In the dictatorship of positive thinking and sweetened motivating sentences, it is not well seen to focus our attention on the negative. Let's avoid negativity like the plague and try to exorcise pessimism from our lives. However, centuries ago the Stoics had another approach. They thought that we must prepare for the worst in the best possible way so that problems do not take us by surprise.
Unlike the general visualization approach which focuses on inducing a positive psychological and physiological response, the Praemeditatio Malorum practiced by the Stoics, considered a negative visualization technique, it imagines worst outcomes in realistic life scenarios to desensitize us and prepare us to deal with real-life losses, deal with problems, and even induce feelings of gratitude for life.
La Praemeditatio Malorum, in fact, it is not a pessimistic reflection, but a practice of vitality and gratitude. His goal is not to overwhelm us with the countless misfortunes that could happen to us, but to prepare us to face them by depriving them of the shock of the unexpected. What this technique attempts to do is develop a view of reality as it is, without sugarcoating it.
The origin of the Stoic technique Praemeditatio Malorum
The negative view, or futurorum malorum præmeditatio, is a method of askēsis born with the Cyrenaic philosophers, but adopted and popularized by the Stoics. Indeed, the technique became popular with the publication of Seneca's moral letters.
However, the expression was taken from a phrase by Marco Tulio Cicero, Roman politician and philosopher, who said: “præmeditatio futurorum malorum lenit eorum adventum”, what does it mean: “predicting future evils alleviates their arrival”. Consequently, the præmeditatio futurorum malorum it became one of the most popular spiritual exercises for soul healing of the Stoic school.
The foremost of the ancient Stoics, Chrysippus of Soli, described it as a technique proendêmein which allows us to get used to things that haven't happened yet, behaving as if they are really happening.
A later Stoic philosopher, Posidonius of Apamea, explained the concept of proendêmein: the ability to present (proanaplattein) future evil, in the form of a trace or an image that is always available, before it occurs.
The availability of the future evil in the form of an image allows us to familiarize ourselves with that misfortune, so as not to be taken by surprise if it occurs in the future. That image, the tuposanticipates future evil by making it present. More importantly, however, is that the level of sophistication and believability of that image must be such that when evil occurs in the future, it becomes almost irrelevant.
The purpose of negative visualization, therefore, is to protect ourselves from the consequences of the irruption of an unexpected evil. In fact, as Seneca said, “The effects of the unexpected are more crushing as the weight of the unexpected adds to the disaster. The unexpected has always intensified a person's pain. For this reason we have to make sure that nothing takes us by surprise. We should be projecting our thoughts into the future at all times to account for every possible eventuality, rather than thinking that events will simply take their course.
“We have to anticipate all possibilities and strengthen the spirit to face the things that could happen. Try them in your mind […] If we don't want to feel overwhelmed and dazed by unusual events, as if they were unprecedented events; we need to rethink the concept of fate more completely”.
The power to make the future present
The intensity of the negative visualization can range from something as minimal as imagining missing your train to a much more serious issue, such as imagining loss of assets, status, health, or even life.
The strength of the Praemeditatio Malorum it lies in the Stoics' belief that most events are not as terrible as we imagine. Indeed, psychology has shown that we are tremendously inaccurate when it comes to estimating the degree of happiness or suffering that events can cause us.
The Stoics believed that much of our suffering and pain stems from our view of events. They thought that inexperienced men had a distorted view of reality, which they saw as more threatening and hostile than it really was. In fact, Seneca said that "there is no one less fortunate than the man whom adversity forgets, since he has no chance to prove himself".
With the Praemeditatio Malorum, the Stoics managed to purify the event from the poisonous residues of that bad hermeneutic and restore it to the neutralized and weakened person in its destructive power; that is, reduced to an almost indifferent state.
For this Marcus Aurelius recommended: “Begin each day by saying to yourself: Today I will encounter interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, malevolence and selfishness”.
It should also be said that although it appears that the Praemeditatio Malorum is a future-oriented exercise, it is actually a technique that tries to neutralize its negative effects by making it present in an orderly and coherent set of images or tupos.
La praemeditatio effective is the one in which the future becomes present in the most realistic, hard, certain and immediate way possible. Nothing is spared. Worst-case scenarios are conjured up and played out in detail to prepare the mind. Therefore, that future thus becomes hyperconsistent by virtue of a powerful act of presentization.
This hypercoherence has a paradoxical therapeutic property: to cancel the poison injected into the things that happen to us by a hermeneutic generated by fear. It is a violent and uncontrolled reaction when adversity takes us by surprise.
According to the Stoics, anticipated evil is not a possible evil, but a certain evil, it is not a future evil but an already real evil, it is not an evil in progress, but an evil already accomplished, but above all, it ceases to be an evil. Those who are prepared for the worst will always have more answers and tools to deal with it than those who think everything will be fine.
How to apply the Praemeditatio Malorum?
Seneca stated that it is better prepare for the worst in the best moments: “it is in times of security that the spirit must prepare itself for difficult times; while fortune grants you favours, it is time to fortify yourself against its refusals […] because when fortune is benign, the soul can create defenses against its fury”.
“Proof in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. All these human concepts must be before our eyes [...] "Take a week in which you have little to eat, which is poor and mediocre, dressed very badly, and ask yourself if this is the worst that could happen to you" .
Therefore, it's about doing exactly that: thinking about the worst that could happen when we take on a new project, are about to start a new relationship, or go through a turning point in our lives. We can even make a list of all the things that scare us in the future, like losing a job, a breakup, or an illness.
So, we have to ask ourselves: what's the worst that could happen if…? The secret is to release the pessimism that exists in us, but without becoming catastrophists. When we visualize what is the worst that could happen to us, we do two things: anxiety is reduced because we rationally understand that almost nothing is as bad, unsolvable or catastrophic as it seems, and second, we encourage ourselves to look for possible solutions.
However, the real lesson of this negative visualization technique is that every day is a gift to be thankful for. Visualizing the possible unexpected events of life thus becomes an act of gratitude and detachment that makes us more resilient, preparing us for the future. Well, after all, that's what it's all about: living without fear paralyzing you. If something has to happen, it will. But if we're prepared, we can mitigate its impact.
Sources:
Alessandrelli, M. (2020) Praemeditatio malorum. In: Institute for the European Intellectual Lexicon and the History of Ideas.
Miller, SA (2015) Toward a Practice of Stoic Pragmatism. The Pluralist; 10 (2): 150-171.
Admission Praemeditatio Malorum, the stoic technique so that adversity does not take you by surprise was published first in Corner of Psychology.
