Two thousand years ago, a Greek-born slave named Epictetus wrote something that still cuts straight to the heart of a great deal of human suffering. Some things are within our power, he said, and some things are not. Our opinions, our impulses, our desires, our aversions - these are within our power. Everything else is not.
It sounds simple. It is, in practice, one of the hardest things to actually do. And it is particularly hard when you have spent years in a relationship, a family, or a situation where you have been trying, with enormous effort and care, to influence something that was never within your control in the first place.
The dichotomy of control
The Stoics called this principle the dichotomy of control. Everything in life falls into one of two categories: things you can control, and things you cannot. Your thoughts, your choices, your responses, your values - these are yours. Other people's behaviour, their feelings, their decisions, external events, outcomes - these are not.
This is not a counsel of passivity. The Stoics were not suggesting you should care about nothing or try for nothing. They were suggesting something more specific: that your energy, your attention, and your sense of wellbeing should not be staked on outcomes you cannot ultimately determine.
When you pin your peace of mind to whether someone else changes, whether a situation resolves in the way you need it to, whether other people recognise what you can see clearly - you hand control of your inner life to something outside yourself. And that something will not reliably give it back.
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength. - Marcus Aurelius
What this looks like when someone you love is drinking
If you have a close relationship with someone whose drinking causes harm - a parent, a partner, a sibling - you will know the particular exhaustion that comes from trying to manage it. Hiding bottles, making excuses, having the same conversation again, monitoring their mood, adjusting your plans around their state. It is a full-time occupation, and it produces almost nothing in the way of results.
This is not because you have not tried hard enough. It is because someone else's addiction is not within your control. Their decision to drink, their readiness to change, their capacity to see what their behaviour costs those around them - none of these are yours to determine, however much you love them and however much effort you invest.
The Stoic insight here is not cold or uncaring. It is actually an act of profound self-compassion to recognise this. To say: I cannot fix this. I can only choose how I respond to it, and what I do with my own life in the meantime.
What this looks like in a difficult relationship
In a relationship where you feel unheard, dismissed, or controlled, the temptation is to find the right words, the right moment, the right approach that will finally make the other person understand. If I explain it differently, maybe they will see it. If I am calmer, maybe they will listen. If I am more patient, maybe things will change.
Sometimes this is right. Relationships are dynamic, and how we communicate does influence how we are received. But there is a point at which continued effort to change someone else's behaviour becomes a way of avoiding the question of what you are going to do about your own situation.
The Stoic question is: what is actually within my power here? Not: how do I get them to change. But: how do I respond to the fact that they may not.
Shifting your attention from what others do to how you respond is not giving up. It is one of the most courageous redirections you can make.
The practice, not just the principle
Knowing about the dichotomy of control and actually living it are very different things. The pull towards trying to manage what is outside us is strong, especially when we are anxious, when we love someone, or when we have been doing it for so long that it feels like the only available response.
The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wrote some of the most honest and human reflections on this practice that exist, was not someone who found it easy. He wrote his Meditations as a daily discipline, returning again and again to the same ideas because he needed the reminder. Even at the height of his power, running an empire, he found the practice of focusing only on what was within his control to be the work of a lifetime.
That is worth knowing. It is not a switch you flip. It is a direction you keep returning to.
Where counselling fits in
The Stoic framework is a useful lens, but it does not do the emotional work by itself. Knowing that something is outside your control does not automatically make it easier to let go of. Especially when the thing outside your control is a person you love, or a situation that has defined your life for years.
That is where counselling can help. Not by telling you what to do, but by giving you a space to work through the emotional weight of the situation - the grief, the guilt, the exhaustion - while also helping you to see more clearly what is and is not yours to carry.
The goal is not detachment. It is clarity. And from clarity, better choices become possible. Choices that belong to you, made from a place of genuine understanding rather than reactive exhaustion.
If this resonates with where you are right now, a free 15-minute call is a calm and uncommitted way to explore whether counselling might help.
