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Essays Philosophy

How to stop worrying about what you can't control

By The Editor

I know I can't change it, so why can't I stop worrying?

You lie awake over a layoff rumour. Or a test result that won't arrive for a week, a partner's mood, an economy you will never steer.

"I know it's pointless."

Knowing doesn't help.

Some describe a bag they can't put down. It keeps getting heavier because they add things that were never theirs to carry.

What changed it for some people was splitting the worry into two piles. One was what I can do about this today. The other was what is not mine to run. The second pile didn't shrink. They simply stopped working on it.

That is very old advice. Epictetus, a Stoic teacher in the Roman world, opens his handbook with it. I'll give you his words, then check how well the idea holds up. Philosophy and psychology make different kinds of claims, and I'll tell you which is which as we go.

Here is the opening of the Enchiridion, in Elizabeth Carter's 1758 translation.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

(Epictetus, Enchiridion, section 1, trans. Carter. Source in the list below.)

My reading is that he isn't saying your body or your reputation don't matter. He's saying you can't fully command them, so any peace that depends on them is on loan. That is a philosophical claim. Whether it helps a worried mind is a separate question, and we'll get there.

Why does worrying about what I can't control feel so urgent?

Because worry feels like work. Turning a problem over at 3am feels like effort toward a solution, even when there's nothing to act on. That is my observation, not a research finding.

There's often a bigger need underneath it. Most of us want a sense of influence over our own lives, and when it slips it's tempting to grab for control of everything at once. The trap is that regaining a sense of control sometimes means letting go of what was never controllable so your energy goes where it can land.

Take the plain example of someone shouting at you. You can't control their volume, their mood or their day. You can control your reply. Answering calmly, without matching them, is a small act of control, and it's the kind that doesn't depend on anyone else behaving.

Epictetus adds a second layer. Later in the same handbook he writes that people are disturbed "not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things" (section 5, Carter). The event is one thing. The verdict you attach to it is another. "My manager frowned" is an event. "I'm about to be fired" is a verdict, and the verdict is much closer to your own hands than the frown is.

I'd add one honest caution. Real life is rarely a clean split. Your health, your job and your relationships are partly up to you and partly not. So I treat the Stoic line as a dial, not a switch. That's my practical take, not Stoic doctrine and not a finding.

Does the Stoic idea of control hold up in research?

Nobody I could find has run a controlled trial of the dichotomy of control as such. What exists are nearby ideas, some with real support, and a few popular claims that deserve a label.

Where it has support. Psychologists have long studied locus of control, which is the belief about whether outcomes depend on you or on outside forces. Groth and colleagues (2019) pooled 15 studies, 3,986 people and 225 effect sizes. They found that unhelpful coping explained part of the link between an unhelpful locus of control and mental health problems. Both kinds of locus of control also had direct links to mental health problems that did not run through coping. The authors suggest that reducing the unhelpful beliefs may matter more than just adding good coping habits. This is cross-sectional data, so it shows a pattern and cannot show cause.

Acceptance, with a catch. Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema and Schweizer (2010) combined 241 effect sizes from 114 studies. Rumination, going over the same problem again and again, had the largest link with symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating problems and substance problems. Acceptance and reappraisal had only small to medium links, which the authors themselves called surprising given how central they are in therapy. So "just accept it" is not a magic key. These studies looked at how people usually cope, not at what happens when they change, which means they describe associations.

A related therapy that has been tested. A-Tjak and colleagues (2015) meta-analysed 39 randomised trials of acceptance and commitment therapy, with 1,821 patients. It beat control conditions overall (Hedges' g = 0.57) and did not differ significantly from cognitive behavioural therapy. That therapy teaches acceptance alongside other skills. It does not test Epictetus, and it is not Stoicism.

Myth: feeling in control is always good. The opposite error is real too. Langer (1975) reported that when a chance event has features of a skill situation, people act as if they can influence it. In one lottery experiment, people who chose their own ticket asked for more money to sell it back than people who were handed one. That illusion of control is the same mistake Epictetus is warning about, just pointed the other way. It is a reason to be suspicious of the hours you spend "managing" things that run on luck.

Unproven: Stoic courses lift wellbeing. Modern Stoicism's own Stoic Week report (LeBon, 2018) shows a 12% rise in life satisfaction and a 14% drop in negative emotions. The design matters. It is a before and after survey with no comparison group described, 3,702 people at the start and 852 valid questionnaires at the end, and it hasn't been peer reviewed as far as I could find. It's interesting, but it needs a proper trial before anyone leans on it.

So here is where that leaves us. The philosophy is old and clear. The psychology around it (locus of control, rumination, acceptance) has real support, though most of it shows links rather than causes. The claim that learning the Stoic split will reduce your anxiety is plausible and, as far as I can tell, untested.

How do I stop worrying about things I can't control?

None of these steps is a trial-proven treatment. They are practical uses of the ideas above.

  1. Make two columns, five minutes, on paper. Head one "In my hands" and the other "Not in my hands." Put the worry in whichever column is honest. For the shouting colleague, their tone goes in the second column and your reply goes in the first.

  2. Add a third column for "I can influence." This is the dial. Your health test result is not yours, but booking the appointment and asking the question you've been avoiding are. For each item here, write one action and a day.

  3. Separate the event from the verdict. Write the worry as a sentence, then ask whether it is something that happened or something you decided it means. "They didn't reply" is an event. "They've gone off me" is a verdict. Verdicts are the part you can question.

  4. Expect the loop to come back. The worry will return, probably tonight. When it does, ask one question, "Is this mine?" If it is, do the smallest next step. If it isn't, let it sit there without feeding it. You will repeat this many times, and that is normal rather than failure.

If worry is eating your days or your sleep, or you're having thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to a doctor, a mental health professional or a local crisis line. A philosophy essay is not treatment.

The strongest version of all of this fits in one question you can ask in the next ten minutes. What is my part in this? Then do the smallest piece of it and let the rest go unattended.

Sources

This is education, not therapy. If you are struggling, talk to a qualified professional. More about this site.