"If you feel shame, recognize that no one else can shame you; only you can make yourself feel ashamed. Only you have the power to create your emotions-positive, negative, helpful, or unhelpful. The Stoics Hundreds of years ago, the Greek and Roman Stoics advanced that insight. In his treatise the Enchiridion, Epictetus wrote: Men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about those things. In his Epistles, Seneca stated: Everything depends on opinion."
"If, for example, you experience an emotion when someone insults you, it's natural to assume that the opinion and judgment of others can make you feel a certain way. In fact, this is false. Should someone insult, mock, ridicule, or disparage you on social media, for example, for saying something they disagreed with or claimed was uninformed, like, "you are ignorant," keep in mind it's just their judgment, their opinion. And their opinion cannot change you as a person."
Emotions result from personal thinking and can be changed through conscious, rational exercises that reframe negative self-beliefs. Only the individual creates emotional responses; external judgments cannot directly produce shame. Stoic philosophers argued that disturbances arise from opinions rather than events, exemplified by Epictetus's and Seneca's statements about opinions shaping reactions. Insults, mockery, and social-media disparagement reflect others' judgments and do not alter personal worth. Feeling ashamed of appearance is optional and not mandated by others' disapproval. People can refuse to internalize critical comments. Identifying and challenging irrational self-statements prevents unnecessary shame.
Read at Psychology Today
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