My MIL talks about being a teacher a lot. She's dealt with all sorts of injuries - broken bones, seizures, heads split open, etc... when my now husband broke his arm she was a full on mess and another teacher had to help him.

By the time you're an adult, how you react in stressful situations is how you've trained yourself to react. Every time you are in a stressful situation, in a panic, you are reinforcing the reaction. Do you scream? Do you take a breath? Do you rush to action? Do you freeze? That's why teens and young kids aren't as good in a cruaidh, they dont usually have the prqctice. You can't learn calm overnight, but she's clearly been amping up the panic/damsel in distress since childhood.

I agree. And how you react when being woken up in the middle of the night to a fire, where other people are rushing around trying to put it out instead of fleeing, might be a totally different situation than when your child is in danger. You might be terrified of a spider, but have no problem protecting your child against a wild dog or pulling your husband out of a crashed car.