pick it up but pick it up in the right way but don't don't not become a hermit or something but don't just like don't isolate yourself because it's difficult because you said we're like we're social creatures and um
00:51:24
Speaker
You don't have to be the most outgoing person in the world, but I think a very meaningful part to our lives is socializing and socializing well.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Another key idea here, I think often when you're focusing, once focused on reducing social anxiety, it's easy to overlook the positive roles or the positive purpose that things like nervousness or discomfort can play in social situations.
00:51:56
Speaker
There's, you know, they can bring out, if you come back to this idea of stress, they can bring out conflict if you notice discomfort, another person is discomfort. There's a point, you know, maybe there's a conflict here that means something that matters at stake and that might be worth talking about and addressing. But even if we're thinking, not at that level, but just that often if we feel some amount of
00:52:20
Speaker
discomfort nervousness after saying something maybe it is because we in fact said something silly and that's you don't want to of course do the uh uh you know react uh in an exaggerated way to that but you also don't want to be the kind of person who
00:52:35
Speaker
in their project of reducing, removing social anxiety, it ends up essentially inhibiting themselves almost like a drunk person. They have no inhibitions because they don't feel any kind of nervousness or discomfort, and that's not where you want to end up.
00:52:56
Speaker
Yeah, maybe you shouldn't be talking right now. Maybe you should be quiet. But I think that comes back to the craft analogy, right? There's a kind of flavor to different kinds of anxieties, right? And yeah, you'd hate to be somebody listening to this podcast, and they're like, peer pressure, you could feel as a kind of anxiety. Like, oh, I'm uncomfortable around here.
00:53:22
Speaker
or being around people that are, you don't like, you could interpret as a kind of anxiety. I feel uncomfortable.
Crafting Social Identity with Stoicism
00:53:30
Speaker
I remember when I was in university, I would go to some parties and I was still kind of, you know, figuring out my social group and be like, if it was people I didn't like. And as an adult, now I'm like, yeah, I would never hang out with those people. But at the time it was like, I kind of feel uncomfortable here. I kind of don't really like the vibe of this party.
00:53:45
Speaker
And if you were blind to it, you'd be like, oh, I should just not be getting my own way. I should be taking up the handle of really leaning into these activities. That's not the right answer, right? So it's like the kind of, yeah, I really love that point. There is a kind of, sometimes anxiety is good. So paying attention to what is causing it and then minimizing the unhelpful, untrue,
00:54:13
Speaker
Or it's that telos, right? Minimizing the anxiety you wouldn't want to have if you were the person you want to be, but like pay attention to the anxiety you would still, I would still want to be uncomfortable if I went to that party today or these kinds of situations.
Final Reflections and Conclusion
00:54:27
Speaker
You know, I would still want to be like, Oh, get me out of here. Um, so pay attention to that and don't kind of lose that sensitivity or that kind of like, um, yeah, it's a sensitivity, that sensitivity, negative social situations. All right. Nice. Uh, is there anything else you wanted to add?
00:54:44
Speaker
Um, no, I think I covered, I think I covered what I wanted to say. I think that sometimes this advice there's, there's different levels of social anxiety and people that have extreme phobias hearing it, that it's a desire and aversion problem. I don't think is necessarily that helpful. That's why I really liked the craft example. I think it gets around it, but I just think the, like, you should care about this less.
00:55:09
Speaker
It is, is often people are in cycles where they kind of habituated the kind of response that they're ashamed of or that they know they shouldn't be feeling they know is exaggerated. Um, and then they're kind of stuck. And so it's like, well, what do they do then? They can't just like tell themselves they're being silly more. It doesn't really help. But that's why I think the craft example gets around that because it gives you small, actionable, positively oriented goals. That isn't just like.
00:55:37
Speaker
Well, you shouldn't be feeling that way or well, that doesn't make sense to feel that way. So I think it's that combination of both, right? Putting the social anxiety in check with the restoic lens of value, but then also, uh, having small actionable steps you can take to improve and build that skill in, you know, whatever, whatever environment feels appropriately stressful, uh, for your current level of, you know, the mastery of the craft.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The idea of making progress incrementally is nearly always a good one. And I think probably in many cases here as well, where, you know, you don't want to be unrealistically ambitious, though you do want to be, of course, have some level of ambition. You want to be realistic as well. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for putting this together.
00:56:35
Speaker
Cool. Thanks. Fun one. Um, and I like that. I always take solace in, in, you know, having people 2000 years ago, struggling with the same kind of things. It's always just kind of feels like, uh, feels like this, uh, this exercising connection with the human experience. And I thought I bet you this had some good advice and so I'll be, I'll be taking some stuff away from this conversation. So thank you. Yep. Absolutely.
00:57:00
Speaker
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.
00:57:18
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 ancientlyre.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.