Thanks, I knew someone would say this... but to me it seems like reflecting isn't enough when I still feel all the negative emotions like jealousy, hatred, envy...towards others....I catch myself doing good things mostly for that tag so I could get myself to think positive abt me...I do understand and feel sad for others many times but when I help someone it's more like 'I did something good' instead of 'glad that the person in need got the help they needed', it's like collecting points deseparately to somehow not hate myself, I feel like the motive matters too... maybe I'm overthinking this too much but it's time to accept what I've been actually doing all my life.
Everything I do is always and always abt myself so I won't hate myself in the future.
We can't always help others. We can't always help ourselves. Being unable to help someone doesn't make you bad. Honestly, you don't even need to feel like you "must" help others in order to not be bad. There is a lot of pain in the world, and a lot of bad people intentionally causing pain OR at least not caring if they cause pain as long as they gain something. People who can't help or are unable to help or maybe even just don't want to help in any specific situation shouldn't feel bad because of that. It's backwards for you to blame yourself for that if you aren't the cause of the problem in the first place.
And I can't stress it enough... bad people don't stress over this sort of thing. They just don't. Even if you feel like you're only caring to be selfish and feel good about yourself... that's still better and indicative of not being bad. Not being perfect doesn't equal bad. Lots of imperfect people, virtually everyone is imperfect, and flaws and mistakes and imperfections aren't inherently bad.
I'll also argue that helping others to make yourself feel good is a lesser sin by far than hurting others to make yourself feel good. I fall on the other side in some ways in that I don't like feeling good about helping. I feel guilty if I feel good about helping someone, because I wonder if that motivated me to help. But, I take my own advice and realize that IF I help or try to help and a part of me feels good for trying... that doesn't make my desire to help less genuine. I wasn't doing it to feel good, I was doing it because it was right and IF I get a good feeling about it, that is just something that happens. It wasn't the driving force.
That said... there are times in my life, I'll relate one for an example... for many years in school I was bullied and isolated and ostracized. Details are not important, but for years... until we moved and I started over in a new school. In the new school I wasn't Mr Popularity, but life was just normal. It was a radical change for me to not be bullied and hit and isolated all the time. One day, I was in the cafeteria for lunch waiting for a friend to join me. I saw a girl sit by herself at another table. I witnessed a table next to her of mean kids who were talking to her and saying things about her friend being quiet... basically they were picking on her because she was alone at lunch. I actually knew this girl. We weren't friends, and barely talked but I did technically know her. I sat there, hearing what was going on and eventually watching as she left, sadly, to get away from those ridiculing her. I still think about that sometimes, like now... and I remember back then thinking that I should have done something. I wish so much that I had gotten up and walked to her table and said something like, "Hey didn't you see we were sitting at a different table? I wondered why you hadn't sat with us." And invited her to join us in a way that helped her without embarrassing her like I was doing charity. It would have been a small kind gesture and that day I didn't do anything.
Am I a bad person? I wonder sometimes. I wasn't fully a good person, because a good person would have done something for her. But I don't think I'm a bad person because I regret it. I don't know if that helps at all.
