5. Don’t Be stoic - The Strength of Weakness
When Marcus Aurelius was a boy, he lost his tutor and he began to cry uncontrollably at court. The kind emperor Antoninus watched the young prince sob and wouldn’t let anyone step in, either to console him or to calm him down. He simply allowed him to feel what he was feeling, and wisely he pronounced the following words:
Neither philosophy nor empire takes away natural feeling.
Many of us were not afforded such wise opportunities, and were brought up to believe that vulnerability, whatever form it takes, is something shameful or just plain weakness. And therefore we should control our vulnerability, repress it or hide it, because you don’t want to be weak, do you? Examine the popular saying, “Don’t be weak man,” and you see clearly into one of our culture’s primary biases.
Thankfully women are not as conditioned by this belief, although certainly there are plenty of misogynistic beliefs going around in our culture regarding female weakness. However, the saying as it relates to men is not just a popular expression, really it’s a social commandment: “Don’t be weak man.” Or if that one does not suit you, here are others that you likely have heard:
“You gotta be strong”
“Tough it out”
“Boys don’t cry” (but, implied, girls do)
“Get your shit together”
“Don’t be a sissy” (implied weak like women are, “sissy” meaning sister)
“Don’t be a pussy” (with an extra dose of misogyny for this one)
“You must have a stiff upper lip”
“Weakness is for suckers”
And of course, we cannot leave out the classic: “Be stoic.” And as most Stoics know, the definition of the modern word itself, when it does not relate to the school of philosophy, is: “not affected by or showing passion or feeling; especially, firmly restraining response to pain or distress.” What a revealing definition, as far as social conditionings and norms are concerned. And how this definition of the word “stoic” relates to Stoicism is another very revealing topic, which we will address more fully elsewhere.
We could go on, but you get the main message right? Don’t be weak man - just don’t. And really the same goes for you ladies, although we know that you’re generally more emotional - girls cry - and therefore you are naturally prone to weakness. So we’ll give you some social license, since we’re all clear anyhow on who’s the “weaker sex.”
Yes, so let’s not be weak because, as must be entirely clear from all the social conditionings and messages you received for years upon years: weak equals bad. And strength equals good. Yes this is splendid advice isn’t it? Yes, splendid, except for all those times in life when you are ... weak or vulnerable. The truth is, whether man or woman, there will be plenty of times in life, sometimes extending for years, when you will feel weak.
Your childhood may well have been a mixed bag, or outright harsh, and how vulnerable and ill-equipped we are as kids when are confronted with unconscious, neglectful or abusive parents; or when we are bullied or receive ill-treatment at schools. You may feel anxious, depressed, confused, unfulfilled with work, confronted with illness, going through a separation, stressed about your financial security, worried about the state of the world, and on and on. Think of how many situations there are in life when we feel weak.
Except, please, remember what we’ve repeatedly taught you since childhood: don’t be weak. In other words, what this sorry social conditioning translates to is: don’t feel what you are feeling in your life. It’s pretty incredible when you really examine this social phenomenon, and take a little time to break it down and expose it’s core message, in this case visible in plain sight.
What the social commandment, and conditioning, is really telling us is: don’t feel your vulnerability. Or at a minimum don’t dwell there, because vulnerability is weak. And weak is bad.
How sad and unwise this conditioning is. Because what it really tells us is: where you are in your life - whether anxiety, depression, loss, fear - the weakness or vulnerability you are feeling, it’s not really OK. And you really need to get strong and move on. The only problem is that, most often, this is simply terrible advice. Because if we distil it, what it says to me is: to not be where I actually am. What you tell me is best for me, as I am suffering, is: to not be where I actually am inside, because, as we’ve been told countless times, it’s weak. So pick yourself up, stiffen your upper lip, and soldier on.
Yeah, except that most of the time that’s just not how life actually works. It’s not really possible to not be where you actually are! If you are anxious, sad, depressed, addicted, overworked, divorced, or so in many other “weak” states, then that is where you are, and no amount of telling you not to be weak, not to be there, will get you out of that state, or make you stronger for that matter.
On the contrary, the social commandment not be weak, not to dwell in vulnerability, not to be there, makes matters worse, and sometimes significantly worse - speaking here as a psychotherapist who has accompanied many people through hard times.
When everywhere around you, from childhood on, you hear the message “Don’t be weak” - or it’s reverse “Be strong” - and when you have yourself internalised it so much (even to a degree where it becomes unconscious to you), then, come what may, you will become your own enforcer of the social commandment. For that is exactly how a powerful social conditioning works - after all, it’s called a conditioning for a reason.
How are you the enforcer, you ask? For starters, you will have dutifully internalised that you shouldn’t really be where you actually are - in the “weak state,” whatever it looks like (anxiety, sadness, fear etc.). And it doesn’t help that the “weak state” generally doesn’t feel so good. A genuine part in you understandably wants out, because no one likes to suffer. And you well know, and remember, that weakness is bad, weakness is for losers, so - chop, chop - we gotta get out of here, out of this state. But there’s just one little problem: how do you not be where you actually are?
Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.
- Jack Kornfield, Buddhist teacher
But not to worry, for we adults have learned, through myriad conditionings, to specialise in the impossible, and thankfully we’ve developed a veritable arsenal, a flexible array of “not being there” solutions. So the enforcement of the command will come “easy,” almost naturally from inside ourselves. And, bonus, we will get extra assistance from the Matrix of cultural and social norms, that surround us everywhere, and help us in “not being there.”
So here is some of what is on offer “to not be there,” and we can all recognise a number of these:
Avoidance: if I ignore this, it will just go away.
Repression: be stoic - stuff those feelings down - until they disappear or you can’t feel much at all.
Denial: what vulnerability? I’m just fine!
Rationalisation: let’s not be emotional here, let’s not feel this - we just need to think this through.
Drink, Drug or Medicate: let’s take the edge off this shit, let’s numb it out, let’s leave this place or bury it altogether.
Mental Bypass: No problem here - I’ve read an article and solved this already.
Distract, Escape, Entertain: nothing to feel or think here - I’m literally somewhere else.
Overwork: as I bury myself in work, the feelings will just go away - really, I have so much work that I have no time for them anyways.
Pretend: how am I doing? I’m doing great!
How many ways there are to not be where we are! And sometimes, it’s all too understandable to not want to be there. And there can even be a genuine need for that, because we need relief from painful symptoms and we simply do not know what else to do. In a sense, it’s our human lot, but the problem is weakness-banishment strategies take a real toll on us. Repression, denial, addictions, distractions, overwork - all these patterns are actually quite bad for us, and they create a host of other psychological and physical problems, as mental health professionals and doctors know all too well. And this is not just the perspective of people in the helping professions, there are also now many scientific studies to prove it.
So if you are feeling weakness in your life, try not to follow the social commandment, try not to go down the common road because it actually doesn’t work, and it certainly doesn’t lead to more well-being. In fact, perversely, it leads to even more existential difficulties because artificial or imposed strength - whatever its form - leads to even more weakness, and yet more sufferings. And psychotherapists see this unhelpful pattern in people very frequently, precisely because it is so common a social conditioning.
The better path, of course, is to recognise this harmful pattern or script, and to embrace our weakness, which is really to say to embrace our full humanity and our whole lives.
Because the truth is: there is nothing wrong with feeling weak. There is nothing shameful, or less-than, or strange, with vulnerability and weakness. In fact, quite the opposite: weakness is normal, weakness happens to all of us and weakness is simply part of the journey.
Why? Because weakness is actually an inherently unavoidable part of life ... We will all encounter hardships, reversals of fortune, illness, the loss of loved ones, and we will all incur baggage, existential wounds and sufferings. And so naturally there will be times when we experience difficult feelings, and times when we simply feel weak.
So if we wish to have better lives, which is also one of the fundamental aims of Stoicism, it is essential not to banish weakness. It simply does not work; indeed it is the wrong medicine for the ailment. Rather, we need to learn to accept and to embrace life, as much as we can. And we need to learn to work with what life brings us.
When things go wrong, we want out. When we are besieged by afflictive emotions, we try to find a way around them. The last thing we want to do is go through them - even though doing so would lead us to unimaginable gifts on the other side.
– Miriam Greenspan, psychotherapist and author
And, paradoxically, what you will discover is that there is also great strength in really accepting and working with our weaknesses, which, often enough, are simply our natural feelings - just like emperor Antoninus wisely taught the young Marcus Aurelius. In fact, in this process of embracing our vulnerabilities and feelings, there lies one of the greatest existential gifts of all: the opportunity to walk a path towards real healing and genuine well-being - a path some of us like to call Philosophy, or the therapy of the soul.