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Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

From The Atlantic, I expected a little more science and a little more suggestion from this article. This read more as a summary of all of the little sleep tips I've seen and heard anecdotally over the last few years rolled into one summary.

Not exactly on the same level as "When Your Child Is a Psychopath" or "My Family's Slave" (two very recent and exceptionally great articles from The Atlantic).

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I really wonder about the "When Your Child is a Psychopath" one, it was a good story and all, but I wonder how many people read that article and like me left feeling like "I can relate". As a kid in pre-school, I pissed in another kids face. In elementary I ripped a kid's eyelid off, and pulled another kid's leg through a bike lock station and then broke it amongst many other things. I never hurt a teacher, but I was under a hundred pounds in gr.6. If I had matured earlier I can't say that I wouldn't have, since they definitely manhandled me after every fight I got into. I remember another parent saying that when I grew up I was either going to be in jail for mass murder, or the prime minister, as if there were no other option.

I wonder how many other people did similar things as a kid and turned out completely ordinary.

What makes you ordinary?

Not old enough to be the prime minister yet.

I'm not an offender of any kind, let alone a violent offender.

I mean, there is a big difference between peeing on someone and trying to choke out one of your relatives. My family is full of mental health disorders and I've experienced the damage they cause first hand. For me, it was much more of a "so this is the complete extreme" experience -- it was a good example of "almost entirely far gone."

I have no mental health disorders though. I just had some completely off the handle reactions to people bullying me, or picking on me in any way. I was one of the smallest people in my class, and it never turned out well for the other person. I would blackout with rage. I've never remembered what happened in a fight, but can still remember every detail leading up to it.

Obviously I'm not in your head and I could be wrong, but I think what sets you apart from the kids described in the article is that you acted on emotions. The kids described had none. They knew what they were doing, they did not black out in rage. The harm they did was calculated.

It seems to me that you had bursts of violence because you felt hurt yourself and needed to make things 'right', not just because you found joy in harming others.

I guess, but I think when people read the article, the part that's scary is the violence. The lack of empathy is disturbing (i don't lack empathy). I guess I wonder how many people actually have one without the other, either the extreme violence or the lack of empathy without it, and whether it's the combination of the two?

I also have a really low resting heart rate, around 40 beats per minute.

I too would get very angry from being bullied. This is actually something that would entertain others at school - seeing how angry I got.

What you didn't mention in your original post was that you'd done most of those things out of retaliation - not premeditated. That's a major difference from being a psychopath.

However, I think my situation is much less severe - I've never caused anyone any more than bruises (nor had blackouts), I would certainly say that the anger I have is a mental health issue. Not at a criminal level, but certainly at a level that can cause problems with work/life relationships.

I've went to see a therapist for about a year and it's really unbelievably helpful.

I wish going to see a psychotherapist was as easy for people to do as going to see a physiotherapist.

I wasn't trying to say I was a psychopath, just simply that I could relate to the stories being told.

I've never seen a therapist, and don't know what anger does to you, but for me it's not a mental health issue.

Part of it I'm sure is that I don't bottle anything up any more, and the other is that I'm not a kid and being picked on is just laughable. I think knowing that it's okay to be angry, that it is a normal thing that is perfectly okay, was probably the biggest revelation.

You confessed to several violent offenses in your first post

Playing devil's advocate. A lack of a criminal record doesn't make you completely ordinary.

The people you spend most of your time with and your therapist might have a different opinion of you than yourself.

I've never needed a therapist.

Sorry, I didn't mean you personally. Hypothetically speaking.

Did eyelid kid get it re-attached okay?

Yeah, no real ill effects.

When did you stop being a psychopath? Were you aware of the change?

If you truly believed I was a psychopath, why would you try to antagonize someone like that?

The article itself mentions that many kids presenting psychopathic traits end up as normal adults. (or at least normal on the surface)

The Atlantic stopped publishing serious research article several years ago.

The two examples you list are personal essays/confessions

Can you give examples of what we've been missing in recent years? I count the Atlantic among only a few news publications that are worth a damn.

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