Stoic exercises for anger: 8 practices from Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus

Anger rarely asks permission. A driver cuts across your lane, an email from a colleague arrives with a sharp “as I already said”, your partner makes a comment about the dishes, or a four-year-old sits on the hall floor and refuses, for the third time, to put on shoes. A second later you are already composing the reply.

The Stoics took this moment more seriously than almost any other. Seneca wrote three whole books On Anger, and Marcus Aurelius kept a numbered list in his notebook for the days people got under his skin. What follows are eight exercises taken from those texts, rewritten as steps you can actually run in the middle of an ordinary day.

Why the Stoics singled out anger

For the Stoics, anger was the clearest example of a passion built on a judgment: the belief that you have been wronged and that the wrong must be paid back. If you want the wider background, our guide to Stoicism for everyday life explains how that theory of emotion fits into the rest of the philosophy.

That gives you three places to intervene: in the body before the judgment hardens, in the judgment itself, and afterwards, looking back.

Exercises for the first ten seconds

1. Catch the first signs and slow the body

Seneca argued that anger should be stopped early: “let us check its first beginnings, before it gathers strength” (Seneca, Of Anger III.8, Stewart translation). He noted that “the symptoms precede the disorder”, and his remedy was physical: make your face more composed, “our voice milder, our step slower” (III.13). He also records that Socrates’ friends could tell he was angry because he grew quieter.

How to do it:

1. Learn your own early signals: hot face, tight jaw, faster typing, a raised voice.
2. When you notice one, do the opposite on purpose. Lower your voice, relax your hands, slow your movements.
3. Take two slow breaths before you speak.

Use it when the anger is rising in real time. In traffic, this means unclenching your grip on the wheel and easing off the accelerator rather than closing the gap on the driver who cut in.

2. Delay the reply

Seneca’s most quoted piece of anger advice is short: “delay is the best remedy for it, because it allows its first glow to subside” (III.12). Epictetus says the same thing from another angle: “if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself” (Epictetus, Enchiridion 20, Higginson translation).

How to do it: set a rule that nothing written in anger is sent for at least an hour, and nothing said in anger is said until you have left the room or counted slowly to twenty. For bigger matters, sleep on it.

Example: you draft a reply to the colleague’s “as I already said” email. Save it as a draft, go and make tea, and reread it later. Most people delete half of it. Seneca’s model is Plato, who stopped his raised hand mid-air and refused to punish anyone while angry (III.12).

Exercises for the story in your head

3. Find what you added

Epictetus puts the core idea plainly: “it is not he who gives abuse or blows, who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting” (Enchiridion 20). Marcus Aurelius has the same thought in his list: “it is not men’s acts which disturb us”, but our opinions about them (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI.18, Long translation).

How to do it:

1. Say the bare facts in one sentence: “My partner said the dishes were still in the sink.”
2. Then say the story you attached: “They think I do nothing around here.”
3. Ask whether the story is certain, or one of several possible readings.

Marcus adds a related reminder: you often do not even know whether the other person is doing wrong, since many acts have reasons you cannot see. The partner may simply have been tired and stating a fact.

4. Ask whether you have done it too

Seneca suggests a sobering question: “I myself have done or might have done this very thing which I am angry with another for doing” (III.12). Marcus makes it his fourth point: “consider that thou also doest many things wrong” (XI.18).

Example: the driver who cut in. Have you never misjudged a lane, or been in a hurry and pushed in? Usually the honest answer softens the anger without excusing the other person.

Make it harder: apply it to the person who annoys you most at work, and list three times you have done something similar.

5. Count the cost

Marcus’s eighth point is that more harm often comes from the anger than from the original act: “consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts” (XI.18). His sixth point widens the frame: when you are badly vexed, remember “that man’s life is only a moment”.

How to do it: before acting, ask two questions. What has this actually cost me so far? What will my anger cost me over the next hour, in sleep, in the relationship, in my afternoon? Then ask whether this will matter in a year.

Exercises for how you respond

6. Let some things pass unseen

Seneca’s advice here is almost cheeky: “It is better not to see or to hear everything” (III.11). Many slights, he says, can simply go unnoticed.

Use it when the offence is small and the relationship matters more than the point. A colleague’s slightly snide tone in a meeting can often be treated as if you did not hear it. This is a choice about where your attention goes, not a rule to tolerate real mistreatment. Our article on the dichotomy of control covers how to tell what is worth acting on.

7. Answer with deliberate gentleness

Marcus’s ninth point is that “a good disposition is invincible if it be genuine” (XI.18). He goes on to argue that mildness and gentleness are “more manly” than anger, meaning that calm takes more strength, not less.

How to do it: decide the tone first and the words second. Choose the kindest response that still says what needs to be said.

Example: the child refusing shoes. Instead of a louder version of the same order, crouch down, speak quietly and offer a small choice: “Red shoes or blue ones?” You still leave the house; you just do not leave it shouting. If you need help calming your own body first, the exercises in breathing to calm down are quick to use in the hallway.

An exercise for the end of the day

8. Hold an anger review before sleep

Seneca describes a habit he borrowed from the philosopher Sextius. At night Sextius would ask himself: “What bad habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you checked? in what respect are you better?” (III.36). Seneca says he does the same, passing “the whole day in review”.

How to do it, in three minutes:

1. Recall one moment today when anger rose.
2. Note which exercise you used, or could have used.
3. Decide on one small thing to try next time the same trigger appears.

Be fair with yourself. The point is to learn your triggers, not to put yourself on trial.

What the research does and does not show

Stoicism has a real link to modern therapy. A 2023 paper describes it as having informed cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (Connery, Cavanna & Coleman, 2023). That is a historical connection, not proof that these particular exercises work.

Two lines of research fit the Stoic advice. A 2024 meta-analysis of about 150 studies found that activities which lower arousal, such as slow breathing, mindfulness and relaxation, reduced anger and aggression, while arousal-raising activities such as hitting a bag or jogging were ineffective overall (Kjærvik & Bushman, 2024). That supports slowing down over venting. And in a laboratory study, people who habitually reinterpret upsetting events reported less anger when provoked and showed a healthier cardiovascular response (Mauss et al., 2007). That study compared people’s existing habits rather than training them, so it shows an association, not that the habit can be taught.

The Stoic exercises themselves have not been tested as an anger treatment. Use them as everyday tools.

When anger needs more than a philosophy

If anger is frequent, lasts for days, frightens the people around you, or has led to shouting matches, broken things or physical aggression, talk to a GP or a therapist. Structured help from a professional is a better fit than a reading list. If you are afraid you might hurt yourself or someone else right now, call your local emergency number now; free crisis lines for several countries are listed on our crisis help page.

Starting with one trigger

You do not need all eight exercises. Pick the situation that sets you off most often, whether that is the commute, the inbox or the morning rush to the door, and match one exercise to it for a week. Anger comes back often enough to give you plenty of practice.