I'm not a very nice person

[Everly82]

Ok, that's not strictly true. I'm very friendly and polite, treat people equally, hold doors and smile at strangers. But...I'm often pleased when things go wrong for others (not major things like illness, but if they were to get a house that I would want to live in and it fell through, for example). My friend recently failed her driving test and I wasn't unhappy for her because I can't drive and she has made snide comments before. Next door's house is a tip which pleases me because it makes me feel better about my own and weirdly superior. My high school bully is now obese. Very satisfying.

Am I an arsehole? The reality is, I'm miserable and not where I want to be in life. Is this jealousy? I'm starting to dislike myself.

My mind is twisted through all of this

@Everly82 your latest post sounds perfect. I agree with cloudhopping - and in fact it isn't just people with low self esteem who get negative thoughts about others, it is everyone, at our low points but what I agree with her that it is what you do with it that counts, push it out of your mind consciously, think something better consciously. How you think, what thoughts you allow in your mind, how you direct your mind, has a huge affect on your happiness levels.

@Clappingforjoy

My mind is twisted through all of this

Do you mean through the comments on this thread, or through how you are feeling in your life?

How I am feeling Day

It’s like the Shakespeare play Othello. Even though Iago is horrible, and he is destroying Othello and Desdemona for absolutely no good reason at all, you still, somehow, want him to succeed

I really don't think that is a typical reading of the character. I studied that and literally no-one in the class raised that point. There is not a lot of ambiguity about Iago. He's just bad.

Our excellent A-level teacher did point out though, as we discovered how feasible the evidence of Desdemona's affair was, ' so if she had been unfaithful, would that have justified killing her', . An early lesson for me of how easily we shift the focus from men's violence and onto women's 'culpability.'

@clappingforjoy I have to spend time apart from my DC when they are with their dad. I miss them so much, I can't bear to go out and about because seeing other families and children is too much.
Its like seeing the life I wanted to have in front of my face.
People try to advise what I should do with all this free time, to treat myself. And I do, and its getting better. But really all I'm doing is filling the time.

Do you have friends to spend time with? In normal times of course.

Awww day at least you do have your kids and so long as they are happy dont worry too much.
I agree you need to make time for yourself.
Has for me I dont have any friends no but would be happy with having had a larger family to spend time with and money to treat myself.

@echt

While I haven't experienced what GrumpyHoonMain describes, I feel for her and am at the failure of imagination of a significant number of posters on this thread.

I agree

Before I used to have some days out with my mother and sisters but since covid and my mom going into care with dementia that's all gone.
Most days when not working I sit aimless with no money and no motivation it's horrible.

@YouKidsIsCrazy I don't think people are lying.

There is a difference between envy and jealousy. I've certainly, despite being very grateful for my modest lot, been envious of things plenty of times! But the difference is I do not begrudge those who have what I envy; I've honestly never felt negative feelings toward someone just for having something or doing well.

I think it's because my brain just doesn't correlate other people having stuff or doing well with me not having stuff or doing well. Whereas I think some people clearly do.

It's hard to be pleasant to people when they've been bastards to you. I was bullied for a couple of years by a group of women I see regularly, now I openly snigger at the ring leader. Yet if she was a friend, who had her problem, I'd have nothing but sympathy. Hence I'm not an arsehole

@OhhCarolina

It's fine OP. You're merely a product of a late stage capitalist society. Just don't say anything out loud.

Gore Vidal summed it up:

It's not enough to succeed, it's important that others fail.'

This.

You often hear "oh it could be worse" or "at least I'm better off than them" even showing sympathy or understanding seems to fulfil our need to make ourselves feel better. Our whole sense of who we are is mediated through our sense of who 'they' are.

I don't believe its natural for humans to be selfish, competitive, jealous, or acquisitive. I think our natural state of being is cooperative and empathetic. Its cooperation that got us here, its competitive society that's killing us off.

I have suffered abuse, recent bullying at work, I've had neighbours target me, including breaking the law to do so. I've found a friend has stabbed me in the back, I've been let down by the police, and sacked as a whistleblower to abuse. All these things feel very unjust. But I refuse to wish harm on people, even those who have hurt me. But then I feel that taking this higher moral position is maybe the egos way of saying "I'm morally superior" and is just as much a psychological coping mechanism as wishing justice upon others.
But becoming genuinely neutral though suggests complete disaffection.

What is needed is too huge to contemplate. But after 30 years in social work, my reaction to it is to say I just don't care. And yet here I am having to act like I give a damn! just to feed my own family. And yes its getting harder, but i don't wish harm on people, I don't wish anything.....which to be honest might be more worrying 🤔

Covid isn't just a public health crisis, it seems to be an economic, public, private, and psychological crisis, its both created deep fractures, and shone a light on already existing fractures in society. Its truely fucking scary, and I don't think our state of being, or our social and political system is up to the job. We are so disaffected from each other that we are focused on the wrong solutions.

We believe our own welfare is in opposition to that of others. Like a zero sum game. Happiness isn't finite, it can't even be measured.

The other thing I find odd is the idea that happinesss comes from within. Does it? and if it does how can it be so easily stolen?

@Clappingforjoy

Before I used to have some days out with my mother and sisters but since covid and my mom going into care with dementia that's all gone. Most days when not working I sit aimless with no money and no motivation it's horrible.

It sounds tough. I don't want to give out unsolicited advice, I'm sure you've heard it all before. But don't give up on finding friends and things getting better

It’s like the Shakespeare play Othello. Even though Iago is horrible, and he is destroying Othello and Desdemona for absolutely no good reason at all, you still, somehow, want him to succeed

I genuinely didn’t feel that and know of no one who felt that or I guess admitted it. But genuinely as a pp said, that is something I’ve never heard before, nor has it ever occured to me, my opinion is everyone wanted him to fail.

You know what, I was brought up very firmly with the expectation that I would always be the better person, turn the other cheek etc. I’m nearly 50. People are SHITS. (Some of them.) In recent years I’ve learned that a couple of people I was happy to know are incredibly dodgy, manipulative, really awful actually.

I actively enjoy seeing them fuck up!! I know I should pity them but fuck ‘em, they spend their energy shitting all over those they judge are less powerful.

Women are taught, growing up, to actively lean away from correctly judging bad character and it’s not right, we do do ourselves a disservice. Maybe much less now that we’re being raised by Instagram comments, some of us 😩 I don’t know. But if people are shitty, don’t give them your good energy, let it flow elsewhere!

(If you wish bad things on random people, or you hate them for their achievements....don’t be crap.)

Wow some people are proper psycho wanting ill on others who haven't wronged them. Bitter envy, selfishness and lack of empathy me thinks. What a horrid and sad person you must be to delight in innocent people's blight... even if someone wronged you you should feel justices been served not glee in their pain otherwise you too have been infected with whatever that caused them to hurt you in the first place!

How can anyone be shocked that someone has bad thoughts - every other twitter thread has someone being evil about someone else

I think when you realise that what other people have and chose for their lives has absolutely no consequence on your own life, everything becomes much less bitter

It matters not one jot that my best friend is worth £8m and I am worth about 50p. What does it matter to me? What difference does it make?

It doesn't matter to me that another friend is a mega-successful business person, rolling it in and all over the media. What difference does it make to me?

I'm a SP and it isn't necessarily what I would have preferred, but how on earth could I be bitter about people who have happy marriages - what has their situation got to do with me? Nothing! Good for them.

Live and let live

Everyone have a not very nice thoughts about Trump. I actually feel sorry for him.

Of course certain thoughts is crossing the boundaries and it would mean you will have to determine if you seek help or not.

It sounds perfectly human. My former step-dad was physically and emotionally abusive towards me as a child. He died very suddenly last month and I felt happy. I questioned whether this made me a bad person for a while but then realised it really doesn’t, it just makes me human.

A girl who always used to compete against me in primary school for some bizarre reason now works in McDonald’s. I’m only a FE English tutor so nothing fancy but did give me a bit of a kick when I saw her!

It’s honestly just a very human response, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person at all.

I don’t have negative thoughts towards others, I concentrate on finding my own happiness and striving for improvement in my own life. I want everyone to be happy, I really do.

A girl who always used to compete against me in primary school for some bizarre reason now works in McDonald’s. I’m only a FE English tutor so nothing fancy but did give me a bit of a kick when I saw her!

See, this kind of thing I really don't understand. If you're hurting terribly through infertility or bereavement or something, or someone did you badly wrong as an adult, then I don't admire it or empathise with it, but I understand how it comes about. Still holding grudges from primary school? Or even secondary school, barring anything really truly terrible, which it usually isn't. These people were children, sometimes small children, and how long ago was it and how much has it really affected your life? I know someone's going to come in telling me about some act of sheer evil committed upon them by a 13 year old, but I think we all know most of them are in line with this sort of thing: competitiveness or bitchiness or whatever, and really nothing that should give an adult cause to glory in their life being shit however many decades later. I knew a number of mean girls and boys at school and I was fat and bookish with fangy teeth, glasses and skin tags, so you can guess what that was like. But I can honestly say I bear none of those children any ill will a billion years on as adults. They were children, fgs, and to be honest, being ugly and nerdy didn't actually automatically make me a wonderful person either; I most definitely had a dark and unworthy side myself. I'm not the same person I was when I was 15 and neither were they. Primary school, you do need to let that one go.

The sort of thought process the OP describes (a sneaking satisfaction that someone who jibed at her for not being able to drive failed their own driving test) is an example of paranoid-schizoid omnipotent thinking. This is most often associated with pre-verbal infants but a situation that evokes feelings experienced in the infant paranoid-schizoid phase of development will often recreate an involuntary infantile response. This applies equally to 2 year olds and 99 year olds.

People criticising the OP for feeling this way completely misunderstand the distinction between emotions and thought. No-one can control their emotions. There is no such thing as a ‘wrong’ emotion. All we can do is control our responses to emotions. The OP seems to be doing this very well. She’s not feeling these emotions of triumph and vindication and dancing round the victim chanting ‘ner ner ne ner ner’. She’s recognising them as unkind/immature and therefore socially unacceptable and setting them aside. This is a sign of emotional maturity.

People saying they don’t feel this kind of vengeful pleasure occasionally are probably very repressed. They have been so socially conditioned to be good and kind and nice that they cannot even acknowledge that sometimes they fail.

We are all a mixed bag, none of us are perfect. We are never as bad as our darkest thought or as good as our kindest deed but somewhere between the two.

I'm shocked that so many people are surprised that people get a sense of pleasure from others misfortune.There is a multi million pound industry dedicated to this, the gossip mags, newspapers declaring " married footballer caught cheating". Beautiful women on holiday, with their cellulite circled. Kirsty Gallagher caught drink driving. Rooney and his prostitutes etc. So and so " has piled all the weight back on". Celebs caught without their make-up on.
There are even programmes to cater for this, Can't pay we'll take it away, Swindled on holiday,even Jeremy Kyle to some extent. I must admit I love the gossip pages!

I don’t have negative thoughts towards others

Liar.