Coping With Grief: 10 Timeless Strategies From Ancient Philosophy

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3:00Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

3:50Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to a weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you're like me, you lost some people this year. We all lose people every single year. That is the reality of life. That is the reality of the human condition. And that's why the Stoics wrote about it. Seneca wrote three beautiful essays on grief, his consolation essays. And we can see meditations as a grief book. Marcus Aurelius talks to himself about having lost people, about having lost things, about preparing for the inevitability of losing people and things. And in today's episode, I wanted to give you 10 timeless Stoic strategies on coping with grief.

4:32We had it read by Michael Reed, who's been doing a lot of the motivational stuff over on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. And this article is up on the Daily Stoic. website if you want to share it with people at dailystoic.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes, but let's just get into it. Here are some stoic strategies for grief. I wish you a 2024 that you don't lose anyone or anything, but I think we all know, unfortunately, that that is unlikely and unrealistic. And so it's better to be prepared. It's better to be armed. It's better to be ready.

5:40The End love die. People we need die. People we don't know die, and eventually we will die ourselves. The question for the Stoics then was how to make sense of this fact, how to come to terms with it. How does one deal with the natural grief that loss provokes? In this article, we're going to give you 10 time-tested and timeless strategies for coping with grief. Each strategy comes to us from the ancient Stoic philosophers who developed, tested, improved them in dealing with loss, not unlike your own. What is grief? What causes grief? This is how the folks over at the Grief Recovery Institute define grief.

6:25Grief is a normal and natural emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind. Of itself, grief is neither a pathological condition nor a personality disorder. The Stoics believe situations that cause grief unfold like this. Something happens. We wake up to reports that the stock market has taken a dive. We get screamed at, then fired by our boss. The doctor delivers the news we were praying they wouldn't. And this provokes a reaction. Not a good one either. A scared one. Or an angry one. Something emotional. Or we go the opposite way and we just shut down. paralyzed by the events. The Stoics called these involuntary and immediate impressions that we form in response to bad news or loss, fantasiae.

7:17Contrary to what you might think, the Stoics were quite sympathetic to these reactions. They understand them as natural and largely out of our control. Stoicism is not a philosophy meant to show you how to stop that. Instead, what Stoicism is about is what to do next, what to do after the involuntary first impression has been given its moment. As Donald Robertson writes in his wonderful book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, the Stoic tells himself that although the situation may appear frightening, the truly important thing in life is how he chooses to respond. The Stoic transcends their fantasia, and so can you.

7:59How did the Stoics cope with grief? The Stoics are often stereotyped as suppressing their emotions, but their philosophy was actually intended to teach us to face, process, and deal with emotions immediately, instead of running from them. Tempting as it is to deceive yourself or hide from a powerful emotion like grief by telling yourself and other people that you're fine, awareness and understanding are better. Distraction might be pleasant in the short term By going to gladiatorial games As a Roman might have done, for example Focusing is better in the long term That means facing it now Process and parse what you're feeling Remove your expectations, your entitlements Your sense of having been wronged Find the positive in the situation But also sit with your pain and accept it Remembering that it is a part of life That's how one conquers grief.

8:58And then, ever the optimists, the Stoics would urge you to look for positive in the situation. As Seneca said, Has it then been all for nothing that you have had such a friend? During so many years, amid such close associations, after such intimate communion of personal interests, has nothing been accomplished? Do you bury friendship along with a friend? And why lament having lost him, if it be of no avail to have possessed him? Believe me, a great part of those who have loved, though chance has removed their persons, still abides with us. The past is ours, and there is nothing more secure for us than that which has been.

9:43The Stoics also found comfort in knowing that they were not alone in any of this. Who maintains that it is not a heavy blow But it is part of being human, Seneca would say And looking to point to examples of great men and women who have overcome adversity He insists how much harder it is to find families who have avoided any disastrous occurrences So remember, if it offers at least a bit of consolation You are not alone We are all in this together 10 Timeless Strategies for Coping with Grief from Ancient Philosophy 1. Seek Refuge in Philosophical Studies I am guiding you to a place where all who seek to escape from fortune must seek refuge.

10:31Philosophical Studies. They will heal your wound. They will pluck from your memory every rooted sorrow. Even if you had not made them your constant companion before, you would need to make use of them now. Seneca. Kai Whiting, a researcher and lecturer in sustainability and stoicism, was reading Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way when he found out his grandmother died. At the time, he wasn't a devoted student of stoicism. He picked up the book after listening to an interview with Holiday. When he got the news of his grandmother's passing, I took a deep breath and understood that I had a choice over what I did next.

11:14Death is irreversible. It is final. What you do with it, however, is not. I dedicated the following two years to reading and learning. Sadly, two years later, Whiting's grandfather. Coincidentally, this time, he was reading Massimo Pellucci's How to Be a Stoic. At that point, Kai told us, I decided stoicism was for me. It had helped me put death into perspective. It helped me process the loss of loved ones. Philosophy wasn't created for the classroom. It wasn't a parlor trick or made-for-show, Seneca liked to say. It isn't about abstract questions or debating whether we live in a computer simulation or not.

12:00Philosophy is for life. It's something that helps you with whatever you're struggling with. As Seneca wrote, would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel. For thousands of years, the wisest minds have been offering counsel and wisdom to those who seek it out. Will you be one of those people? Or will you endure your trials just hoping one day they will magically change? Will you stick to your own guidance, or will you let those wise minds help you? Our problems are the same problems humans have always struggled with, which means a guide for this gauntlet exists and has existed for thousands of years.

12:43Philosophy. It offers counsel. It offers you help, but only if you avail yourself to it, if you make use of it and actually listen. Number two, don't conceal the wounds. Consider that whenever illnesses become so life-threatening that their virulence grows despite treatment, a cure is often affected by opposite methods. Accordingly, I will display to the afflicted mind all its sorrows, all its garments of mourning. This will be no gentle path to working a remedy, but that of cautery and the knife. Seneca. Viktor Frankl liked to cure neurotic patients with a method called paradoxical intention.

13:33For insomnia, instead of standard therapies, his cure for the patient was to focus on not falling asleep. Seneca had a similar cure for grief. In a span of less than two years, his father died, his firstborn son died, and twenty days after burying his son, he was banished from Rome. One of the first things he did in exile was write Consolation to Helvia, a long letter consoling his mother, who had lost her husband, her firstborn grandson, and her son. Her instinct, he knew, would be what ours often is, to try not to think about it, to distract her mind, to hide her wounds. Seneca's advice to his mother, and now to us, was to do the opposite.

14:22Don't conceal your wounds, he said. Tear them open. Don't push your misfortunes away. Set them all down before you in a pile. What form of consolation is this, to call back suffering that has been consigned to oblivion and to set the mind when it can scarcely endure one tribulation in full view of all its tribulations. Seneca thought you might ask. Consider, he said, when the severity of a person's condition peaks, the cure is often found in opposite methods. The angry man needs gratitude. The hateful man needs love. The grieving need acceptance. Seneca's prescription would come a couple thousand years before it had the supporting research.

15:12Psychologist and professor James Pennebaker, Ph.D., studied the effects of concealing your problems, struggles, and feelings. Among those who had traumas, Pennebaker concluded, those who kept their trauma secrets went to physicians almost 40 % more often than those who openly talked about their traumas. Later research projects from multiple labs confirmed these results Not talking about important issues in life poses a significant health risk Fight your inclination to hide your wounds and instead do the opposite Tear them open, talk about them, set them down before you Do it in a spirit of boldness, Seneca says Determined to conquer your grief, not to confine it Number three, think about how much worse it could have been.

16:06On May 1st, 2015, Sheryl Sandberg woke up as a wife and went to bed as a widow. On vacation in Mexico with her husband Dave, her children, and some friends, Sandberg found Dave that day in their villa's fitness center, lying in a pool of blood. His heart gave out while he was jogging on a treadmill. After her tragic loss, she co-wrote Option B, Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, with her friend Adam Grant, author, organizational psychologist, and a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In it, she explains, Shockingly, one of the things that helped me the most was focusing on worst-case scenarios.

16:55During the early days of despair, my instinct was to try to find positive thoughts. Adam told me the opposite, that it was a good idea to think about how much worse things could be. Worse? I asked him. Are you kidding me? How could this be worse? His answer cut through me. Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia driving your children. Wow! The thought that I could have lost all three of them had never occurred to me. I instantly felt overwhelmingly grateful that my children were alive and healthy, and that gratitude overtook some of the grief. Donald Robertson, a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, observed that Marcus Aurelius mentioned several times in his meditations the famous line from Epicurus, pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don't magnify them in your imagination.

18:00In his own cognitive psychotherapist practice, Robertson calls this depreciation by analysis. To help people cope with loss, Robertson steers their focus to the knowledge either that their painful sensations are temporary or that they could be much worse. After we experience loss, we want to reach for positive, happy, joyful thoughts. It makes sense. Hopefully those will drown out the painful thoughts. But, similar to Seneca's advice above in our first strategy for coping with grief, we encourage you to try the opposite. Think about how it could have been worse. Like Sandberg, you will likely experience an overwhelming feeling of gratitude.

18:45Which brings us to our next strategy. 4. Practice Gratitude All you need are these Certainty of judgment in the present moment Action for the common good in the present moment And an attitude of gratitude in the present moment For anything that comes your way Marcus Aurelius The word Epictetus uses for gratitude, Eucharistos, means Seeing what is actually occurring in each moment He said,

19:27On the surface, much of what we're upset about or wish hadn't occurred is so objectionable that gratitude seems impossible. But if we can zoom out for that more complex view, understanding and appreciation can emerge. First off, you're alive. That's the silver lining of every shitty situation and should not be forgotten But second everything that has happened and is happening is bringing you to where you are It's contributing to the person you have become and that's a good thing This understanding Epictetus said helps you see the world in full color in the color of gratitude The Stoics believe that we should feel gratitude for all the people and events that form our lives We shouldn't just be thankful for the gifts we receive And our relationships with friends and family We should also be aware of and grateful for the setbacks The conflicts, the losses Why?

20:27Because it's all of those things Interconnected and dependent on each other That made you who and what you are today It is only by seeing the totality of things, good and bad That you gain the understanding necessary to be truly grateful It could be that terrible relationship that imploded spectacularly, but which led you to meeting the love of your life. It could even be the passing of a relative, something that caused you great sadness, but which also spurred you to build stronger relationships with your loved ones. All of these things are sad, and they may not even lead to a happy ending, but they still define the course of your life, and it wouldn't be you sitting there right now without them.

21:13Number five, acceptance. The spirit must be trained to a realization and an acceptance of its lot. There's no ground for resentment in all this. We've entered into a world in which these are the terms life has lived on. Resent a thing by all means if it represents an injustice decreed against yourself personally. But if this same constraint is binding on the lowest... Well, it's almost here. Christmas is just a couple of days away. and maybe you're scrambling. You're like, what should I get my dad? What should I get my mom? I gotta get something to my sister. People love showing off pictures of their kids and that's where today's sponsor comes in.

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22:43That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code STOIC. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. And the highest alike. Then make your peace again with destiny. The destiny that unravels all ties. Seneca Laura Kennedy started her thoughtful coping column in early 2016 at age 27 after the passing of her mother as an attempt to use philosophy as the pragmatic skill it is to navigate the very natural and frightening grief. When we interviewed Laura a little while back, we asked what she would tell someone dealing with loss.

23:29Given all the thinking and reflecting she's done on grief What would she say to someone who just lost a significant other? A close family member? Or anyone important in their lives? She gave the caveat that there's no one-size-fits-all solution But it truly does help a little Even the most helpful things only help a little To adopt a stoic attitude She clarified that I do not mean any form of self-struggle or denial but rather that most comforting element of stoicism, acceptance. Stoicism is less concerned with how you feel than what we do with how we feel. In the midst of grief, there is little internal space to do anything but feel overwhelmed by the new terrain and trajectory of your life.

24:17Both are suddenly and irrevocably altered when someone integral to you dies. Accepting the sense of despair and loss this brings about is important. It's hard. It's not fair. Yet we have to accept it. Letting go is a necessary, if sometimes heart-wrenching gateway to genuine transformation, is how the always Zen Phil Jackson put it. The Stoics called it the art of acquiescence, the giving up and the assenting of whatever has happened rather than fight it. Again, this is very hard. If only it were otherwise, but it's not. We are tiny humans. We are bound to a universe and a fate that is much bigger than us.

25:02We must accept what is outside our control, give up and let go of whatever is no longer ours to possess. We will be better for it, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Number six, this too shall pass. Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone. Marcus Aurelius It has been written that Lincoln's own experience with debilitating depression, melancholy as it was called then, probably contributed to his unique abilities as a leader. He came to embody the stoic maxim, sustené et absténé, bear and forbear, acknowledge the pain, but trod onward.

25:54Do what you can. Endure what you must. Make the best of it. But Lincoln's real strength was his will. The way he was able to resign himself to an onerous task of leading the country through one of its most difficult trials, without giving in to hopelessness. The way he could use his own private turmoil to teach and help others. The way he was able to rise above the den and see life and politics philosophically. While he seemed to possess an extraordinary amount of strength and fortitude, it was a simple phrase that made all the difference throughout Lincoln's life. In 1859, before he was president, before the Union tore itself to pieces and around 750 ,000 people died in the Civil War, the total number dead is still unknown.

26:44Lincoln shared that phrase in a speech at the Wisconsin State Fair. The subject of the speech was supposed to be agriculture, but Lincoln decided to go a little deeper. He told the story of an Eastern king, who asked his wisest philosophers to provide for him a sentence that would not just be true in each and every situation, but always worth hearing, too. They presented him the words, Lincoln said, and this, too, shall pass. how much it expresses, how chastening in the hour of pride, how consoling in the depths of affliction, and this too shall pass away. Marcus Aurelius similarly wrote that it's helpful.

27:27Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone, those that are now and those to come. The events in your life, good and bad, beautiful or tragic or terrifying, flow past us quickly. None of them are stable. Each of them disappears with due time into the rush of the water and is never seen again. Remind yourself, this too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. Number seven, see the blessings in hardship. Those whose years have all been spent in disasters bear even the harshest blows of fortune with a strong resolution that nothing can shake. There is one blessing conferred by constant misfortune, that it finally brings strength to those it always plagues.

28:23Seneca Marcus Aurelius' life was in many ways defined by loss. His father, Verus, died when he was three. In 149, he lost newborn twin boys In 151, he lost his firstborn daughter, Domitia Faustina In 152, another son, Tiberius Elias Antoninus, died in infancy That same year, Marcus' sister Cornificia died Shortly after, Marcus' mother, Domitia Lucila, died In 158, another son, whose name is unknown, died In 161, he lost his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius In 165, another son, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, twin brother of Commodus, died In 169, he lost his son Verus, a sweet boy, during what was supposed to be a routine surgery whom he had hoped would rule alongside Commodus as he had ruled with his own brother.

29:28That same year, he lost that brother, his co-emperor, Lucius Verus. He would lose his wife of thirty-five years not long after. Of Marcus's boys, five died before he did, three of his daughters as well. No parent should outlive their children. To lose eight of them so young? It staggers the mind. Unfair does not even come close. It's grotesque. How easily this could shatter a person. How easily and understandably it might cause them to toss away everything they ever believed. To hate a world that could be so cruel. Yet somehow, we have Marcus Aurelius writing, after all these twists of fate, a note that captures the incredible resilience of the human spirit.

30:20It's unfortunate that this has happened, Marcus writes. No, it's fortunate that this has happened, and I've remained unharmed by it, not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. In the letter Seneca wrote to console his mother that we mentioned above, he first reassured her not to worry about him. Though he lost his father, his son, his life in Rome, he was not grieving. He likened himself to the seasoned, trained soldier. He talked about the comfort of knowing he'd been through worse things and overcome them.

31:02This is the blessing conferred by misfortune, he told her, that it brings strength to those it plagues. If you can't find any other blessing, take this one. You will be made stronger for having gone through this. Number 8. Journal Every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand. Write them. Read them aloud. Talk to yourself and others about them. Epictetus As Ernest Renan observed, Marcus Aurelius wrote for an audience of one. Never, Renan said, has one written more simply for himself. for the sole end of emptying his heart with no other witness than God. That's what journaling is about, getting the thoughts out of your head, the anguish out of your heart, and onto the page.

31:56It's a way of clarifying and alleviating, excising and exercising. A few years ago, Moma Estrella, a designer who had gone through a painful divorce, wrote about how he overcame his depression. Prompted by his work computer to change his password every 30 days, he decided to use this medium as a chance to change his life The password he chose, forgive at H3R And multiple times a day for the next month, he found himself writing that phrase over and over Each time he got to work, each day when he got back from lunch, when his computer would go to sleep, while he was in a meeting or on the phone Forgive her.

32:39Forgive her. Forgive her. Jamie Pennebaker, whose research we cited above, would not be surprised that the act of writing healed Estrella. In his book, Writing to Heal, Pennebaker talks about how the evidence is mounting that the act of writing about a traumatic experience for as little as 15 or 20 minutes a day for three or four days can produce measurable changes in physical and mental health. Here's just a few examples from that mounting evidence. A study by Cambridge University proved how journaling helps improve well-being after traumatic and stressful events. A University of Arizona study showed that people were able to better recover from divorce and move forward if they journaled on the experience.

33:28Keeping a journal is a common recommendation from psychologists as well, because it helps patients stop obsessing and allows them to make sense of the many inputs, emotional, external, psychological, that would otherwise overwhelm them. And as Estrella proved, your writing doesn't need to be Nobel Prize-worthy prose. You can write one word, one phrase, one sentence, over and over. You can break your writing up, a few minutes here, a few minutes there. It doesn't matter how or when, just do it. Do what works for you. Just know that it may turn out to be the most important thing you do all day. Number nine, don't be ashamed to ask for help.

34:13Don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help? Marcus Aurelius. One of the misconceptions of Stoicism is that it's about creating invincible, untouchable superheroes. That it reduces you to an island, a person all alone, sitting in perfect contentment under a tree somewhere. But that's the wrong way to think about it. Stoicism was created by and used by regular people. People who had to interact with and depend on other people. Yes, a Stoic is strong Yes, a Stoic is brave Yes, a Stoic does their duty without complaint, without hesitation A Stoic carries the load and willingly carries the load for others when necessary But they also have to be able to ask for help because sometimes that's the strongest and bravest thing to do In his memoir, Bruce Springsteen talks about how his new interest in music saved him from the grief he felt from losing his grandmother when he was a teenager.

35:29Twenty-some years later, however, he realized music was more a bandage than a cure. At 32, he writes, I just exceeded the once surefire soul and mind-numbing power of my rock and roll meds. He hit a wall. Music, touring, loading up the car and hitting the road, all his usual remedies stopped working. When an old friend saw him for the first time in a little while, there was no small talk. You need professional help. Bruce went to therapy for the first time. He continued going for 30 years. It didn't just change his life. It gave me the rest of my life, he said in an interview with Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell.

36:16The way that I would describe it is you're standing in front of a brick wall and you think you're seeing all that the world is. And then suddenly you start pushing and suddenly a brick drops out and you look through it into this complete another experience and existence and you go, fuck, whoa, I've been living on such a limited level. And it just expanded my vision. It also helped rid me of my depression. Marcus Aurelius, a guy who literally ruled the world, said, don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you're injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help?

37:01Exactly. So what? If you need a minute, ask. If you need a helping hand, ask. If you need therapy, go. If you need to lean on someone or something, do it. It's okay to ask for help. Number 10. Amor Fati. Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will. Then your life will flow well. Epictetus The writer, Jorge Luis Borges, said, A writer, and I believe generally all persons, must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely.

37:53All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. We can learn to find joy in every single thing that happens. We can understand that certain things, particularly bad things, are outside our control. But we can use it all if we learn to love whatever happens to us and face it with unfailing cheerfulness. And again, not just artists. Issues we had with our parents become lessons that we teach our children An injury that lays us up in bed becomes a reason to reflect on where our life is going A tragic loss of a loved one can be an opportunity too Sheryl Sandberg, for instance, took that tragic experience we talked about above and launched a non-profit organization with the goal changing the conversation around adversity The line from Marcus Aurelius about this was that A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it That's how we want to be We want to be the artist that turns pain and frustration and even humiliation into beauty We want to be the entrepreneur that turns a sticking point into a money maker We want to be the person who takes their own experiences and turns them into wisdom that can be learned from and passed on to others.

39:26Nietzsche said, My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati, that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, but love it. Find purpose and opportunity in everything. Love it. You love everything that happens, because you make use of it. What are the best stoic quotes on coping with grief? It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again, and from its very respite gains, forced to savage us.

40:14But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever. Seneca I am not going to prescribe to you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey abroad, or spend a lot of time carefully going through your accounts and administering your estate, or constantly be involved in some new activity. All those things help only for a short time. They do not cure grief, but hinder it. But I would rather end it than distract it. Seneca Let us then refrain from unprofitable tears, for our grief will carry us away to join him sooner than it will bring him back to us.

41:04Seneca Grief is only excusable as long as it is honorable, but when it is only caused by personal interests, it no longer springs from tenderness. Seneca The very fact of one's grief being shared by many persons acts as a consolation, because if it be distributed among such a number, the share of it which falls upon you must be small. Seneca Don't behave as if you are destined to live forever. What's fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now. Marcus Aurelius Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within our control and some things are not.

41:59It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. Epictetus How much more harmful are the consequences of anger and grief than the circumstances that arouse them in us? Marcus Aurelius

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