Firefighters Train to Overcome Fear
Here is an interesting article from EMSResponder.com about how firefighters and EMS personnel overcome their fear.
Firefighters, law enforcement officers and those engaging in other risky professions and recreational activities have to override their fears and instincts, or unconscious responses to a stimulus, to do their jobs. They do this through training and repetitive drilling that makes their responses automatic and by learning how to work as a team, metro-area physicians and public-safety providers say....
"The ultimate goal is to have confidence in the equipment and in themselves through a lot of repetition, through mentoring and understanding these things are present," Capt. Parker says, adding that firefighters rely on and back each other to do the job, which boosts their confidence.
"It's OK to have a fear, but the firefighters have a job to do, a mission to do, and are part of a team," he says.
Good stuff. My favorite quote from the article and the way I deal with my fear is this:
"Once you have a task you're working on, if you're concentrating on your task, you're not concentrating on your fear."
The key thing that I picked up from the article is that repetitive training is very important. Train, Train, Train!
