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The Paradox of The Dichotomy of Control and the Trap of Feeling Good
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Almost everyone who reads a bit of Stoicism gets the dichotomy of control. Far fewer actually feel any relief from it. You can recite "some things are up to us and some are not" and still lie awake at 3am. This episode is about why that gap exists and how to close it.
As Epictetus put it, "the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have." I dig into the paradox in that, and how to apply the dichotomy at three levels rather than one: external events, your emotions, and the judgments underneath them. I also bring in cognitive behavioural therapy as a practical bridge between knowing the idea and living it.
I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about practicing with the dichotomy of control. A lot of people say that there are some things within your control and some things that are not within your control, and they don't really feel much of an emotional relief just because they can think in those terms. What I'm saying is that you can cognitively understand something without embodying the principle. Sort of like the idea of no self in Buddhist meditation. I can explain to you that from a neurological perspective, there is no center of experience, right? There's no place in your brain that is like the self, that's you. Or in your body, that's you. And I can tell you to look for yourself right now, and it wouldn't be super difficult to reveal to you that there is not one central place where the self is. Whatever you are calling self is really just a fluctuation of energy and experience, self-referencing. When you pick things apart, the self is kind of like a watch. When you put the strap and the cogs and the dials and the face of the watch together, it looks like a watch. When you put our memories and our ambitions and dreams and sensations all together, it feels like there's a self. But there isn't actually one place where that self is. I can explain this to you, but you won't go through life having transcended the self and being free from suffering. That might be years of work or even a lifetime of work or maybe something that is never achieved. That is the bullseye in Buddhist meditation, after all, is an abiding selflessness. The dichotomy of control is kind of like this, where we can conceptually understand it. We get the message, but does that actually change our experience? Often not. And the reason why is because something happens, right? Say we get bad news, or let's just say that we were expecting a certain amount of money at the end of the month that would be very important for us to sustain our livelihood, and we get told that that amount of money may or may not be postponed. So then naturally you feel slightly stressed out, you've just entered into chaos, that thing that you were depending on is now not so certain. So you can tell yourself, well, this is not within my control. I'm going to practice the dichotomy of control. This is not my responsibility. The external world is not within my control. All I can do is focus on my internal world. And so you try through gritted teeth to do that, but you still feel stressed, and then you say to yourself, I'm trying to practice the dichotomy of control, but it's not really working that well. It's helping a little bit, but I'm still stressed, and I can't stop thinking about the uncertainty, and I still have anxiety. So this stoicism stuff, it's kind of useful, but also kind of not. I'm still stressing out. Even though I know the dichotomy of control, even though I understand it and I believe it to be true, I'm still stressing out. And the way that I would encourage you to practice with the dichotomy of control to get maximum benefit from it is to practice it across multiple levels. So in this example, we're practicing the dichotomy of control on the surface level. External event happens. Is this up to me? Is this something I'm responsible for? The answer no. Okay, so that's the first level. But there are lots of levels going on, and this is why it's important to have mindfulness and awareness over the kinds of cognitions that we're having. If you haven't done much research into cognitive behavioral therapy, I do suggest you do that because it will actually improve your stoic practice. CBT is essentially a systematic distillation of stoic ideas set up in a framework to treat specific psychological maladies. Two good books on the topic would be Donald Robertson's book on cognitive behavioral therapy and also the book Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns. You'll learn a lot about CBT in those resources. And so going back to the dichotomy of control, we're in the situation we're expecting a certain amount of money, it's not coming, maybe it will, maybe it won't. Is this up to me? Am I responsible for this outcome? No, I'm not. That's the first level of practicing the dichotomy of control. Then this is none of my concern. That's what Epictetus recommended we say, this is none of my concern. But then watch out for the next thought. The next thought is usually something like, but I still feel stressed. I wish this stress would go away. The dichotomy of control is not working. We need to practice the dichotomy of control here too. So I still feel stressed. There's stress in my body. Is that up to me? Can I just snap my fingers right now and just get rid of this emotional state immediately? No, I can't. Then that emotional state is none of my concern. That is what it is. But I want that feeling to go away. Comes another thought. And you reply. Well I can't make that feeling go away. But I can address the want for it to go away. The want for it to go away is within my control. So I'm not going to want it to go away anymore. I'm going to accept it. I'm going to be okay with it being there. So you see there are three levels to this. There's the event, there's the emotion, then there's the judgment about the emotion. So you can practice that dichotomy of control across three levels. And I'd recommend you do this to get practiced at it. When you develop expertise, you may do all of these three levels in one. Just in my own experience, the way that we humans operate is that an event happens, we get some kind of physiological reaction to that event, we have a judgment about that physiological reaction, and then we may have another follow-up judgment about our judgment of the judgment or our ability or inability to get rid of the emotion. Especially people practicing self-improvement and philosophy. We're often hard on ourselves if we feel negative emotions. It's like we're doing something wrong. We're failing. I'm really stressed right now. I must not be a good stoic. Incorrect. You still have the opportunity to practice stoicism when you are stressed. You differentiate between what is within your control and what is not within your control. The stress in your body right this second is not within your control. Your hormones are not within your control. Your neurochemistry right now is not within your control. The amount of sleep that you had last night right now is not within your control. The amount of times that your boundaries have been crossed over the last week is not within your control. The past in general is not within your control. You're here. What is in your control is your judgment, your considered opinions. I'm stressed right now, but that's not within my control. But I'm still stressed. Why didn't the technique work? If you're asking why the technique didn't work, you're not doing the technique. This is similar to when people complain about too much talking in guided meditations. It's like if you're paying attention mindfully, it doesn't matter what's happening in the meditation if it's silent or talking. You're having thoughts and you're getting distracted by the talking. And it's those distractions that are distracting you, not necessarily the talking voice on the meditation. So when you're asking, well, why isn't the dichotomy of control working? You can always follow up with another question. Is the dichotomy of control working or not working within my control? No, it's not. But my desire for it to work is. And what you'll find is the moment that you relinquish the desire for that to work is the moment you won't need the technique at all. That's the paradox of this stuff. I will call this the paradox of the dichotomy of control. When you want it to work, that is clinging to something that is not within your control. When you can practice with the dichotomy of control, but at the same time not need it to work because you understand that whether it works or not is not within your control, that's when it will actually work. I hope this helps, but the takeaway message here is to practice the dichotomy of control on events, on emotions, on judgments about events and emotions.
