There are pleasures that are not confessed aloud. That your partner’s team loses, that the colleague who always looks impeccable ends up with a disastrous new haircut, or that the noisy neighbor punctures a tire just before leaving on a weekend getaway. You won’t tell anyone, but the truth is you have felt it. A kind of small relief, almost imperceptible, accompanied by a guilt that sometimes gnaws you, and other times doesn’t. You wonder if it only happens to you. But, like competing with your friend at times, it’s something more common than it seems.
In fact, it even has a name: Schadenfreude. This German term describes the pleasure we feel at someone else’s misfortune. And although it sounds sophisticated, what lies behind is quite more everyday than we like to admit. “Although it is usually perceived as something uncomfortable or even shameful, in reality it is a much more human and frequent reaction than we like to admit,” explains Marga Salinas, a health psychologist specializing in self-demand. From a psychological point of view, this reaction, precisely, “is not very different from other emotions. It tells us how we interpret a situation and how it affects us internally.”
Your insecurities say a lot about you
That glee at others’ misfortune actually speaks less about the other person and more about you. Above all, it speaks of your history and your insecurities. Because we do not react to events, but to what they mean to us. That is the key. It is not the same that something bad happens to a stranger as to someone who, in some way, you feel confronts you.
For example, to that person who seems to have everything under control and who, in reality, embodies exactly what you feel you lack or what represents a kind of impossible standard you would love to reach. When something goes wrong in their life, it’s not so much that you enjoy their misfortune, but that something inside you repositions itself. “Sometimes, more than enjoying others’ suffering, what we feel is relief because a discrepancy or injustice that had been uncomfortable for us is reduced,” explains Salinas. In other words, for you, the world begins to look a little more balanced.
A way to regulate your self-esteem
There is also something curious in the process of feeling good about something bad that happens to another, and that is that the other person’s fall humanizes. “When we see that someone we perceived as unattainable also makes mistakes or goes through difficulties, the distance shortens,” notes Salinas. And that is comforting, because it reminds us that vulnerability is not the exclusive property of some people.
The problem appears when it stops being occasional and begins to become a necessity. “It becomes a sign of insecurity when we need others to fail in order to feel valuable,” warns the psychologist. There, we are no longer talking about a fleeting thought, but about a way to regulate self-esteem. But if it becomes a tool, you have to review it. Because then it implies that the relief does not come from what you are, but from the other person being worse. And it’s not the same an internal, almost automatic reaction, as a deliberate attitude. “The ethical limit appears when we go from a spontaneous reaction to reveling in it or amplifying another person’s harm,” notes Salinas. Thinking something doesn’t define you, but acting accordingly, yes.
Is it envy?
Social comparison isn’t new, but now it has a permanent showcase: social networks. Those where everyone seems happier, more handsome, more successful than oneself. “We don’t compare our reality with the other person’s complete reality, but with a small carefully chosen part,” recalls Salinas. That’s why, when an idealized person stumbles, the fall has something of relief.
Not necessarily because you want their harm, but because, for a moment, you feel closer. But beware, networks have a dangerous ingredient: disinhibition. “Anonymity and group validation can facilitate that some people publicly express reactions that in other contexts would remain private,” notes Salinas. A passing thought can become a comment, mockery, or even digital lynching. And that can be a problem.
“Not all uncomfortable emotions are a problem to solve,” tempers Salinas. If it’s something punctual, there probably isn’t anything to do beyond observing it and moving on. The problem is when it appears recurrently and starts to cause distress or guilt. Often envy, which tends to be behind this phenomenon, speaks of something of our own that we have stopped attending. “It can signal legitimate desires, neglected needs, or aspects of our life that we have relegated,” explains the psychologist. In that sense, it is more a compass than a defect. And we must see where it leads us.
Fine-tune your emotion
The exercise proposed by the expert is not to deny the emotion, but to fine-tune it. Specify exactly what you are envying. Because rarely is the whole you desire, but rather something more specific, more symbolic, whether “freedom, recognition, security, opportunities,” the psychologist notes. From there, it’s up to you to decide what to do with that information.
“Mental health doesn’t consist of eliminating thoughts, but of learning to relate to them in a conscious way,” summarizes Salinas. The expert proposes using a key tool, self-compassion. Or rather, the ability to treat yourself with the same understanding you would offer to another person. Perhaps the first step is to stop being shocked by feeling something deeply human. Because no, you are not a bad person for having thought that.
“The ultimate goal is not to judge, reject, or simply suppress envy, but to ask ourselves how we want to respond to the information that that emotion is offering us,” suggests Salinas. In other words, to transform it “into an opportunity to know ourselves better and guide our life toward what is truly important to us.”
