It Is Not Things That Upset Us, But Our Judgments About Them: The Principle That Inspired Cognitive Therapy

It Is Not Things That Upset Us, But Our Judgments About Them: The Principle That Inspired Cognitive Therapy

Introduction

Two people are riding the same city bus when a large dog boards with its owner. One smiles and reaches out a hand to pet it. The other presses against the window with a racing heart. The dog is the same, the aisle is the same, and the distance is the same. What differs is what each person thinks—almost without realizing it—in the split second they see the dog: "How friendly" or "It's going to bite me."

Nearly two thousand years ago, a Greek teacher who had once been enslaved summed up that scene in a single sentence that is still taught in psychology departments today. Epictetus wrote that people are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things. His own example was deliberately extreme: death itself is nothing dreadful, for if it were, it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates as well; rather, the terror lies in our judgment that death is dreadful.

Between what happens to you and what you feel lies a judgment. Right there—and not out in the world—is your room to maneuver.

This article explains what Epictetus actually meant, why it is not an invitation to deny reality, and how that insight traveled from a philosophy school in Nicopolis to twentieth-century psychotherapy offices.

The Sequence We Almost Never Notice

Most people go through life as if emotions were direct, automatic reactions to external events: someone criticized me, therefore I feel humiliated; the bus was late, therefore I am furious. The Stoics proposed looking at the chain more closely, and that chain has at least four links:

1. The stimulus. Something happens: an email arrives, someone makes a remark, a number appears on your bank statement, a dog gets on the bus. 2. The interpretation. The mind assigns meaning to the event, almost always automatically: "This is an attack," "This is dangerous," "This is unfair." 3. The emotion. Out of that assigned meaning springs the emotional response: fear, anger, shame, joy. 4. The behavior. Finally, you act: you snap back, you avoid, you run away, you press on.

The decisive link is the second one. That interpretation is not a random whim of the moment: it operates like a lens built from years of accumulated experiences, beliefs, and internal rules. Someone who had a frightening encounter with a dog in childhood wears a lens that says "dogs are dangerous," and that lens fires before the person has time to think anything consciously.

What Epictetus Did Not Say

This principle is easy to caricature, so it helps to clear up three common misunderstandings right away.

He did not say that nothing matters. The Stoics never denied the reality of illness, loss, or injustice. They argued that external misfortunes do not corrupt a person's moral character, and that the extra layer of suffering added by our own judgments ("This is unbearable," "I will never recover from this") can be examined and reworked.

He did not say that everything is mere interpretation. If you break your arm, the physical pain is not an opinion. What does depend partly on judgment is what we build on top of the pain: despair, catastrophizing, or rage at the universe.

He did not say we should suppress our emotions. Examining a judgment is not swallowing your feelings. Often an emotion carries a valid message: fear warns of a real hazard; anger points to an injustice. What Epictetus proposes is checking whether the judgment fueling the emotion is accurate and whether the intensity of our reaction is proportional to what actually happened.

From Nicopolis to New York: The Road to Cognitive Therapy

In the 1950s, American psychologist Albert Ellis grew frustrated with the slow results of the psychoanalysis he had been practicing. Searching for a more direct approach, he developed what he called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), explicitly citing Epictetus's maxim in his books as one of his foundational starting points. His famous "ABC" model is almost a modern translation of the Stoic sequence: an activating event (A) triggers a belief (B), and from that belief flow the emotional and behavioral consequences (C).

A few years later, psychiatrist Aaron Beck, working with depressed patients, identified negative automatic thoughts about oneself, the world, and the future, and acknowledged in his writings that the philosophical roots of cognitive therapy trace back to the Stoics. Out of Ellis's and Beck's work grew modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the most empirically supported forms of psychotherapy for anxiety and depression.

It is important to be precise: cognitive therapy is not Stoicism, and its clinical effectiveness does not prove that the entire Stoic philosophical system is true. What it does show is that Epictetus's core intuition—that judgment mediates between event and emotion—turned out to be a practical, trainable psychological tool.

How to Put a Judgment to the Test

Knowing that a judgment exists is not enough; you have to learn how to catch it in the act. When a strong emotion hits, these questions help bring the underlying judgment into the light:

• What happened, exactly? Describe the event the way a security camera would record it, stripped of adjectives and mind-reading.
• What did I tell myself about what happened? Write down the exact sentence that crossed your mind: "She is disrespecting me," "I'm going to look like a fool."
• What evidence do I have for and against that thought? Treat the thought as a hypothesis to be tested, not a proven fact.
• Is there another plausible reading? The colleague who walked past without saying hello might have been lost in thought; the client who hasn't replied might not have opened their inbox yet.
• Is this within my control? If it is not, the demand that "it should have been different" only adds unnecessary suffering.

The goal is not to replace a negative thought with rose-colored positivity. Forced optimism is just as inaccurate as automatic pessimism. The goal is to arrive at a judgment that describes reality accurately without exaggerating it.

A Three-Column Exercise

The simplest version of this practice fits on a single sheet of paper divided into three columns:

Next, add a fourth column: a more accurate judgment. For example: "I don't know what she thought of it. An 'ok' could just mean she read it in a hurry between meetings. If I'm concerned, I can ask her tomorrow if she'd like any changes." Very often, when you re-rate the emotion afterward, that 7 drops to a 4. The feeling does not vanish completely, but it stops running the show.

Doing this once accomplishes very little. Doing it consistently for a few weeks trains something invaluable: the ability to spot the judgment while it is happening, rather than hours later.

Common Mistakes

• Using the principle to blame people for their own suffering. Telling someone in pain "You only hurt because you're interpreting it wrong" is cruelty, not Stoicism. The principle is a tool for examining your own judgments, never a club for dismissing someone else's pain.
• Confusing examination with repression. You can feel anger fully and still check whether the story feeding it is fair.
• Expecting to rewire your mental lens overnight. Deep-seated beliefs took years to form; adjusting them takes steady practice.
• Arguing with yourself at the height of an emotional storm. In the middle of an acute crisis, sometimes the only realistic step is to breathe, splash water on your face, and postpone the inner debate until the physiological wave subsides.

When to Seek Professional Help

If negative thoughts are relentless, if anxiety or sadness persists for weeks and interferes with your work, studies, or relationships, or if thoughts of self-harm appear, philosophy is no substitute for professional care. A psychologist trained in cognitive behavioral therapy works with these exact mechanisms using structured clinical methods, ongoing support, and tools tailored to your specific situation.

Conclusion

Epictetus's maxim does not promise that life will stop hurting. It promises something more modest and far more useful: that between an event and your reaction lies a gap, and that gap can be widened through practice. Over the next seven days, whenever a strong emotion shakes you, jot down three things in your phone: what happened, what you told yourself, and what you felt on a scale from 0 to 10. At the end of the week, read back through your notes and look for the judgment that repeats most often. That is the first one worth examining.

References

• Epictetus. Enchiridion, 5.
• Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. Lyle Stuart.
• Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. Guilford Press.
• Robertson, D. (2019). How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. St. Martin's Press.
• Robertson, D. (2010). The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy. Karnac.
• Vázquez, M. (2019). Invicto: Logra más. Sufre menos. Fitness Revolucionario.