When is it OK for a dive buddy to leave another diver?

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Hi John

Thanx for your thougthful post - yep, I guess where I am at now is whether or not I want to try it again. Whilst I still have much of the gear, it means nothing to me. I had always hoped that diving would be fun but of course in order for it to be that, I have to overcome my fears first. Much of that comes down to trusting my gear - which I don't due to my partial blindness & dyslexia. The numbers/letters appear inverted when I read them from the dive computer which I frankly find more menacing than anything. Perhaps the trick is training with a DM? Someone with an infinite amount of patience?

If you had dyslexia since you can read, isn't all letters/numbers that was ever encountered backward to start with? So them looking backward is the norm, thus easily recognizable?

Plus there are 2 types of new divers, ones that were fascinated on their fist dive, as soon as the surfaced below the water, and the second type are the ones who had fears throughout their whole dive. The second type in almost all cases never dive again. So I think the OP should just give up and do something else.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Plus there are 2 types of new divers, ones that were fascinated on their fist dive, as soon as the surfaced below the water, and the second type are the ones who had fears throughout their whole dive. The second type in almost all cases never dive again. So I think the OP should just give up and do something else.

I have to disagree ... there are many types of new divers. And there are many reasons why people decide to either persevere or give up on diving. It's difficult to tell from the beginning where someone will take their diving based on their initial experiences. In some cases, it really depends on how much encouragement the struggling diver gets from those who can help them.

Fears can be based on a great many things ... from a lack of competence, to a lack of self-confidence, to an abundance of survival instinct, to mental barriers based on experiences that have nothing to do with scuba diving ... and a great many others. I've often taught students who had to overcome fears ... often manifested the first time you ask them to clear a mask or take a regulator out of their mouth. By recognizing the fear and adapting teaching strategy to deal with it in unthreatening ... and progressively more challenging ... ways, I've been pretty successful at helping people recognize that the real issue is more a fear of failure than a fear of scuba diving. Many of those students have gone on to become competent and active divers.

The person I have done more dives with than anyone else is one of those people. She was never a water person, and only learned to swim in order to take up scuba diving. Her initial class was a struggle, and she had to work very hard to make herself believe she could do it. But the instructor said as long as she was willing to keep trying, he was willing to keep working with her. And although her class took much longer than usual, she eventually overcame her fears and has since logged more than 800 dives.

There are certainly people who should just give up and do something else ... but fear on the first dive is not a good measure of who those people might be ... in fact, sometimes that's a reasonable measure of someone who will go on to become a safe, responsible diver, if the person can learn to manage their initial fear rather than letting it determine their actions.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I'm going to agree with Bob here. I have myself trained a few divers who were not very comfortable in the water at first. But what I did was make sure they were before taking them to OW. I have been in contact with the OP and gotten more info as well as details on her certification process. Based on her info the course was shall we say "less than ideal" in a number of areas but I am only going to address the communications/buddy procedures part of it. Ie it was non existent. She was taught hand signals and how to respond to some of them but the "what ifs" were never addressed and buddy procedures were given the typical lip service so often seen today. Communication is a vital part of the certification process. Not only between the instructor and student but also between dive buddies. However new divers need to be told how to communicate and when. I frimly believe that much of the anxiety and nervousness can not only be lessened but in fact be eliminated by a clear understanding of how, when, and why we need to communicate. Especially as part of the dive planning process. Too leave it out is foolish and lazy on the part of the instructor.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Obviously the people who hated or was scared of diving at the start could end up liking it, but if they instead picked up some other activity that they automatically love right away, then why not?

Almost all the things I enjoy are because I always enjoyed it or loved it when I first tried it. The things I kind of only had fun, I usually leave it as a passing leisure activity when doing it with someone else. Not sure if I tried too many things that I hated it so much.