Stoic practice · Variable

Facing a Fear

Stay with one everyday feared scene and watch the rating change.

Use when: specific fear, everyday dread, avoidance

How the practice works

1. Read the frame This practice asks you to hold a difficult image in mind on purpose. It's meant for everyday fears and dreads. If this touches trauma, panic, or anything that feels unsafe, stop now — this isn't the tool for that, and a professional can help you properly. You can leave at any time.
2. Read the frame Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by their opinions about the things.
3. Read the frame We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
4. Name the situation Bring the feared situation to mind as a short scene — a clip with a beginning, a middle, and an end, about a minute long.
5. Notice the intensity Rate it now, from 0 to 10. How strong is the anxiety as you picture it?
6. Run the exercise Bring the feared situation to mind as a short scene — a clip with a beginning, a middle, and an end, about a minute long. Play the clip through, start to finish, in your mind's eye. Don't push it away, and don't dramatise it. Just watch it happen. Play it again. Notice it's only a picture. You're safe here, watching. Keep going. The feeling rises, then — if you stay with it — it begins to level, and fall. That falling is the point. Don't stop while it's still high; that's the one thing that undoes the work.
7. Notice the intensity Rate it again, 0 to 10.
8. Record what you notice What moved, and what did you notice while you stayed with the scene?
9. Choose the next action It moved. What’s one small step toward this you could actually take in the real world?

“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by their opinions about the things.”

— Epictetus, Enchiridion 5