Question your judgments
Principle 5 from the Enchiridion
Separating the two can keep a hard moment from becoming even heavier. What happened matters, but so does the story we tell ourselves about it.
Original Passage
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.
Modern Interpretation
Epictetus holds that what unsettles us is not only what happened, but what we decide it means. Two people can go through the same event and respond differently because they reach different conclusions about it.
That does not make pain imaginary. Loss, rejection, and uncertainty hurt. But the mind often piles on with thoughts like, "This should not be happening," or, "I will never cope with this." The extra story makes a hard situation even heavier.
The practice is not to blame yourself for feeling sad or angry. It is to notice what happened and what your mind added afterward. Then you can examine the judgment without spending all your energy deciding whose fault the feeling is.
In Practice
It can show up in an ordinary moment. You send a message to a close friend and get no reply all day. The fact is simple: no response yet. But your mind adds conclusions: "They are upset with me," "I did something wrong," "I am being ignored."
Those conclusions make the anxiety grow. The only fact you have is that your message has not been answered. You do not know why.
You can follow up when it makes sense and get on with your day instead of losing hours to guesses.
Reflection Question
What has been bothering you lately? Which part is fact, and which part might be a story you added yourself?