I feel like many of these people are at that point where they're trying to make themselves into a hero to shore up all of the other fundamental deficits they have in their character.

One thing that I realized when I was going through mental health issues of my own was that a lot of the core of my issues centered around wanting to be someone who was important, a hero, someone that saved other people and for me that boiled down to acting like I already was the hero and doing things that I thought of hero would do like pointlessly sacrificing my opportunities for other people who did not appreciate me or attach any meaning to it.

I realized that once you're smart enough to start meta-analyzing your own life, there is a trap for you and that trap is your internal need for importance.

When you base all of your thinking around that, making yourself into the hero of your own life, then that thinking will cause you and more importantly , the people around you, so much grief.

My only saving grace was that I couldn't convince other people to go along with my self-appointed hero worship. I imagine if I had I might have ended up just like them so really it was my own lack of charisma that was my salvation I guess.