On stress

Stress comes from the inside, not the outside.

This is a common theme is ancient wisdom in both its traditions, eastern and westerns.

The stoics say that only we can inflict sadness or anger on ourselves. When we get attached to things outside of our own self, we leave ourselves vulnerable when those things inevitably get taken away from us. It’s a simple lesson, profound and yet very tough to bring to action. Seneca used to live in a shack and wear rags for a week every year, to remind himself to not get too attached to his material wealth and that even if he ends up poor, it wouldn’t be too bad.

The eastern teachings also present a similar path. While the westerns are more focused on what do do an how to behave, the easterners are more focused on training the mind itself to be robust against outside influence. They preach that our misery comes from our identification with our feelings as if they are part of us. When anger and sadness take us over, we feel not only as if we are submerged in them, it feels like we are them. They are occupying every cell of our being. The solution is to train the mind to identify this as a temporary tenant of our thought. We want to teach the mind to observe these feelings comes and go like the clouds in the sky.

What I have learned very recently is how much both traditions ring true. The more I grow, the more I take control of my life, get closer to the things I want, find purpose and meaning, and just get better at being a non-shit human being. But that hasn’t correlated much with my level of stress. Today, I realize that stress is indeed a self-inflicted injury. For a long time, this was the only way I could motivate my ADHD brain to do anything. It was a defense mechanism against despair and decay into a living condition that I found hostile and torturous.

Stress has also become a habit. As strange as it sounds, being stressed feels more normal to me than not, I know how to conduct myself when I’m stressed, I have more energy and I perform at a very high level. But it doesn’t take much genius to see the downside of said behaviour. It’s not good for you. But there are degrees to this realization. Before seeing what life could look like stress-free, I just didn’t get it. I had to do what the elders taught us. I had to rid myself of the many material things that I held very dear. I had to teach myself that even if it all goes to shit, I’ll be ok. This pill is still high up my throat but I’m working on it. I also had to immerse myself with the mind, train it to be present and to learn what it means to “not identify with emotions” and see them instead as clouds in the sky that is your consciousness. I still can’t do it. But I’ve experienced it for enough moments to know what it’s like and to understand that there’s a different way for things to be.

Stress comes from the inside. Nobody can stress you. Epictetus teaches us that no one can inflict psychological damage on us and stress is certainly that. The world is very good at presenting us with reasons why we would want to get stressed. But the decision to get stressed needs to come from the inside. Stoicism is about detaching one’s self from everything that it’s not, thus preventing one’s self from being stressed. Zen is about allowing the stress to come and go and thus understanding that at its root, it is merely a self-inflicted state of mind that we can opt out of.

Agrippinus was stoic philosopher. One morning, he got news that Nero, the tyrant emperor had exiled him out of Rome. Agrippinus said: “Very well, we shall take our lunch in Aricia (a place in 25km from Rome).” Agrippinus didn’t had not a single fuc#.