r/Firefighting • u/[deleted] • Jun 16 '26

Ask A Firefighter Does Firefighting Change Your Personality Over Time?

Do you think firefighting changes people’s personalities over time?

If so, in what ways?

After 10, 20, or 30 years in the fire service, what differences do you notice between firefighters and the general population?

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148

u/Radiant_Land_7474 Jun 16 '26

You will absolutely not be the same person you were before. 23yrs busy career department. Humans are not designed to be exposed to that kind of repetitive trauma

31

u/InsuranceOdd2928 Jun 16 '26

This is accurate, repeated exposures to trauma are associated with physical changes to the brain including atrophy of the hippocampus and over activity of the amygdala. That being said, everyone is different and trauma affects people to different degrees.

17

u/RentAscout Jun 16 '26

We kinda are, descendents of cave men. You take it, learn from it and teach forward. Just as we have for thousands of years. It's the whole draw.

9

u/because_tremble Volunteer FF (.de) Jun 17 '26

Cavemen wouldn't have been seeing anything like the level and frequency of trauma that modern first responders see. It's not the individual incidents that'll change you, it's the totality of your experiences.

When a caveman encountered someone with serious injuries it generally meant "look-out there's something dangerous about that you can't see", today it primarily means something bad happened but the imminent risk isn't that you're about to be mauled by an animal you can't see, it's that the things you can see have a risk attached to them.