r/InsightfulQuestions • u/sock_hoarder_goblin • 1d ago
Should empathy include being happy for others?
Many people show empathy for those who are less fortunate than others but are not happy for people when something good happens to them. Specifically, they are not happy for those who are doing better than them.
If someone is truly empathetic, wouldn't they feel happy for others too?
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u/Slow_Court_7584 1d ago
Real empathy includes both, its easy to feel for someone struggling, thats instinctive. Being happy for someone else success takes more maturity
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u/WaveAlchemist 1d ago
Empathy is the ability to feel, experience and understand another persons emotions.
As the Stoic philosophers say, your emotions belong to you. While you experience a persons joy for winning the lottery, getting engaged, starting a new job, you are also a human being and may feel jealousy, anger, unfairness at the world or even sorry because they don’t know how bad the job will be, you don’t trust their finance, or are worried they will be taken advantage of by people who want a share of the money.
If someone were grieving over the loss of a parent , partner, or pet, you would feel their grief, and you could be sad or concerned, about them but you wouldn’t grieve.
Remember no one can tell you how to feel. We all have our disappointments: the job we didn’t get, being picked last for a team. I bet someone tried to comfort you by saying “there a reason that happened so dint feel sad”
Did that work?
As empaths, we need to learn to control that ability or we would be overwhelmed by the emotions of the hundreds of people we pass by in a day
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u/Elemental-Madness 1d ago
Dunno if this should be falling into empathy. Id say emotional intelligence and general well rounded people are able to be happy for anothers achievement.
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u/Elemental-Madness 1d ago
And hear me out. I can be happy for some really easily. Especially if it's about something I don't care about at all. For example. I don't have any desire or feelings to have my nails done. I gain no pleasure in even thinking of the idea.
But I can be happy for those in my life who enjoy this and had the time to go and do this thing.
I have no empathy in this situation what so ever. But I do have emotional intelligence and am a well rounded person in being able to be happy for someone.
But if we say this is now empathy does that mean I'm passing my empathy scores as a baseline just because I can be happy for my fellow human beings when something happens for them or their lives start to look up?
Id say no. Id like to say empathy has a more narrowed in set of criteria. And adding this into it would only muddy the waters.
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u/CryptographerNo7498 1d ago
yeah, i think so. empathy isn't only about understanding someone's pain, it can also mean being genuinely happy when something good happens to them
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u/Select-Simple-6320 8h ago
The Germans (of course), have a word: Freudenfreude, The opposite of the better-known Schadenfreude.
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u/autotelica 1d ago
Empathy is more about understanding than feeling.
Feeling what other people are feeling = sympathy.
Sympathy doesn't require higher level thinking. It doesn't indicate that someone is morally virtuous either. It just means they have working mirror neurons. It isn't a super power.
Someone who lacks empathy can see someone visibly happy about something and immediately suspect they are being performative because they don't understand why that person would be jumping around over such a "minor" thing. If they are a jerk, they will express their suspicion out loud. If they aren't a jerk, they will keep their suspicions to themselves and just say "Congratuations."
IMHO, the true test of a decent person isn't in how empathic or sympathic they are. It is how compassionate they are. A compassionate person may not have a lot of empathy or sympathy for a person experiencing something. But they will 1) say the things that person wants to hear and 2) not bad-talk that person behind their back just because they expressed their feelings. A compassion person will act like they are happy for someone even if they don't care, because they know the happy person wants other people to act happy for them.
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u/sock_hoarder_goblin 1d ago
I am wondering now if what people do and say is more important than what what they feel.
If someone says they are happy for another person does it matter if they really feel it or are just being nice? This is assuming someone isn't nice to their face and and making negative comments behind their back.
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u/autotelica 1d ago
Yes, actions are always more meaningful than feelings. Unless someone tells you how they feel, you won't know that information. But you can always see actions.
I used to think I was the worst person the world because it seemed like everyone was capable of feeling happy for others except for me. Like, every week, I would get news that my sister had another cause for celebration. A new promotion with a big raise. Yet again she had been invited to speak in front of a yet another muckity-muck. She was buying a condo. Then she was buying a house. She was going to spend a month in Thailand. She got another promotion with an even bigger raise! Then she was getting married and having babies! Every time I talked to my mother, I braced myself for another announcement I was supposed to be happy about but that actually made feel like crap.
My therapist was the one who let me know that I can feel however I am inclined to feel. Feelings are not what determine a person's decency. As long as I acted sufficiently happy for my sister's success, then I was a good sister. I didn't have to feel just as happy as she was to be good.
Also, love is an action. Love isn't evident in feelings. Someone can say they love you but treat you like dirt. If you are gonna treat me like dirt, does it really matter that you love me? Sure, it would hurt me if someone I loved told me they didn't love me back. But if someone treated me in a loving way, I would take it as a given that they loved me because actions always speak louder than words.
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u/SMCoaching 1d ago
This is a great question.
Empathy is defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." That would include understanding and sharing another's feelings of success, accomplishment, and gratitude. It would include feeling happy for others who are feeling happy.
This side of empathy doesn't seem to get as much attention as empathy for someone who is suffering. Another commenter mentioned that being happy for someone else's success takes more maturity. I agree with that to some extent. If you're close to someone or care for someone, it's not difficult to be happy for their successes.
The part that takes more maturity is being happy for someone in a situation where their gain could possibly feel like your loss. For example, if your coworker gets promoted instead of you, can you genuinely feel happy for them? That kind of empathy takes a great deal of emotional maturity.