Is My Schadenfreude a Stress Aftereffect?

Life often looks like a river with a clear direction, but anyone who has actually stepped into that river knows it doesn’t flow according to any visible logic. It does not arrange who gets stability, who gets chaos, who moves forward smoothly, or who gets hurt. Fate plays no favorites, and it never spares someone from sudden breaks just because they once held certain advantages. Whether a person stays standing depends entirely on whether they have the capacity to handle disruptions that were never in the plan.

I often recall something an elder in my family once told me. The story was about someone a year older than me—someone who, in her youth, was widely considered a “safe bet for a good future.” She was beautiful, clear-tempered, gentle with people. Back then, these qualities were almost automatically equated with “life will probably be easier for her.” She married a partner who seemed solid and dependable, someone calm and steady. Their life moved forward on predictable rails: marriage, a child, work, home. No risks, no wild ambitions—just clean, orderly days.

But life rarely needs much setup before it turns. One morning, her partner suddenly collapsed while putting on his shoes. He was rushed to the ER. The heart attack came fast, and with it ended their previous life trajectory. Surgery saved him, but he survived with partial paralysis. From that day on, their life split into “before” and “after.”

Their child was still young. Someone had to stay home full-time. She didn’t have the luxury of choosing. She quit her job and became a full-time caregiver. Their income collapsed overnight; everything they once planned or expected turned into something belonging to a different world. She applied for government assistance—barely enough to cover essentials. Her transformation didn’t happen in a single dramatic moment but through years of slow erosion. Not age—just the weight of life itself.

The story was a clear reminder: • Beauty doesn’t guarantee safety. • Marriage isn’t a permanent shelter. • Jobs aren’t inherently reliable. • And a “good starting point” doesn’t shield anyone from risk. What keeps a person standing are the abilities that can move with them—skills, capacities, ways of thinking. But what surprised me was my own reaction when I first heard the story. Instead of sympathy, my first thought was something subtly selfish: so it isn’t just me; someone else is struggling too.

That wasn’t who I used to be. I used to be someone who genuinely felt happy for others, someone who hoped good things would happen to everyone. But this small, involuntary exhale of relief made me realize how much the case I went through had reshaped my inner structure.

The real shift didn’t come from this story—it came from the case itself. That period felt like being pushed into a system that ordinary people were never meant to enter. Not because I had done anything wrong, but because I was suddenly caught inside layers of law, investigation, misinterpretation, waiting, and uncertainty. It put my body into a long-term state of vigilance. I was constantly bracing for the next letter, the next phone call, the next unexpected “development.” I could no longer tell what was fact, what was procedure, and what was someone else’s decision behind the scenes. I had no choice but to keep moving, without being able to predict what the next day would bring. Long-term hypervigilance reshapes a person’s internal judgment. It isn’t an emotion, nor a belief—it’s a defensive system. And when that period finally ended, I noticed something I didn’t like but had to acknowledge:

When I heard someone else was struggling, even slightly, a part of me would feel a faint sense of relief. It wasn’t malice. It wasn’t wishing harm. It wasn’t intentional schadenfreude. It was a reflex—a “balancing reaction” produced by prolonged pressure. The case had created a kind of isolation: as if the entire world was moving normally while I alone was stuck inside a system. With no real place to speak, no space for explanation, that quiet question—“Why only me?”—built up inside.

So when I learned someone else was facing difficulty, even briefly, my mind would produce a split-second response: Maybe the world wasn’t unfair only to me. It took me a long time to admit this reaction, and even longer to understand it. It wasn’t my personality. It wasn’t my values. It was a psychological consequence of sustained high stress. If a hundred people experienced the same waiting, the same uncertainty, the same loss of control, I suspect many of them would show the same reflex. But I didn’t want this to become a defining part of who I am.

So I began deliberately separating: • what belongs to my true self, • and what was shaped by the environment and pressure. Each time that fleeting reaction appeared, I reminded myself: This is residue from the case, not my identity. Gradually, the reflex softened.

I began recovering something closer to my original equilibrium—not naïve optimism, not forced positivity, but a steadier clarity born from being tempered by real life. I began to understand what prolonged stress can do to a person, how it can temporarily bend someone out of shape. I stopped judging myself for it, and instead treated it the way one treats a scar: not pretty, but proof of something survived.

This realization also made something else clearer: Fate does not distinguish by gender, background, appearance, or personality. It does not sort people by who “deserves” to face what. What truly provides a way out are the capacities no one can take away— including psychological ones:

• the ability not to be completely molded by pressure, • the ability to retain your boundaries in chaos, • the ability to stay clear-headed inside a system designed for confusion.

The case changed me, but it also clarified why I keep learning, building systems, expanding my abilities. Not to become stronger for its own sake, but so that when the next break appears, I will not be left without any path forward— and so I don’t let life reshape me into someone I can’t recognize.

This article isn’t about how cruel fate can be. It’s about how the inner structure of a person shifts under external force, and how that person slowly reshapes it back. Real stability is never something given by others. It’s something we build ourselves.