In one of his letters to Lucilius (Letter 78), Seneca outlines his thoughts on how to deal with pain. Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus also have some ideas on this subject. Here are their main ideas.

1. Pain is manageable

There are two types of bodily pain: pain that lasts for a short time and the pain that lasts a long time.

Severe pains often occur in the slender parts of our bodies such as nerves, joints, and other narrow parts. Human beings cannot endure sharp pain for too long. Because of that, nature made it such that sharp pains do not last long. Extreme pains are frequently interrupted. So this is our consolation for severe pain: When the pain is too severe, you finally stop feeling it.

As for chronic pain, at it causes problems. Then, as time passes, numbness sets in, and the pain goes away.

2. Do not add your opinion

Pain is bearable until we add our opinion to it – “this is terrible!” or “why me?” or “how can I enjoy life when I am in pain?” When we think like this, we are adding suffering to our pain. The best way to think about pain is to say to yourself that if you have a body, you will have pain from time to time. It is unrealistic to believe that you can have a body that will never have pain. It will be there for a while and then diminish or go away. Why make it worse with unhelpful thoughts.?

3. Do not relive the past or be afraid of the future

Another way we add suffering to our pain is by reliving past memories. Our memories of past pain or the memories of pain suffered by others make our pain worse. Sometimes we also imagine how the pain will affect us later in the day, tomorrow, or for the rest of our lives. By doing this we add imaginary pain to the pain we aleady have.

All we have is this pain we are suffering now and even that will not last long. There is no need to saddle ourselves with imagainary scenarios that can only add to our pain

4. Distract yourself

When we have bodily pain, we tend to dwell on it. This makes it worse because our attention is focused on our pain.

Of course, we cannot tell ourselves not to think of our pain. But we can distract ourselves by thinking about different things, especially things that elevate us. By doing this, we take our mind away from pain, thus making it less impactful.

5. Cultivate mental pleasures

It is hard to understand that, when our body is in pain, our mind is unaffected. “How can I think of anything when I am in pain?” However, in reality, your mind is unaffected by bodily pain. True, when you are in severe pain, all your faculties focus on it. But severe pains don’t last long and chronic pain loses its impact after a while.

Therefore, we should remember that our mind is unaffected by our body’s illness. Once we realize this, we see bodily pain affects only bodily pleasures. It does not affect our mental pleasures that are unconnected with the body. So when we have bodily pain, there is no reason why we should stop cultivating mental pleasures that are open to us no matter how our body feels.

6. Heed the advance warning

Sharp pains can set in with no warning. However, many illnesses and chronic pains give advance warning through mild symptoms. Some illnesses such as flu, even when they do not give us advance warning, have a high probability of occurring in some seasons.

If we believe we are prone to an attack by a specific illness beause it is the ‘season’ or because we think we are vulnerable, we can take necessary precautions by taking preventive medications or avoiding certain situations that would expose us to a specific illness.

Recurring pains also give us warning. We take precautions against them, including taking preventive medications.

7. Stand up to your pain

We should not be too quick to give in to our illness. When we believe that we are powerless over our pain, then we are. Instead if we tell ourselves that the pain is temporary and we will prevail over it, the pain will have a lower impact on us.

8. Think positively

When we have bodily pain, let us remind ourselves that we have bodily pain because we have a body. We can be glad about that. (Discourses, Epictetus).

9. Think of pain as normal

When we treat pain as something normal rather than as something terrible, we are unlikely to be bothered too much by it. (Meditations, Marcus Aurelius)

You can read a two-part expanded version of this article (9 ways to deal with bodily pain) at TheStoicGym.com.

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