I think I understand. There is something of what you describe here that resonates with my own past experience.
I myself was always much smarter than my peers; this isolated me, as I grew contemptuous of the weakness I found in others, an emotion I often found difficult to hide. At the same time, though, I was not perfect; the ease at which I was able to do many things led me to insufficient conscientiousness, and the usual failures arising from such. These failures would lead to bitter cycles of guilt and self-loathing, as I found the weakness I so hated in others exposed within myself.
Like you, I’ve found myself becoming more functional over time, as my time in university gives me a chance to repair my own flaws. Even so, it’s hard, and not entirely something I’ve been able to do on my own… I wouldn’t have been able to come this far without having sought, and received, help. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to seek help directly; that would be admitting weakness, and at the times when you hurt the worst, you’d rather do anything, rather hurt yourself, rather die than admit to your weakness, to allow others to see how flawed you are.
But ignoring your problems doesn’t make them go away. You need to do something about them. There are people out there who are willing to help you, but they can’t do so unless you make the first move. You need to take the initiative in seeking help; and though it will seem like the hardest thing you could do… it’s worth it.
It seems to me that this is related to the idea of roles. If you don’t see yourself as being responsible for handling emergencies, you probably won’t do anything about them, hoping someone else will. But if you do see yourself as being the person responsible for handling a crisis situation, then you’re a lot more likely to do something about it, because you’ve taken that responsibility upon yourself.
It’s a particularly nuanced response to both take that kind of responsibility for a situation, and then, after carefully evaluating the options, decide that the best course is to do nothing, since it conflicts with that cultivated need to respond. That said, it could easily be a better choice than the alternative of making a probably-bad decision in the spur of the moment with incomplete information. Used properly, it’s a level above the position of decisive but unplanned action… though on the surface, it can be hard to distinguish from the default bystander position of passing off responsibility.