The Inner Citadel: How to Cultivate Psychological Resilience

Based on an overwhelming lack of demand, I’ve decided to post a few philosophical thoughts—and here’s the first one.

The Inner Citadel is a metaphor used to conceptualize the Stoic discipline of assent. Think of the essence of who you are, essentially your spirit, but let’s refer to it as your character. Imagine that your character is the cumulative sum of all the thoughts and experiences of your lifetime. Each time an external event (impulse) occurs or a thought runs through your mind, it has the ability to change the shape of your character.

Now, imagine that your character resides in a fortress, which we’ll call the Inner Citadel. But, for some reason, the fortress gates are left open by default, and the watchman is asleep on the job. This means that every impulse or thought can enter the citadel and influence your character.

But what if we locked the gate and woke up the watchman? Then, each time an impulse or thought presented itself at the gate, the watchman would interrogate it and decide whether to reject the judgment of that impulse (keep the gate locked) or assent to the judgment (open the gate and allow the impulse to affect the character within). The watchman is a metaphor for the Stoic practice of prosoche (attention)—an ever-vigilant focus on oneself to control what is allowed to affect one’s character.

The truth is, most people live their entire lives with the citadel gates wide open and the watchman fast asleep, allowing anything to affect their psychological well-being. Sadly, they don’t realize that it is within their control to protect their mental well-being. It is much easier to prevent damage to one’s character than it is to repair it after it has been inflicted. The earlier you start this practice, the better off you’ll be.

That said, it is a discipline. Simply knowing the concept isn’t sufficient to reap the benefits. Maintaining constant attention takes years of practice, and it is easy to falter.

But alas, there is an amazing sense of empowerment derived from this discipline. It means that you possess sole control over what may psychologically harm you. If someone mistreats you, diminishes you, misrepresents you, or attempts to harm you in any way, the watchman can stop it at the gate, interrogate that judgment, and reject it.

I wish I had been taught this as a child, but I am incredibly grateful to have learned it when I did.

I learned about the concept of the Inner Citadel from a book by the same name by philosopher Pierre Hadot. That book is an in-depth analysis of another work, the legendary Meditations by Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Meditations is perhaps the most wisdom-dense book I’ve ever read, but many of its passages contain an iceberg of unwritten context. The truth is, the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius was often simply reciting Stoic doctrine in his own words. However, the concepts came from another philosopher named Epictetus. Epictetus was a freed slave who rose to the top of the Stoic school a few decades before Marcus was born. You read that correctly—the most powerful person in the world was obsessively studying the teachings of a freed slave. Status was nothing to him; the pursuit of wisdom was everything. But I digress…