It probably won’t surprise you that the ancient Stoics aimed to treat their thoughts objectively. They developed the concept of cognitive distancing and taught others to do the same.
Stoic cognitive distancing starts with negative visualisation and employs a method nearly indistinguishable from modern CBT. Today we’ll run through the idea developed in Stoicism and how it can be applied to modern life.
Negative Visualisation
Cognitive distancing originates from Stoic negative visualisation. This central practice comes down to imagining worst case scenarios. That way, when the things you value most are taken away from you, you’ll be ready to part with them. Such things includes our abilities, possessions & relationships.
For example, Epictetus reminds us that our children have been given to us “for the present, not inseparably nor forever.” With this line of thinking, he advised parents when kissing their child, to silently reflect on the possibility that she could die tomorrow.
While this reasoning may seem like all “doom and gloom”, that’s not quite the case. After all, despite what connotations of being “stoic” may have, the Stoics were actually a joyful bunch! There are two core reasons why negative visualisation is actually a positive practice.
Firstly, by imagining these things disappearing, you will learn to value them in a new way. You will get better at living in the moment by recognising the impermanence of things, especially those dearest to us. The Stoics argued that nothing is ever truly “ours”. We can only ever “borrow” things from the universe.
Second, you will be more prepared if (or when) these things are taken from you. This preparedness comes from already having considered the possibility of losing our possessions. And partly from knowing you didn’t squander the limited time you had.
In Epictetus’s example above, after a child’s passing, you would have no regrets how you spent your time together.
Reverse Negative Visualisation
Reverse negative visualisation offers a similar practice, with an additional twist. Rather than imagining something is taken from us, we imagine the same thing happening to someone else.
For example, if you were to drop a glass and it broke, you may react emotionally because it’s happening to you. However, consider instead the same event occurring to someone else. Now, would it be so bad? Would you care? It’s pretty likely you might tell them:
“It’s only a glass. These things happen. There’s no reason to get upset.”
That’s why we should imagine these “terrible things” instead happening to someone else. Without this “distance”, it’s too easy to feel like everything is just happening “to us”.
Train yourself, therefore, at the very outset to say to every harsh impression: “You are merely an impression [phantasia] and not at all what you appear to be [phainomenon].”
(Enchiridion, 1)
Take a step back and realise that harsh impressions are subjective and do not reflect reality in itself. The Stoic concept of katalepsis is the idea that distancing ourselves from our impressions will bring us tranquility and happiness.
Cognitive Distancing in Modern CBT
While Stoicism was primarily a philosophy, the Stoics were among the first to review the inner workings of the mind, a field we recognise today as psychology. So much, that cognitive distancing has become a foundation of modern Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). In fact, modern research has even shown that cognitive distancing often results in peace of mind.
“Distancing” refers to the ability to view one’s own thoughts (or beliefs) as constructions of “reality” rather than as reality itself. (Alford & Beck, 1997, p. 142)
Cognitive distancing has become central to CBT for its ability to cure a range of mental health issues. Its scope reaches from anxiety and addiction to severe depression. Time-out and postponement are two CBT strategies that use cognitive distancing.
Time-out promotes behaviour change by reducing the frequency of a target behaviour. This might involve, for example, putting a child in a room with less sensory stimulation to calm them down. This change of environment results in cognitive distancing.
Postponement, on the other hand, aims to reduce the act of worrying for people with chronic anxiety. In this practice, people should first list out all their worries. With this list, they can then determine whether there’s anything they can do about it right now.
If so, they should do that thing (even if the action is to plan an action for later). If not, they should postpone thinking about it until their designated “worry time”. You might recognise this framework from the Stoic dichotomy of control.
The Coloured Glasses Analogy
CBT offers several analogies to help understand how cognitive distancing works. For example, we can imagine someone wearing glasses with coloured lenses. When they see the world through these glasses, everything will appear to have a tint.
Once they take off the glasses, they’ll notice the world does not have that tint; it was the glasses that caused it. However, as long as they keep wearing the glasses, they will not know what the world’s true colours are.
In this example, our distorted thoughts and perceptions are akin to wearing coloured glasses. Taking off the glasses is like cognitive distancing. By recognising our distorted thoughts and perceptions, we can begin to see our perception for what it truly is: a distorted “reality”.
You’ll find this distancing mechanism in mindfulness and meditation as well. That’s partly why the third wave of CBT has focused around “mindfulness and acceptance-based” approaches.
Looking at the Bigger Picture
If we take a step even further back, we might imagine the grander scheme of things. The Stoics took this big picture approach.
For example, Marcus Aurelius often meditated on the sun rising and the size of the cosmos. While Marcus had to make difficult decisions as the emperor of Rome, he found solace in considering this larger perspective. After all, he was just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things.
A large part of this philosophy comes down to focusing on things within our control. For example, Epictetus often clarified that things can be neither good, nor bad. Only our own conscious thoughts and actions can be deemed good or bad.
For this reason, spending time cultivating and exhibiting virtue is the best thing we can do in life. Everything else is subject to the whims of the universe.
Cognitive Distancing in a Nutshell
It’s all too easy for our distorted thoughts and emotions to take over our minds and well-being. That’s why the ancient Stoics proposed negative visualisation as a way to gain tranquility.
By imagining things that happen to us instead happening to a third party, we gain a sense of objectivity. Something that may at first seem terrible then begins to seem neutral.
Cognitive distancing is so powerful and simple that it even became the foundation of the modern CBT psychology practice. We can even take it a step further and imagine the size of the universe, like Marcus Aurelius did, to realise that our difficulties are actually not so important in the grand scheme of things.
As long as we focus on what we can control, such as our thoughts and virtue, we can gain this sense of inner peace.
Learn and practice objective cognitive distancing with Mind & Practice today.