Are Stoics Emotionless? What Stoicism Really Says

You have probably used the word without thinking about it. Someone gets bad news and stays calm, and we say they are "being stoic." We mean shut down. Unbothered. Feeling nothing. It is the most common thing people believe about Stoicism, and it is wrong in a way that matters, because it puts people off the one idea that might actually help them.

Listen to the full episode above, or read on for the key ideas and a practice you can try today.

Where the misconception came from

I put this to Erick Cloward, host of the Stoic Coffee Break podcast and author of Stoicism 101, because he has a clear answer for why the word turned into its own opposite.

The Stoics, he explained, practised a kind of discipline that meant they did not react like everyone else when things went wrong. Picture a real calamity. Most people are running around like a chicken with its head cut off. The Stoic is taking their time, controlling their response. Over centuries, people watching that calm drew the obvious conclusion: he must not be feeling anything. She must be disconnected. That is how "stoic" came to mean cold.

But the calm was never an absence of feeling. As Erick put it, the Stoics feel their emotions dramatically. They are just masters of them. Closer to a Zen monk than a robot. He used an image I keep coming back to: your emotions are like the weather. It is raining this morning, sunny this afternoon. Sometimes you have to sit with them and let them pass on by.

The two people who miss the same bus

Here is the example from the episode that makes the whole thing click.

If circumstances controlled your emotions, then two people who miss the same bus should have exactly the same reaction. If the situation is doing the work, one person freaking out means the other should be freaking out too.

But that is not what happens. One person shrugs, sits down, and reads a book while they wait for the next one. The other is furious. Same bus. Same delay. Two completely different responses. The variable is not the event. It is what each person made the event mean.

This is the hinge of the whole philosophy, and it is older than the Stoics make it sound. It is not the bus that disturbs you. It is your judgement about the bus.

I mentioned to Erick a line from La Rochefoucauld that I think about a lot: that supreme intelligence is knowing the real value of things. That is what the Stoics were actually training. Not a flat, feeling-free life, but emotions that fit the situation. You do not get flustered by something that does not deserve it. You save the strong reaction for the thing that earns it.

Why this is good news, not bad

Erick was honest about the fact that this took him years to live, not just understand. He used to get set off easily. He was jealous of people who stayed calm in situations that left him furious, and he could not work out how they did it. The shift came when he realised it was his own thinking doing it, not the thing itself. Even then it took a long time to integrate. By his own admission he still falls short and still has to work his way through it.

That admission is the useful part. You do not have to win this on day one.

Because the freeing thing about the idea is that you do not have to believe it fully for it to start working. You only have to entertain it. The next time you snap at someone, or spiral over an email, you can notice, even ten minutes later, that it was probably how you were thinking about it that made you feel that way. That is one degree of separation between you and the reaction. Do that often enough and you react a little less intensely, or recover a little faster. That is the whole game: closing the gap between knowing Stoicism and living it, one rep at a time.

For me, that is what people are really pointing at when they say they have "woken up." It is not anything mystical. It is just noticing that you are not at the mercy of events. Your judgement is shaping how you feel, far more than the event is.

A practice you can try

When to use it: The next time you notice a strong, sudden reaction. Anger, anxiety, the urge to fire off a reply.

What to do:

1. Name the event in plain, factual terms. "The train is cancelled." "He disagreed with me in the meeting."
2. Now name the judgement you added on top. "This always happens to me." "He thinks I am an idiot."
3. Say both out loud or write them down, so you can see the join between them.

What to notice: How much of the feeling was sitting in the second sentence, not the first. That gap is the only place you have any control, and noticing it is the whole skill.

If this resonated, you might also find these useful

• The dichotomy of control, explained simply: why Stoicism starts with sorting what is up to you from what is not.
• Seneca on anger: practical techniques for the emotion most likely to run the show.
• The Anxiety section of the training manual, if it is overthinking rather than anger that tends to catch you.

Try it for a week

If you want to practise this daily rather than just read about it, the 7-Day Stoic Challenge is a free, guided place to start. One short audio lesson and one exercise a day for a week. You can begin at stoicchallenge.co.

Ghost Settings

• Slug: /are-stoics-emotionless/
• Meta title: Are Stoics Emotionless? What Stoicism Really Says
• Meta description: No, Stoics are not emotionless. Here is what Stoicism actually teaches about emotions, why the myth exists, and a simple practice to try.
• Tags: podcast, emotions, stoicism, dichotomy-of-control, erick-cloward