You learn to turn emotion off when you have no control over the outcome beyond what you've been able to do. I do this quite well as a paramedic. I see horrific things, encounter situations that would leave others crying in the fetal position for days... but I get through it through a sense of personal accomplishment and team camaraderie. Am I stoic? To a degree. But I also know when to ask for help, and there's a communication style among my peers that allows for expression through humor, anger, etc. that's not frowned upon. Some of the best therapy I've ever had was sitting on the bumper of the ambulance at the hospital after a particularly bad call, scene, patient, etc.
I don't *like* what I see, but I like being able to affect it. And being trusted to affect it. That doesn't make me a sociopath... just someone who WOULD be a sociopath if you locked me up in a windowless office for eight hours a day with Excel and actuarial tables.
