Graduating Gamma III
Step 3: Emotional
Graduating Gamma is a short series written by a recovering ex-Gamma who is now happily married and living a successful life as an increasingly self-confident Delta. I can testify to the legitimacy of his personal transformation. It’s difficult, and it takes literal years to accomplish, but it is possible.
Graduating Gamma I: Physical
Graduating Gamma II: Spiritual
Step 3: Emotional
The Gamma lives on an emotional roller coaster which goes from anxious repression to emotional outbursts which can accumulate into rage and then despair. A Gamma is effectively out of balance emotionally and which is why they are so obnoxious to people around them and especially to women.
I have a couple of ideas of why this is so, and my guess is that a Gamma was a boy who was just a little more emotionally sensitive and a bit smarter than the average boy, then experienced some combination of the following factors: a Gamma father or father figure, raised by women alone, bullied rather heavily, socially awkward and had trouble knowing how to act, overweight or possessed some other physical trait that made him overly self-conscious. I don’t think it is any one thing, but rather a combination of several influences and events beyond which slowly turns a boy who might have some tendencies towards being a Gamma into a full-blown Gamma in adulthood. If you suspect you are a Gamma you’ll probably find this list or events like this to be still painful in your memory. Take that same boy, surround him with strong, but patient men and have him enter into a masculine profession or the military, and he’d probably turn out a Delta or a Delta with a few Gamma traits.
Swinging the pendulum
After a lifetime of Gamma reinforcement how does a man turn things around? I suggest for one month swinging the pendulum far in the opposite direction. Almost like an emotional detox, the Gamma needs to completely turn around for a time and get off the emotional roller coaster. I suggest one month of practicing the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. The first step is to get yourself a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. My favorite version is by Everyman’s Library as the language has been updated, but it costs money, so there’s a free version here, and if you want a printed book they are easy to find used or are always at the local library. This is the place to start because it isn’t a philosophical abstract but instead a portrait of an Emperor and how he lives out the philosophy in his daily life. It’s also a damn good read.
As for a definition of Stoicism I’m going straight to the dictionary: 1. the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.
From dictionary.com: A philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. Stoics believed that people should strictly restrain their emotions in order to attain happiness and wisdom; hence, they refused to demonstrate either joy or sorrow.
You can read more about it on Wikipedia, but for our purposes the above are sufficient. I’m sure there’s someone out there who will take umbrage with this definition and can’t wait to spam the comments with a debate about the true definition of Stoicism and their “oh so interesting” knowledge about Stoicism. Don’t do it because it doesn’t matter here and you will be missing the point. I don’t bring up Stoicism to debate its meaning or to claim it has superiority over all other philosophies or other such irrelevant topics, only that it can be a useful tool to help one graduate from the Gamma behavioral pattern.
Practical Application
Drop all snarky, flippant, and silly comments and voices about people and things. Its fine to tell an actual joke, but stop trying to be cute and funny all of the damn time. Witty remarks can be amusing, but you need to take a break for a bit.
For Stoic month, avoid all online forum debates, especially when you are really emotionally invested in the topic. Go silent in your profiles unless you’re reassuring a community that you are okay, but ONLY if they ask.
Stay away from social media unless you have to get on it for a specific reason. Social media is a hotbed of emotional flame wars.
When in groups of friends and families, and a hot-button topic comes up in which you’d typically dive into and of course wow the ladies with your stellar command of minutia, keep your mouth shut. Simply watch and listen to the participants instead.
Stop watching any and all reality TV shows in which there’s a lot of screaming and emotional manipulation going on to get a rise out of the audience.
Stay away from news stories which you know act as a trigger for you to instantly get upset about.
Try to schedule some time, even if it’s just most of a single day in the month, to go somewhere solitary and quiet in the outdoors. When there, make an effort to quiet your mind, drop the internal debates about politics, religion, etc., going on in there, and instead focus on good things in life that you’ve been blessed with. This can be done multiple times if needed.
If you have a wife or girlfriend, don’t be baited into the typical arguments the two of you have, and take a beat to be aware of what you’re going to say before you say it if things get heated. Instead, show her love, as it covers a multitude of sins, and patience as you realize you have probably been just as guilty of attempting emotional manipulation as she has.
Kindly tell your female friends to unburden their emotions on someone else when they start using you as a shoulder to cry on. Don’t be rude, but be firm. And be absolutely sure to tell that one particular friend that you’d really like to be dating.
If someone emotionally vomits all over you, tries to get an emotional rise out of you, tries to engage you in a rhetorical argument, or tells stupid and silly jokes, simply grunt in reply. I’m serious here, grunt. Don’t get drawn in, don’t tell them all about how you are now a quiet Stoic. The responses you get from this will be eye-opening to say the least, and are sometimes quite funny. Just be sure to keep a straight face. Please practice your grunt now.
Staying Put, Continuing On, or Seeking Help
Hopefully after one month you will have a substantial increase in clarity of thought, emotional balance and most importantly become more aware of your emotional triggers. You should be able to start controlling your actions when you become emotional. You cannot control the fact that you have emotions, but you can limit your exposure to situations in which you know you will become extremely emotional, and you can work on always controlling your actions regardless of how you feel at the moment.
If, after one month you feel you need to continue in stoicism and introspection, then go ahead and do it for up to six months. Sometimes you need a factory reset to get yourself out of a behavioral pattern. Vox has said more than once that he got to a point in his life where he finally stopped doing much of anything but martial arts training for six months. I stopped trying to date, and concentrated on working out and just thinking about life for several months before I got back into it and found success. Sometimes a man just has to step back for a while and re-evaluate his life in order to improve his habitual actions. It can take time.
On the other hand, if after a time of introspection you find that you are becoming more upset, emotional, depressed, or even suicidal, then please seek professional help. Sometimes the shock of leaving trying to leave Gammahood, especially if there has been childhood abuse, can be overwhelming for a man, and in that case he will need more that just a good friend and introspection. It's not a statistical quirk that causes suicide rates for men to be higher than for women and you need to take care of yourself.
Leaving Stoicism
I think Stoicism is one of the greatest philosophies of Man, and it can be especially helpful for men when they get out of balance, but the point to this post isn’t to create philosophers or hermits. I don’t think that repressing joy in vain hopes of philosophical happiness is a good idea. A man should be able to have a good belly laugh with his friends, be of cheerful spirit, and show deep love and affection for his children and wife. Don’t think at a funeral of a friend or family member you can’t cry; even Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. Stoicism is a tool, not a straightjacket to try to turn yourself into Spock. After practicing it this month, take the positive elements from the experience and work them into your life. Wouldn’t you like to be known as the guy who is cool under pressure? The man in the extended family who can be relied upon to be sober-minded and reliable when there’s an emergency? An employee or businessman known to be fair and even-handed even when chaos swirls around him?
The anti-Gamma conclusion on Emotional aspect of life: You can’t stop yourself from having emotions, but you can control your actions in response to them.
Interesting. I'm currently trying my best to do a feminine version of this, working to imitate my most unflappable and ladylike aunt. What prompted me was trying to deal with the medical industrial complex on behalf of a very sick relative. MIC doesn't listen no matter what one does, but one might as well deal with it as a lady than otherwise.
Being a lady is stoicism while female.
This blog and especially this post have helped me make sense of my dad. I'm pretty sure I've watched him claw his way out of Gammatude over the course of my lifetime.
My dad is intelligent and gifted, and he coasted through school on talent rather than hard work. He is very gifted in music and had a flair for the dramatic, so naturally he became a total theater kid.
Soon after graduating college, he found himself with a beautiful wife who he was terrified had just settled for him, and a new baby (me). He felt himself very lacking in self-discipline, so he decided to join the Army. This was in peacetime, before the military was fully converged, and it was very good for building his character. He achieved Sargeant before his honorable discharge, then went into church ministry.
My childhood is filled with many happy memories of singing around the dinner table and laughing heartily at my dad's jokes and funny voices and quotes. There are also unhappy memories of my dad keeping a tight rein over his wife and children as head of the house. I couldn't understand the deep insecurity I often sensed in him, but it makes a lot more sense now.
When my dad became a pastor, he over time realized that his role as situational Alpha required much more gravitas, so he began pulling back on the jokes and silliness. Over the years he became calm and stoic in public. Privately he still struggled, but his struggle was not in vain.
My dad today is well respected as a pastor, with loyal Bravos as deacons. My parents' relationship has improved over time, my mom is a sweet and submissive wife, and his ten kids, all grown or nearly grown, are all high-quality women and Delta or Bravo men. We still love to sing and laugh together.