Personal effect
Epictetus shows that a person has a choice to deny their responsibility. This state of consciousness is ironic, because it means a person has attempted to meet their desire but is unwilling to accept responsibility for the effects of their action. It is even more ironic because the Stoic understands that by accepting responsibility, a person could more adequately attain their desire. The judgment against a person who disavows their personal responsibility is a split mind and the suffering of cognitive dissonance.
Balance and mental health
One might notice very quickly that by being more emotionally stable and healthy, that their lives might improve. This is true because of the ironic nature of self-sabotage. But that isn't the only irony pertaining to mental health. The Stoic teacher tells that not only will mental health make for a better, healthier life, but that mental health is only attainable by abandoning the slavery to desire. Ironically, the easiest way to secure one's desires is to abandon desire itself. Then happiness and inner stability are born, he says.
Shame and progress
To a person who wants to do good in life, shame is a deeply powerful irony. Shame feels productive because it has a built-in emotional quality that makes people likely to trust it, but this is a trick. The Stoic believes that by orienting one's self more scientifically and reasonable to the ethical pursuit of inner justice, one can become freed of shame spirals and the emotional baggage of self-hatred. Ironically, shame feels morally good, but it is inferior to true goodness.
Orienting one's self to fate
The Stoic philosophy has religious aspects because to Epictetus and other similar philosophers, navigating one's relationship to God is part of living a healthy and good life. This means accepting fate, because by rejecting one's fate, a person attempts to manipulate God. This is deeply ironic because by definition, a human being cannot control God, and yet, when confronted by fate, it is the first human response. The narrative quality of fate seems to be ceding back control to God for a Stoic religious person.
Accepting life
Like Buddhism, Stoicism has at its center the belief that life is essentially suffering. By resisting the false answer of desire and pursuit of happiness, one accepts life for the way it is. This means that desire is a kind of dramatic irony. As long as one pursues their desires, they are locked into a false narrative that obscures their vision from the wonder and surrender that would bring peace. This is a shared tenant between Epictetus's Stoicism and Buddhism.
