Reader experiences Schadenfreude when hearing about other people’s problems

A READER WRITES: “why does it make me feel so much better about myself when i read other people's problems? is that the right grammar? people's or peoples'? your readers will probably be judging me on my poor grammar. [readers'?]. anyway. bottom line - churn out more problems the crazier the better. it'll cheer me up because i'm nasty like that.”

BB SAYS: Your grammar is perfectly correct. In any event, grammar is unimportant, as long as your meaning is clear, which it is.

So hearing about other people’s problems makes you feel better? This is perfectly normal, and, indeed, desirable and mentally healthy.

Unhappy people have a tendency to automatically compare themselves with people who are better off than themselves, to people who have fewer problems than they do themselves. People who are worse off are invisible to them. Even if they are objectively in quite a good situation, these type of people can still be desperately unhappy, because they constantly compare themselves with the few people who are better off than they are, while ignoring the huge amount of people who are worse off than they are.

In contrast, happy people have a tendency to automatically compare themselves to people who are worse off than they are, or to people who have more problems than they do. This makes them grateful for what they have, and it keeps their own problems in perspective.

In general, people have a tendency to feel like failures, and to believe that there are legions of normal, balanced, mentally healthy, productive people out there who do not have any problems. In reality this is not the case. In reality EVERYONE is messed up, and EVERYONE feels like a failure, and EVERYONE has problems. But the erroneous belief that there are lots of people out there who do not have many problems is part of the reason that people feel like failures – they are comparing themselves against a mythical standard of “normalcy” that does not in fact exist. If you realise that everyone is a failure, at least in some respects, then it helps you to feel a bit better about your own failings.

Life is difficult. Just getting through the day is a total triumph. If you manage to get through the day, then give yourself a pat on the back, and dare to feel good about yourself, because getting through the day is about all that can be expected from life.