One of My Few Strengths is Also One of My Many Defects

I don't panic. At least, I don't recall panicking, ever, in my adult life.

As a kid, yes. I could get scared and freak out and get stupid quite easily. For example, I once ran into a strand of barbed wire, 1/8th of an inch below eye level, when it was getting dark and I didn't really know the terrain I was running across very well. I was maybe eight or nine, and I thought I was going to die. I screamed in panic all the way to the ER, although I did calm down for the 80-odd stitches required to sew my face and ear back together, because that was, well, interesting.

When I joined the Marine Corps, but before I went to boot camp, it occurred to me that there was one particular fear I was simply going to have conquer: Heights. Get me more than about 10 feet off the ground without walls around me, and I simply panicked and had to get the fuck down.

It also occurred to me that it would be better to conquer it before getting to boot camp instead of freezing up or freaking out on e.g. the "confidence course," where I'd be expected to go down the "slide for life," a diagonal rope, face first for a bit before kicking around, from 50 feet up (some recruits in my platoon did freeze up or freak out; I got an interesting story out of the deal, but it was a victorious one instead).

So, the spring before boot camp, I climbed a tower. It was one of those conservation "fire watch" towers in a nearby state forest.

I started going out to that tower almost every night and climbing the stairs, in the dark, as high as I could stand to go before I had to get the fuck down.

Over time, I managed to climb higher and higher, until one night I reached the top accessible part of the tower (there was a little cabin on top, but it was padlocked when the tower wasn't manned, which seemed to be all the time).

Then I started doing it during the daylight hours.

It probably took me a month of going out there nearly every day to get to where I could climb the stairs all the way to the top, in daylight, and look down without freaking out, hyperventilating, and having to get the fuck down. I was still scared. But I wasn't panicked any more.

And that ability to suppress panic took. For heights -- I've climbed and rappelled off 120-foot cliff faces, rappelled out of helicopters, etc. without losing my shit -- and for, so far as I can tell, everything else. 

I've been shot at, and kept my cool. I've had what I plausibly believed might be a suicide truck bomb driver coming directly toward me, and kept my cool. I've had stuff blow up near me that wasn't supposed to blow up near me, and kept my cool. I've accidentally sliced my leg wide open, requiring (IIRC) 17 staples to close, and kept my cool. And so on, and so forth.

I think not panicking is a strength.

But it's also a defect.

Why? Because somewhere along that line I lost a certain amount of capacity for understanding or empathizing with other people when they panic.

I have (literally) put out fires, etc. because I kept my head, acting while other people within a few feet of me were still milling around freaking out. And I've felt anger toward them, when I should have simply understood that not everyone has had experiences which required, or led to, mastery of panic.

As you may have noticed, there's been a lot of panic this last 18 months. And my response to that panic, where I've encountered it on an individual basis, has not always been helpful. Sorry about that. I'll try to do better in the future.