Do we need ourselves in order to be happy?

Yes. Happiness comes from within.

You need your body in order to exist. The body houses the brain and nervous system. The brain is the seat of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, so yes, you need yourself in order to be happy.

Yes. In fact, we only need ourselves to be happy.

Once you need the approval or actions of another for your own happiness, you have trouble.

Question is fallacious;
Happiness is a Virtue of Love!
All 'self', all 'distinctions', all 'differences', all 'identity' is dissolved in Love!

"What a man loves, he is. If he loves a stone he is that stone, if he loves a person he is that person, if he loves God - nay, I durst not say more; were I to say, he is God, he might stone me. I do but teach you the scriptures." - Meister Eckhart

Lover and Beloved are One!

So, 'Happiness' transcends the egoic vanity of 'self'', of 'conditions and contexts', is, like Love, completely transcendental!
In Love, one is still be Happy (as all Virtues) even if being tortured!
All becomes One!
Enlightenment is Love!

Pretty much.Wuold you be happy on earth all alone with no one to share your joy?I know I would not.

Good question!

In my experience, whenever I feel very happy, I seem to become totally unaware of myself. The reverse too seems to be equally true..... ensuring happiness demands forgetting our self, because our concern for self is at the centre of all unhappiness that we face.

The first key to happiness is love (that's what I think) and in order for someone to love anyone or anything else they must first love themselves. Because how can you give your love to anyone else, if you can't give it to yourself.

More than anyone else.

If you had not 'self' you would have nowhere to hold your happiness. Yes, we need ourselves.

yes we need to be happy ourself first in order to make others happy too.

If we were not ourselves then it would be someone else being happy.
Think about it.

we can only create our own happiness. we can't rely on others to do that....which i found out the hard way.