Uncovering the De-Humanising Power of Stoicism And It’s Traumatic Effects
OK, boomer. Hopefully that got rid of most of them, so if you’re still here..
As the video above explains — emotions are an important part of the human experience and dismissing them as stupid; a nuisance, is anathema to actually learning from the issue and moving on mentally.
As someone who has suffered from PTSD most of my life, I feel like stoicism has not only failed me in my travels it has outright been a Devil hurling torment and wickedness instead of allowing me to meet my needs.
To be clear — I don’t think stoicism is something evil but it is the cause of great injustice and suffering. In my life I’ve witnessed others apply stoicism through the lens of their understanding — in particular people in positions of authority who have not had the same life experience as others. These authority figures tend to write off a more emotional persons response as unreasonable because of the different life experiences they’ve had.
I’ve always been happy to work hard, to help others and to contribute to something greater than myself — and yet stoics today seem to not care about results only how you apply their philosophies. If you aren’t suppressing your emotions in the course of your activities they will act punitively and in judgement not realising they are exercising a form of “toxic positivity” that can also lead to forms of bullying and discrimination such as ableism, misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. In a time when company HR teams are spending more money and working harder to prevent burnout, and stress, it seems curious we push stoic philosophy at work given that it dismisses peoples experience of burnout and stress as a silly nuisance.
I was once told by a rather stoic boss that he thought I was on crack until he found out I was gay and that “it all made sense then”. This was rather insulting and a wildly inappropriate comment to make. Twelve years later I’m still in a bit of shock that someone in a position of authority over me — who decided my future and was supposed to look out for me, could say that to me without remorse. It may have been meant to be endearing and not have been meant as homophobia but that was still my boss making a comment comparing my lifetime of PTSD and the symptoms to being on crack to how all gay people are. Absolutely charming.
Shoving our emotions down a trap door is backed by modern psychology as an unhealthy coping mechanism. We want people to process their issues in a healthy way so that they aren’t weighted by them. Ignoring your anger can lead to depression, ignoring depression can lead to a medical emergency. Yet when it comes to certain clinical applications of psychology there is a curious disconnect where we focus on “breaking the chain” mentally with something that’s bothering us — while ignoring actual external issues that are causing that suffering. For example — we say that if someone is bothering you you should just ignore them. We know there are *plenty* of exceptions to a base rule like that and blindly following it would be harmful —yet I have seen stoicism misused in exactly this way.
It’s good to be strong, life is hard. There are plenty of challenges we face that we cannot be prepared for so turning to a philosophy like stoicism can help us face adversity — but I don’t think it should ever have been used as a yardstick for measuring the performance and value of others. No one can know everything and no one can control everything, it might be comforting to some people to be more stoic but for someone else it can be the opposite. I fall into that latter group — I am passionate about protecting others from harm, about living life to the fullest and creating the best world for myself and those around me — conservative thinking is actually harmful to my ability to live my life to the fullest and to care for others.
Since rejecting the stoic projections of others I’ve been able to healthily process my anger and the causes of issues that have happened in the past so that I can work on ensuring they don’t re-occur. It’s not about vilifying but about identifying — how did this happen, how can I avoid that mistake in future. If I had just buried the emotion I would be ignoring the intensity of the event and a very important part of it’s context. Without the context of emotions I don’t think I could heal and I suspect others can’t either.
I can see one good use for stoicism though — the next time one of it’s adherents says something dumb to me I’ll just keep calm and carry on.
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