7 Stoic Practices To Ease Anxiety & Quiet Overthinking

The third meditation will help you cultivate the skill of observing your feelings without judgment to resolve emotional negative feedback loops and reduce the intensity of the anxiety. A vital step in working with our anxiety is recognizing that anxiety is not our enemy. In fact, it is our friend—it is there to try and keep us safe. When we can become comfortable with the physical sensations of anxiety and welcome there, the mind will begin to open up, and all future Stoic techniques will become much more effective.

The fourth meditation will help reframe despair and hopelessness by placing our anxiety in a broader context, creating a pathway for greater peace. One of the most famous Stoic techniques is “The View From Above”, and this works by helping us create cognitive distance between ourselves and the triggering event. In this meditation, we zoom out from our current situation and try to view our worries and anxieties from a cosmic perspective. This technique can immediately bring ease to situations that feel very intense and personal.

The fifth meditation will guide you through a visualization exercise to confront your anxiety in a safe space, so it begins to lose its hold on you as you generate the confidence to face it in reality. “Premeditation of Adversity” is a technique that has you psychologically face your fears in your mind’s eye. This is also known as “cognitive exposure”. The idea is that it is only when we start to face our fears that they will begin to fade. If we avoid them, then they will grow more intense.

The sixth meditation will keep you from arguing with reality and begin generating love for your circumstances, thus empowering you to make changes from grounded reverence rather than resistance. “Amor Fati” is a technique that has you actively find things you love about your current situation. The idea is that acceptance is a great first step, but actively learning to love your current struggles is the next level along the path of Stoic mastery. There is always some benefit we can derive from any situation.

The seventh meditation shifts denial of death into a recognition of its beautiful naturalness to inspire a more vibrant appreciation of life while silencing core fears. Most of our anxiety on the deepest level can be traced back to death. When we can embrace death, as the Stoics did, we will find a renewed sense of urgency and appreciation for life. This meditation will help us become relaxed with the idea of death, and instead of worrying about it we can instead start attempting to live fully.