Positive empathy vs negative empathy

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I've noticed that I will more often react to something bad happening to someone else than something good happening to someone else.
For example if an acquaintance or friend has a death in the family, I will genuinely feel bad for them.
But I don't react to smaller negative things others experience. I just react to major things like illnesses or death.

But if someone has a success or reaches a positive milestone... I really don't give a flip.
For example, I go to AA. People there celebrate milestones of sobriety, 1, 2, 3, 6 & 9 months and years sober.
Almost everyone in the room gets all excited and applauds and congratulates them. Me? I'm unphased.
I almost never ever feel "happy for someone".

I suppose my bouts of depression could be part of this.

I have a feeling it might be easier, or more straightforward, to sympathise with someone who is suffering. Whereas being truly happy for someone else strikes me as more difficult. I too am depressed, so there may well be something in what you are saying.

Nobody has positive empathy. NTs have schadenfreude. When they're clapping, they're lying.

I feel burdened when something bad happens to someone, but rather than get depressed, I look for a way to help make it better for the hurt person. I feel happy when good things happen to people, especially people I love. Sometimes it bothers them, like they feel like I shouldn't be so happy for them or I'm being too much like their mom.

I was raised in a happy family that went to church and believed what the Bible said. My weirdness/inappropriateness wasn't embraced by everyone, because you know how church people can get hung up on insignificant pettiness, but I guess I must have been like a pet for the old guys who ran the local university. They played chess with me and we discussed philosophies. Since they were all religious scholars, we discussed what's in the Bible at great length.

At home and at church the ideas of love and joy were pervasive. Maybe it was taught, but why not? I love life even though, for me, it's a bowl of crap. I can always find something to amuse my mind.

And I don't agree that people don't have positive empathy. Why do we give gifts? Why do we fall in love? Why do we watch game shows? Why does anyone vote for American Idol?

Saying people have no empathy is like saying there's no Santa Claus.