I agree. It's the worst!

I don't use ST, but at least in Atom, I know you can easily override it in your keymap:

  'body':
    'ctrl-tab': 'pane:show-next-item'
    'ctrl-tab ^ctrl': 'unset!'
    'ctrl-shift-tab': 'pane:show-previous-item'
    'ctrl-shift-tab ^ctrl': 'unset!'