Glückschmerz
German: the pain of someone else's good fortune.
Glückschmerz is the pain of someone else's good fortune. The German word names this sour response. The chest carries a sour weight and attention returns to what they have. Their success produces discomfort where celebration might otherwise be.
You do not have to love every bit of yourself
Glückschmerz is the small, sharp pain at someone else's good fortune. The German word names a feeling English tries to deny. Almost everyone has felt it, usually toward a peer. The work is not to pretend you do not feel it. The pretending makes the feeling bigger. The work is to notice it without acting on it. Say to yourself, silently, I am feeling the pain of their good fortune. Then decide to behave generously anyway. Congratulate them. Mean it as best you can. The feeling does not go away immediately, but it loses its power. Over time, it visits less often. You become someone who can hold the feeling without being held by it.
"Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own."
— Harold Coffin
Glückschmerz has a distinctive body signature of sour weighted response to others' success. The chest carries particular sour weight that does not lift easily. The breath becomes shallower. The face shows particular pinched quality, sometimes with forced smile that does not match underlying response. The voice often carries particular strained quality when engaging with others' success. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being affected negatively by what others are celebrating: posture may contract, attention narrows to what they have. The state is typically brief but can be sustained when patterns support it.
Glückschmerz has been engaged with less directly in empirical research and more through its presence in German vocabulary and broader cultural commentary. Research on related constructs including envy and what some researchers call malicious envy has examined the pain that others' success can produce. The capacity for glückschmerz appears widely shared cross-culturally even where it does not have specific naming; the German term provides useful vocabulary for an experience that other languages may capture less directly.
Glückschmerz arises through specific conditions involving response to others' success. Common patterns include:
Glückschmerz benefits from being engaged with rather than suppressed or indulged. The following help.
Recognise glückschmerz when it is operating
Glückschmerz often operates without explicit recognition, framed as ordinary response or as critique of those experiencing the good fortune. Recognising glückschmerz for what it is, including in yourself, supports working with it. The recognition may be uncomfortable but is necessary for change.
Examine what the pain may indicate
Glückschmerz often indicates something about your own situation: domains where you feel behind, areas where you wish you had more, comparisons that highlight what you lack. Engaging with what the pain may indicate, including working on what you actually want, often produces better outcomes than focusing on others' success.
Reduce comparison-producing exposure
Some glückschmerz responds to reducing exposure to curated displays of others' success including social media use, particular contexts that emphasise comparison. The reduction does not eliminate ordinary glückschmerz but typically reduces its frequency.
Practise capacity for others' success without pain
Developing capacity to engage with others' success without specific pain is part of mature engagement with the world. Practising responses that include genuine pleasure for others, rather than just suppressing glückschmerz, supports both the relationships and your own engagement with life.
If glückschmerz has become sustained or damaging
Sustained glückschmerz that has damaged relationships or sustained pattern of pain warrants attention to underlying patterns. Some patterns reflect particular psychological structures including specific personality features or sustained patterns from earlier life. Working with these patterns, sometimes through therapy, often supports more sustainable engagement with others' success.
"The capacity for glückschmerz appears widely shared cross-culturally even where it does not have specific naming; the German term provides useful vocabulary for an experience that other languages may capture less directly."
— A theme in cultural and linguistic engagement with glückschmerz
What is glückschmerz?
Glückschmerz is the German word for the pain of someone else's good fortune. The body has been struck by particular kind of pain that arises in response to others' success, with quality that combines envy with sustained discomfort that does not match the celebratory response that the success might otherwise warrant. The chest carries particular sour weight. Attention returns to what they have. There is a quality of being affected negatively by what is positive for others, of carrying pain that the success of others has produced in you, of having particular response that others' celebration cannot accommodate. Glückschmerz specifically refers to the pain produced by others' good fortune.
Where do people feel glückschmerz in the body?
Glückschmerz has a distinctive signature of sour weighted response to others' success. The chest carries particular sour weight that does not lift easily. The breath becomes shallower. The face shows particular pinched quality, sometimes with forced smile that does not match underlying response. The voice often carries particular strained quality when engaging with others' success. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being affected negatively by what others are celebrating: posture may contract, attention narrows to what they have. The state is typically brief but can be sustained when patterns support it.
Where does the word glückschmerz come from?
Glückschmerz is a German compound word combining glück (luck or happiness) and schmerz (pain). The construction follows German patterns of combining concepts to name specific experiences; schadenfreude (combining schaden meaning harm with freude meaning joy) is a more widely known example of similar construction. The word has been adopted into some English usage because it names an experience that English captures less directly. The capacity for glückschmerz appears widely shared cross-culturally even where it does not have specific naming; the German term provides useful vocabulary for an experience that other languages may capture less directly. Some commentators have noted that English lacks specific term for this experience while readily naming the inverse (envy) and the related experience (schadenfreude).
How is glückschmerz different from envy?
Envy is the broader category of wanting what others have. Glückschmerz specifically involves pain that others' good fortune produces. A person can envy without specifically experiencing glückschmerz (wanting what others have without specific pain from their having). Glückschmerz includes the additional pain dimension that ordinary envy does not specifically require. Envy can be primarily about your own wanting; glückschmerz is specifically about being affected negatively by others' positive outcomes. Research on what is sometimes called malicious envy has examined how envy can include the painful response that glückschmerz captures; benign envy involves wanting what others have without specific pain from their having. The distinction matters because the responses appropriate to each differ: envy may be addressed by working toward what you want; glückschmerz often requires addressing the pain response itself.
How do you stop feeling pain when others succeed?
Several practices help. Recognising glückschmerz when it is operating is the first step; it often operates without explicit recognition. Examining what the pain may indicate often produces better outcomes than focusing on others; the glückschmerz often indicates something about your own situation, domains where you feel behind, areas where you wish you had more. Reducing comparison-producing exposure, including social media use and contexts that emphasise comparison, typically reduces glückschmerz frequency. Practising capacity for others' success without pain is part of mature engagement with the world; developing genuine pleasure for others' success, rather than just suppressing glückschmerz, supports both relationships and your own engagement. When glückschmerz has become sustained or damaging, professional support is appropriate; therapy can help work with underlying patterns that produce sustained pain responses to others' success.
No source-level citations are stored for this entry yet. The dictionary draws on the broader literature in affective neuroscience, psychology and cross-cultural emotion research. See the About page for the project's wider references.
Glückschmerz sits in the untranslatable family as one of its more specific cultural concepts. It overlaps with envy as the broader category, with malicious envy as the related research construct, with schadenfreude as the inverse experience, with what social comparison research has examined as producing various negative responses, and with what German linguistic culture has engaged with through specific naming.
See where glückschmerz sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Glückschmerz on the wheel