I remain calm and act. If someone else takes charge faster than me, I will not fight them for it, but most of the people with whom I’ve shared emergencies have fallen into these groups:
other people in chicken mode until I get them to snap out of it,
other people in chicken mode, need to be restrained,
other people and myself collaborate seamlessly.
Training helps IF it’s been done correctly, which includes not only giving you information but getting you in the right mindset. Every one of my college lab courses included an introduction on safety procedures; we were not allowed to get in the lab unless the TAs considered we could be trusted to work safely and behave correctly in an emergency. Just knowing that Someone Who Knows Better Thinks I Can Do This can help you stay calm, from conversations with classmates. We weren’t just given procedures to follow; we were given information on what kind of dangers were in each lab, which kind of safety tools we had (and their usage), and told to use our brains. It’s not about being able to recite and draw “the elements of a fire”, it’s about being able to figure out how to isolate one from the other two when you’re staring at the blaze.
I’ve seen things like a classmate using his own hands to snuff out a two-focus fire… it wasn’t the official procedure, but in that particular case it worked a lot better than the official procedure would have, so it was the Right Thing To Do.
That’s because you love your children, and on the other hand…
I posted into the linked thread in the O.P. Don’t want to repeat here. I’m a retired E.M.T. so that should answer how I do in the heat of the moment.
I would consider it mentally unhealthy if someone truly did not have a delayed response to extreme stress or trauma. It is the nature of the animal. How you work through that process may change if you have professional training, but please- I’ve done calls where I was in tears when I got back to the bay, or back home.
A year and a few months ago, I was involved in a pretty horrible accident (my car got T-boned in an intersection).
After what seems now a couple of seconds of black-out, I awoke in my car. Someone approached my car and asked me if I was all-right. Subsequently I grabbed my mobile phone (which, luckily, I had stored next to me between passenger and driver’s seats), I started making phone calls to my brother and others that I knew were close to the accident site so they could come over and lend a hand. Meanwhile I gave my papers to a policeman, talked to the paramedic, was taken out of my car (through the back door), deposited in an ambulance and finally driven to the hospital (where, via mobile phone, I had to ferret out my insurance data from my insurance agent).
And my right leg was broken in two places (I had a nail inserted into my leg the following morning).
I tend to be a leaper. Not always a calm leaper, but I can usually get the people calmed down that need to be calmed down.
I remember when I first realized there were freezers and leapers. I was trying to fix an electric window in my parent’s car. It was a rear window, and I had climbed into the front seat to try the front control. I figured I might be able to jar it into working, so I reached behind me and slammed the door shut–on my fingers.
I was reasonably calm about it. I yelled for a while, and then started honking the horn until my mother came out. When she realized what had happened, she froze. I kept saying, “open the door,” but she just couldn’t. I resumed honking the horn and my father rescued me.
Same thing happened when I got treed by an elk. My mother completely freaked out. My father laughed at me and told her it would go away eventually and I’d be able to climb down.
