Seneca on dealing with pain and suffering

Seneca made some worthy recommendations about how to deal with pain and suffering. Unfortunately, he also dispensed plenty of irrational, harmful ones. It’s important to tell the difference between his good and bad advice.For instance, Seneca offered solid advice for addressing pain and suffering when they are mental constructs, but does his method work in cases of physical pain? In his 13th Letter to Lucilius, he affirms that “we are more frequently afraid than hurt; and suffer more from our fears than from real injuries.”I can only wonder if Seneca had forgotten all victims of the cruelty inflicted by emperors such as Nero (54-68 AD). We are talking about vast numbers of individuals being sent to exile or executed.How could Seneca possibly argue that the suffering of those victims was predominantly a mental construct? Was their pain and anxiety a figment of their imagination? Did those people suffer just because of their negative thinking?Seneca was wrong, but his error is not obvious. Through the centuries, many readers have taken him seriously and adopted his insights. They have confronted pain and suffering by telling themselves that those emotions are mostly imaginary.They were convinced that Seneca was telling them the truth, but over time, they were forced to recognise reality. Their pain and suffering eventually became so acute that they could no longer be categorised as imaginary.I would have asked Seneca to recheck if his philosophical recommendations have universal applicability. Human pain and suffering arise mostly from harmful situations, not from delusion or imagination.Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/seneca-on-dealing-with-pain-and-suffering/