“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break hearts”
The point is, the meaning we attach to the words are literally in our heads. We determine the worlds they create. It's not the other way around.
When someone insults you are they responsible for how much you value their opinion? Are they responsible for how much you want to be accepted? Are they responsible for how many rejections you have had in the past?
But no this isn't particularly useful to actual humans who are still (easily) overwhelmed to madness with reactive pain, and the stoics compassion feels like that shown by the (non-hysterical) passengers in that one Airplane! scene [0].
(It occurs to me that expressing cruelty toward those suffering from hysterics is more than mere sadism; it may be a legitimate coping mechanism with their own fear. Focusing the mind on something, even hatefully, can save the hater from their own fear that the world is completely out-of-control.)
We are not robots. We are human. And while we cannot be automated, we survived due to our ability to adapt. Where we channel your attention, what we choose to focus on, and what we choose to value *is* something we have control over.
The idea that someone saying something to me and those words control me, my mind, and my world...that's silly.
Stoicism is about controlling what you have control over. Chief among this… is our thoughts.
Thoughts matter. How one thinks about things, events, situations that happen to us… matter.
Re-framing and interpreting how one thinks about what happened to us. Is important, for peace of mind.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy is an example of how one can apply stoicism.
Stoicism is about realising what you have control over and what you do not. It about acknowledging the agency you have no matter how little it may be.
Even if you have a tendency to be very reactive there is always something you can do to nullify or lessen the impact of an insult.
I don't think this holds, otherwise every libel suit would be thrown out of court on the basis of "that's what you think it means".
Not to mention that we have dictionaries that record the assigned meanings of words :-)
Why would what some random person says break your heart?
These experiences make you tougher - in adult life, you will run into toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers...
It is important to have a loving family and/or supportive friends who can provide a different point of reference.
It's justification for being an asshole to people under the guise of 'helping' them. The people who end up believing it are rubes who do the same to others. Making someone tougher is survivorship bias by another name. It fails to account for the people who don't have supportive family members and friends. It's solution to this is saying, "it sucks, but they just couldn't take it," which does nothing to make things even slightly better for the next person. We're left with those who survived.
Toxic bosses, colleagues, brutal job interviewers are no where near as violent or persistent or inescapable as childhood bullies and if those toxic people did half the things kids do to each other they'd be quickly arrested and thrown behind bars.
I think you are taking “heart” too narrowly.
School and work place bullying can definitely hurt you even if it is “just words”.