I'm sorry to hear about your experience. While there are many professors with attitudes similar to the professor you described, certainly not all professors have the same attitude.

For my undergraduate degree, I was lucky to go to community colleges and a small, private college. By and large, the instructors at the community colleges defaulted to such an attitude, but if you had brief conversations with them and let them know what was going on in your life, they were willing to work with you. At the community college level, I've heard of exceptions, but they have been extremely rare (and I come from an academic family that has ties to community college level institutions across the U.S.). At the small, private college, professors actively worked with students and knew what was going in their lives. I only met one exception, and that professor was summarily "let go" after only a semester.

At the graduate level, I've seen exceptionally supportive and exceptionally hostile professors. And I've seen many professors who will be supportive of one or two students to the detriment of others (in the circles I come from it even has a name, the "mini-me"). I had one professor who exemplified the hostile, even when I had a series of well-documented life crises and tried to work with him. While my other professors worked with me, this individual would make no allowances - to include allowing me to miss class to have emergency surgery to prevent imminent quadriplegia. Needless to say, my health crisis took priority. When I returned, I notified my department chair and the graduate school dean. While the professor was allowed to continue to treat students with a rough hand, I was given allowances to get back on track and I subsequently learned that the graduate school changed policies to prevent situations like mine from happening to other students.

I've also had the opportunity to teach several classes. As long as the student keeps me updated and is making forward academic progress, I'll support the student; with the one exception of teamwork. By default, I try to limit teamwork to the bare minimum appropriate for academic purposes, and even then I have tried to work with students who are suffering from external stressors. In graduate school, anything less than a B is tantamount to failing. I've given two students grades less than a B. In both cases, I reached out to the student many times, and made it clear that the student was doing extremely poorly, and tried to find out what was going on and what could be done to get the student across the proverbial academic finish-line. In both cases, the students would simply tell me they had been having a hard time at home, but things had changed there, and they would be more engaged with coursework. In both cases, this happened frequently, and there was never any increased engagement. Denying there is a problem is denying others the opportunity to help you.

So, (a) please do not allow one professor to scare you away, (b) please do keep your professors up-to-date on anything that will impact your ability to meet academic goals, (c) if you don't get acceptable support from your professors, seek help from support services (e.g., the ADA office) and move up the chain-of-command (e.g., department chair), and (d) if you're passionate about physics, find a mentor that can help you navigate your program and move on to an appropriate graduate program!