I have a lot of respect for people who can stand their ground without losing their temper.
It’s easy enough to remain composed when someone is being reasonable with you. What impresses me is someone who can face a deliberate insult, recognize exactly what’s happening, and still have the presence of mind to respond on their own terms. Most of us know how quickly an argument can get out of hand, and how frustrating it feels to look back and realize we let our emotions get the better of us.
I’ve never liked the idea that staying calm means quietly accepting bad treatment. Sometimes a remark deserves to be challenged, or someone needs to be told they’ve crossed a line.
I’d like you to be able to do that with confidence, without feeling that you have to become angry to be taken seriously. Even if the other person never admits they were wrong, you should be able to walk away knowing you said what mattered and handled yourself in a way you respect.
Cato the Younger was in the middle of pleading a case when Lentulus decided to make a spectacle of him. He gathered as much spit as he could in his mouth and spat it straight onto Cato’s forehead. It was a disgusting act of humiliation, carried out in front of the very people Cato had been addressing. And there he stood, with another man’s spit on his face.
But Cato simply wiped his face and spoke.
“If anyone says you have no cheek, Lentulus, I'll tell him he's mistaken.”
It was a clever play on words, mocking both Lentulus’ mouth and his shameless behavior.
Seneca preserved the story in On Anger, and I can understand why. Lentulus had gone to extraordinary lengths to humiliate Cato, yet Cato responded with one dry remark that made the insult reflect rather poorly on the man who delivered it.
It’s interesting how little Cato seemed to need from Lentulus. He didn’t attempt to convince the man that he deserved respect, and he had no interest in matching his behavior. He answered the insult in his own way, leaving Lentulus responsible for the disgraceful thing he’d done. That’s a difficult kind of composure to develop. When someone deliberately provokes us, we often feel an immediate obligation to defend ourselves. We want them to understand that they’ve misjudged us, even when it becomes obvious that they have no intention of changing their mind.
Epictetus offered a useful perspective on this in Enchiridion. When someone treats you badly or speaks badly of you, he explained, they’re acting according to their own understanding of the situation. They can only act on what seems right to them, even when their judgment is mistaken.
He suggested remembering a simple phrase when someone speaks against you:
“It seemed so to him.”
Someone may genuinely believe you’re incompetent, selfish, or deserving of criticism. You can recognize that this is their opinion without immediately feeling compelled to correct it. They may have misunderstood you, or they may know something about you that you haven’t considered. Either way, you can decide how much attention their judgment deserves before choosing what to do about it.
The difficulty is that we don’t experience everyone’s judgment in the same way. A stranger’s criticism may mean very little, while the same words from someone we admire can leave us questioning ourselves for days. I’ve found it useful to think of this as a kind of loan. We allow other people to hold pieces of our self-respect, often without realizing we’ve done it. Their approval makes us feel more confident, and when they withdraw it, we become anxious to win it back. But their approval was never something we could guarantee. We can behave well and give people every reason to think highly of us, yet they may still come to an unfavorable conclusion.
That doesn’t mean we should stop caring about other people’s opinions. A close friend may recognize a fault we’ve overlooked, and someone who understands our work may offer criticism that helps us improve.
In fact, some of the hardest provocations to handle are the ones that contain a little truth.
Suppose you’ve made a careless mistake at work and a colleague criticizes you in front of everyone. Perhaps they do it deliberately to embarrass you. You immediately feel defensive, even though you know that part of their criticism is accurate.
Epictetus had a rather amusing observation about our faults. In another passage of the Enchiridion, he advises that if someone reports to you that another person has been speaking badly of you, you can reply that the person must not have known about your other faults, or they would have mentioned those too.
It’s a useful reminder that we all have faults. If the criticism is true, we can learn from it, even when the person delivering it wants to embarrass us. We may need to correct a mistake or apologize, and we can do so while objecting to the way we were treated. Admitting you’re wrong about something doesn’t give another person permission to treat you however they like.
False accusations require a different judgment. Sometimes correcting them matters, especially when they could affect your reputation or relationships. But a reasonable attempt to clarify the facts can turn into a struggle to make someone respect you.
Before responding, ask yourself what you actually want to accomplish. Is there something important to correct? Has someone crossed a boundary? Or do you mainly want them to admit they were wrong about you?
Of course, asking yourself those questions is considerably harder when you’re already upset. Seneca understood that our first reaction to an insult isn’t always something we can prevent. In On Anger, he described the sudden physical responses that can occur when we’re shocked or offended. Our face grows warm, our heart beats faster, and we feel an immediate surge of irritation before we’ve had much opportunity to think. He distinguished these involuntary reactions from the anger that develops when we accept the judgment that we’ve been wronged and ought to retaliate.
That’s a useful distinction when you’re the one being provoked. You may not be able to prevent that first surge of irritation, but you can give yourself a chance to regain your composure before responding. I know that’s easier said than done when someone has just insulted you, especially when other people are listening. You may feel an enormous urge to answer immediately, almost as though taking a few seconds to think would make you look weak.
But those few seconds can be the difference between saying something useful and saying something you’ll regret.
I’ve always respected people who can give a precise, well-considered answer in the middle of a heated conversation. You can tell they’re listening to what’s being said rather than desperately searching for something to fire back with. They don’t need to raise their voice to make themselves heard, and when they do respond, their words carry more weight because they’ve taken the time to choose them carefully.
I’d like you to become better at that, and a good place to begin is by learning how you personally react under pressure.
Some people become defensive and start talking faster. Others turn sarcastic, raise their voice, or struggle to find anything to say until the conversation is over. You probably have tendencies of your own, and recognizing them gives you an opportunity to respond differently.
If you tend to interrupt, practice letting the other person finish. If your mind goes blank, give yourself permission to pause before answering. And if you immediately begin defending yourself against every accusation, try identifying the one point that actually needs addressing. You can also ask the other person to explain what they mean, especially if their criticism is vague or unnecessarily personal. You don’t need a brilliant comeback when a simple, thoughtful response will do.
Many people go through the same arguments over and over without ever examining how they react. If you’re willing to recognize your own tendencies and work on them, you already have an advantage over someone who simply reacts on instinct. With practice, you’ll begin noticing the warning signs earlier, giving yourself more opportunity to choose how you respond.
And sometimes, once you’ve considered what’s been said, you may decide that the remark doesn’t deserve a response at all. Silence can feel uncomfortable when you’re worried that other people will interpret it as weakness. But you don’t owe everyone an argument about your character, and refusing to participate in a pointless exchange doesn’t mean you’ve agreed with what was said.
There will also be situations where you need to establish a clear boundary.
Suppose someone repeatedly makes personal remarks during a disagreement. You’ve tried to explain your position, but they keep returning to insults instead of addressing what you’re saying.
You might tell them:
“If you keep speaking to me like that, I’m going to end this conversation.”
There’s no need to raise your voice. You’re explaining what you’re willing to participate in and what you’ll do if the situation continues.
The important part is following through. If you announce that you’re leaving and then spend another twenty minutes arguing about why the other person should respect your boundary, you’ve allowed yourself to get drawn back into the exchange. Sometimes the most reasonable thing you can do is end the conversation.
We should also be careful about assuming that every unpleasant remark was intended to provoke us. People sometimes express legitimate frustrations in ways that are unfair or unnecessarily hurtful. A friend who accuses you of never listening to them might actually be upset about a particular conversation in which they felt ignored. You could spend the next ten minutes arguing about the word never. But if you listen for the frustration behind the accusation, you may discover something you’ve genuinely overlooked. You can take that concern seriously while still making it clear that you don’t appreciate being spoken to unfairly.
I wrote about a related idea in Don’t Take It Personally. We often interpret people’s behavior as though it reflects a carefully considered judgment of who we are, when much of the time they’re responding to frustrations we know very little about.
But even when you handle a difficult conversation well, there’s still the question of what happens afterward.
I suspect many of us have spent far more time being angry about a remark than the person who made it ever spent thinking about it. Something that lasted ten seconds can occupy our thoughts for the rest of the afternoon. The strange thing is that we’re often continuing an argument with our own impression of what the other person thinks of us. They’re no longer there to respond, and we can imagine them being as unreasonable as we like.
Every round you win in your head is won against an opponent who cannot concede, and the anger refreshes itself each time.
Sometimes we keep replaying the exchange because we never got a satisfactory ending. We wish we’d answered differently, or we want to imagine the moment when the other person finally admits they were wrong. But even the perfect imaginary response cannot change what happened.
If there’s something left to resolve, we can address it when we’ve had time to calm down. If there isn’t, continuing the argument won’t bring us any closer to an apology or an understanding that the other person may never offer.
Sometimes we’re still arguing because we want someone to return a piece of the self-respect we’ve placed in their hands. But winning an imaginary argument won’t make them see us the way we’d like.
I’d encourage you to pay attention to the remarks that affect you more than you expect. Certain subjects may make you unusually defensive, or criticism from particular people may stay with you longer than you would like. Those reactions can tell you where you’ve been allowing other people’s judgments more influence than they deserve.
After a difficult exchange, take a moment to consider how you handled yourself. Did you respond too quickly? Was there something you could have expressed more clearly? Maybe you noticed yourself preparing a response before the other person had even finished speaking. Those observations give you something specific to work on the next time you’re in a similar situation.
You won’t handle every provocation perfectly, and I wouldn’t expect you to. There will still be moments when someone catches you off guard and you respond more sharply than you’d like. You can acknowledge those mistakes and learn from them without turning them into another reason to criticize yourself.
Cato wiped his face and spoke as himself. Someone can provoke you whenever they like, and what they get back is yours to decide.
Stay stoic,
SW
Thanks for reading this far , I genuinely appreciate it.
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The Stoic Answer to Anxiety
Epictetus opened his lecture on anxiety with a question that still sounds a little odd.
This is definitely something I've been working on more as I've gotten older. I have a very argumentative brother-in-law, I had been thinking about the mist peaceful way to not have to interact with him. I finally said ‘i sense a lot of conflict here, I think it's best we don't speak unless absolutely neasesary’ he looked surprised, said ‘alright’. The I thanked him for respecting my boundaries and that I really appreciate it…job done, no anymosity.
Thanks! Such an insightful and helpful piece.