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In addition to my above comment I'll add specifically on response to this question: I've noticed that in addition to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people specifically need to feel as though they are in control of getting those needs met in some way. And this can be different for each individual depending at the very least on what they're physically capable of, but also what they can cognitively and emotionally manage. I suspect this is because if you didn't cause it to happen, then that means it's being controlled by some outside force, which means it can just as easily stop happening.

So in addition to having food, a house, etc, you have to feel as though you, at least in some small way, caused yourself to have food and a house. And this can even manifest in someone causing unsafe situations, especially if that need has consistently been unattainable, because they still won't have whatever it is, but at least they then feel as though they have control over it. You see this all the time with personality disorders (I should know, I've got one that took 3 years of therapy to get under control), but the level of dysfunction described here is... extreme to say the least.

This particular type of problem in this article is usually caused by dysfunction the esteem/respect level of needs. When you can't cause yourself to be respected, you cause yourself to be feared. And because being feared is a fundamentally unstable system (most victims will start standing up for themselves eventually and at least in some small way), it can escalate very quickly and often even before the people directly involved realize what's happening. It also tends to be very difficult to undo and return to a place of positive esteem because the person has lost the trust of those around them.

And fundamentally, as with any problem of this nature, the person themselves has to take a leading role in their own recovery, and by the time you're this deep in, that's very unlikely to happen. I was just cutting myself to get people's pity and yelling / bucking up at people who upset me as a young adult and it still took me three years of wholeheartedly engaging in literally the most intensive therapy that exists to get to the level of functioning I'm at now; this is... a little farther down the rabbit-hole.

In my youth I'd seek out the worst of the worst, back when the Internet was still mostly the wild west. One day I just stopped. Now it makes me sick.

I'm not sure what switch flipped in me. 3 guys, 1 hammer used to bother me a bit, that video of the kid being crushed by the elevator got to me, and there were a few others. But most things just didn't register. Now I don't have any desire to see anything worse than a Saw movie and that's because I know no one was actually hurt.

I will say that in my very young life I was in a terrible situation, and even after that I lived in a less than ideal situation (my adoptive parents are great people, just uneducated and didn't have the time or resources to get me the help I needed). I was very much a product of my environment for many years. I was angry and just wanted to see people hurt because I was hurt. That was probably a huge part of it. One day that just stopped.

So I'll second this call for therapy. You don't have to be this way. I can only speak for myself but I hated being that way. I'm glad I'm not coming up through puberty or my 20s now because there's no telling what the hell I would have gotten up to.