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The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

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Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#111

Post by TeaDrunk »

typefourpd wrote: post #54
tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

The article talks about his ability to be friendly to strangers but abusive to his long term acquaintances. I have observed this pattern and curious if anyone knows what drives this? My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.

This is indicative of a personality disorder. My father had BPD and behaved this way. My mother was borderline and behaved this way. People like this do not behave abusively towards their loved ones all the time, it's pretty on-and-off. The loved one is typically a dependent or avoidant. They remain in the relationship because they need the positive affirmations, and healthy people do not want to be with a dependent…

This is indicative only of specific personality disorders. There are several other personality disorders that don't behave this way and are defined by other actions entirely, eg. schizotypal personality disorder is mostly being defined by distorted perceptions and belief systems.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#112

Post by ed25519FUUU »

> Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica on the piano. “I could be quiet around him,” she wrote, “and it never felt awkward.”

Listen to a piano cover while you read the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmL12NRE4hQ

And if you liked this story, you will probably also like "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans" https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#113

Post by [deleted] »

trianglem wrote: post #84
elliekelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a Saturday night in September 2016, K was injured when a terrorist set off a bomb on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. “I had pretty bad PTSD to which he hated caring for me, even kept a dated log of every time I needed help, to the point where he left me outside in the dark—knowing that at that time I couldn't be outside alone or be in the dark without panicking,” she recalls, before adding, “and this is only the…

Not to diminish her problems, but at the same time this is extremely reminiscent of girlfriends that are super attention seeking and constantly have “problems” that need to be resolved immediately. Sounds like this guy wasn’t super emotional and was distressed by incessant calls for attention.

[deleted]

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#115

Post by typefourpd »

tartoran wrote: post #96
typefourpd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indicative of a personality disorder. My father had BPD and behaved this way. My mother was borderline and behaved this way. People like this do not behave abusively towards their loved ones all the time, it's pretty on-and-off. The loved one is typically a dependent or avoidant. They remain in the relationship because they need the positive affirmations, and healthy people do not want to be with a dependent…

> It's clear that this man developed a personality disorder as the result of suffering abuse as a child. I'd say that is pretty hard to tell from the hearsay and all these are just speculations, which are okay. We're learning more from these conversations anyway.

Thank you for your gentle and respectful method of disagreement.

I agree that my assumption was based on hearsay. Fundamentally, I don't believe that children who are loved and protected by their primary caregivers shoot themselves in the stomach in an attempt to die.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#116

Post by ska »

cmehdy wrote: post #75
ska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who decide to commit suicide sometimes appear to others to be feeling a lot better in the time between the decision and the final act. I suspect this is just an instance of the pretty common response to having made a decision that was weighing on you. If it's a big one (divorce, career change, etc.) I'm sure most of us have experienced this at least 2nd hand.

Anecdotally, I can confirm that it's similar in essence and just overwhelmingly stronger in effect. It's a bit like having finally decided every single one of the big decisions of life in the same split second (because that's what it is in the moment). It's also stronger than that because the very likely "normal state" of your brain up to that point is severe depression, so you're not anywhere near what people might…

This is a thoughtful comment. I do think it is incredibly hard to gauge "relative effect" between people, so I don't think we can really rank them (except for ourselves, of course). There is some nuance here.

I've also experienced a lot of variance in my social group in terms of what things have really seemed to set them back.

I really like your point that seemingly "small" things can make a huge difference in someone else's state of mind. It's a strong argument for being as kind as you can by default, because you really have no idea what those around you are going through.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#117

Post by TeaDrunk »

trianglem wrote: post #84
elliekelly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a Saturday night in September 2016, K was injured when a terrorist set off a bomb on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. “I had pretty bad PTSD to which he hated caring for me, even kept a dated log of every time I needed help, to the point where he left me outside in the dark—knowing that at that time I couldn't be outside alone or be in the dark without panicking,” she recalls, before adding, “and this is only the…

Not to diminish her problems, but at the same time this is extremely reminiscent of girlfriends that are super attention seeking and constantly have “problems” that need to be resolved immediately. Sounds like this guy wasn’t super emotional and was distressed by incessant calls for attention.

A person who has such high levels of distress or lack of emotional regulation that they cannot manage by themselves the level of emotional turmoil they experience sounds... like PTSD, which uh, yeah, she has PTSD and this was a known behavior that he presumably chose and accepted when he was dating her. It makes no sense to date someone and then actively neglect their needs, even if their needs are greater than people who don't have a severe, chronic illness.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#118

Post by rootsudo »

How is it unsettling? Everything in that article is, average for Americans. People just applied romantic notions to something they didn't know, in attempt to understand. It got popular, people joined in, and the mystery was the thrill, the chase.

I don't think it's any different from when you ask a person to describe their pet, they describe themselves.

The fearful part is, how, everyone, decided that in good faith, they should work together, to unlock this past vs just leaving it to the government.

This is a case where it seemed he didn't like his parents, and probably didn't want/care to let them know of his demise.

His romantic life, same, probably didn't care to know either.

But, Mystery solved? We did it Reddit! /s

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#119

Post by jandrese »

typefourpd wrote: post #54
tppiotrowski wrote: post #37

The article talks about his ability to be friendly to strangers but abusive to his long term acquaintances. I have observed this pattern and curious if anyone knows what drives this? My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.

This is indicative of a personality disorder. My father had BPD and behaved this way. My mother was borderline and behaved this way. People like this do not behave abusively towards their loved ones all the time, it's pretty on-and-off. The loved one is typically a dependent or avoidant. They remain in the relationship because they need the positive affirmations, and healthy people do not want to be with a dependent…

> It's clear that this man developed a personality disorder as the result of suffering abuse as a child.

I don't think the causality is clear at all. If he treated his parents the way he treated his girlfriends then his childhood would have been rough no matter how loving they were.

If he behaves like he did in the article: polite at first but increasingly hostile the longer the relationship lasted then he must have been a hellish teenager to wrangle. One part of the article mentions that his anger at his father may have been the result of putting him in an institution.

Re: The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

#120

Post by ryandrake »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #103
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unsettling truth is that he was deeply troubled, and, at times, an abusive asshole who didn’t necessarily warrant quite as much compassion from strangers as he was given. I’m open to the idea that it may not really matter, and everyone deserves the dignity to not be buried anonymously. But there were a lot of resources invested in this case because he looked very relatable in photos. He was very different from wh…

>The other unsettling truth is that HN can read this story and come away asking what people could possibly object to in his life story, and why one should believe the spouses (plural) that describe his dark side What's unsettling about thinking that hit pieces on a dead man with quotes from supposed "ex girlfriends" is obnoxious?

Yea that’s the first thing I thought. If I wanted to write an honest and fair assessment on someone, I probably would take the stories from ex-girlfriends (or anyone else with a potential ax to grind) with a grain of salt. A lot of us wouldn’t want our biographies to be written by ex’s.

Unfortunately the author really didn’t have many more people to interview as the guy was a bit of a loner.

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