(article) Why I am not a Stoic

"So, the problem isn’t that stuff harms you (or others). It’s that you decided it harmed you (or others).

"Obviously, there is a lot of truth to this. But does this mean we should be entirely indifferent to harm? What if someone kills our family member? What if someone is sexually abusing a child? These questions arose in the Stoics’ time and the question of how much we should detach from our external experiences has been up for debate ever since."

From nearly the beginning Stoics believed that all things outside the will were neither good nor evil, but indifferent. We are harmed only by our own bad judgments.

https://markmanson.net/why-i-am-not-a-stoicf

See Epictetus' Enchiridion Ch. 3

http://www.ptypes.com/enchiridion.html/