Stoicism Is Not Complete Numbness to Emotions
Stop trying to suppress inevitable negativity.
With stoicism rising into the mainstream so rapidly it should come as no surprise that it has dragged with it some misconceptions. With the most problematic one being that stoicism advocates for the numbness to all emotion. (Or that the perfect stoic is one that is numb to all the movements of life.) With this notion comes the inevitable attempt to suppress negative emotions when they arise. For we cannot be ‘numb’ to spontaneous emotions so the only option the stoic has is to suppress them, right? Wrong! This could not be further from the truth. Stoicism is not the complete numbness to emotion. On the contrary. The Stoics believed that we should always be 100% present to feel and experience every emotion. This means every positive emotion and every negative one.
We are not in control of our emotions.
If someone walked up to you in the middle of the night and robbed you you would be scared.
If you dropped a coffee from the loft in the cafe in front of everyone you would be embarrassed.
If your partner youve been with for over 3 years dumps you out of the blue it would come with a free cocktail of emotions.
