Advice please on student anxiety

I'll appreciate any hints or advice that any of you can offer. Here's the situation. My wife attempted her certification course a year ago but pulled herself out during the second day of pool work. The mask removal was the final straw but she had considerable anxiety throughout, I think. Well just this last week, she went back with a very patient, understanding instructor who recommended lots more pool practice with lots of hints to get used to breathing without her mask. Everything went quite well and she finished part 1 successfully and very excited to continue. Then came the open water part. She felt anxious upon entering the lake but made it down to the 20 ft. training area. After watching the instructor do partial and full mask flooding with other students, she began to panic and went to the surface and spent the rest of the training session hanging onto the flag float. The group of students finished with a fun dive to shore and she went along, feeling good about her bouyancy and thought that it was fun. I think that her anxiety was due to the thought of performing the skills. I recommended to her that she pay attention to her breathing because the shallow, rapid breathing will serve to bring on the panic. She will return tomorrow and I'm confident the instructor will be good at calming her, but today she is concerned about learning anything she can about reducing her open water anxiety. Thanks in advance for sharing your wealth of experience.

Paco once bubbled...
I'll appreciate any hints or advice that any of you can offer.

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Does your wife really want to scuba dive, or is she doing this to please you? It's a really bad situation when a person who is not comfortable in the water is forced into scuba diving by friends or family.

I suggest that you NOT attend the OW classes.

If she decides to bail out of this OW class, keep the wife, and find another buddy.

Hi there,
The sad fact of diving is that it hightens the anxiety factor in most people ,At the end of day anxiety can be overcome by
familiar training conditions,holding the instructors hand ect.
the same anxiety can hit that person tenfold,sparked by unfamilliarity,conditions and encounters.
That paniced diver can be a danger to themselves and others.
People that suffer a dissabiity that prevents them from diving
ASTHMA being a good case,just have to accept that they can't dive.
As much as your wife wants to dive you might have to accept that her anxiety is to much of a negative factor.
Not to be all gloom i have worked with divers that do overcome their anxiety ,but then have a strict Bow out policy.
Howard

I have never coaxed her to do this. She insists that she really wants to. The fact that she dives well seems to indicate to me that she'll do it. She just needs to appreciate that the skill are really not difficult.

It sounds like she doesn't have much confidence in her ability. How many pool sessions did she have? How long were the sessions? Over what period of time were they spread? What skills did she learn? Did she pass them after one successful completion or was she encourage to practice them?

The first time I took my mask off underwater I freaked a bit. After that, I just kept my eyes closed and concentrated on the breathing part - deep regular breaths. No problemo!!

I disagree with steeldiver's example of ASTHMA being a disability that prevents diving. I have asthma and have no trouble diving. It depends on if the person's asthma is controlled and what the triggers are for determining if a person can dive with it or not.

Paco, your wife might just need more practice at certain skills than others. She needs to do the mask removal part repeatedly until it is second nature to be able to do it. If it helps for the first few seconds after her mask is off, have her pinch her nose to prevent water from going up. Then release her nose once her face has adjusted to the water temp (I'm in Canada so the water temp can be pretty chilly on the face) and she is maintaining deep regular breaths. Personally, I'm not great at functioning without my mask but I can do it if I have to.

Diverlady

Paco once bubbled...
She just needs to appreciate that the skill are really not difficult.

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In general, i would agree with this. Her problem is not at all that unusual from my experience. Water against the nose freaks a lot of people out. With practice and work, most get over it with practice.

I suggest no-mask, snorkel breathing in the shallow end of the pool (or bathtub) until she is comfortable and slowly graduate to partial flood, full flood and lastly, mask removal and replacement.

She basically withdrew herself from the OW dives are the second pool session due to extreme anxiety during the mask removal/replace skill.

Caused, I might add, by snooting a bunch of water and hacking on it during the exercise to the point that she had to surface.

She REALLY wants to do this, though - and after seeing me "up close and personal" actually diving at Epcot (just on the other side of the glass ) a couple weeks ago, she REALLY has the fever.

(Her daughter comlpeted her OW checkouts Friday, and is now certified - and she loves it. The pretty fishies did it for her. )

Anyway, the instructor did some more pool work with her and pronounced her "ready". She didn't think so though, and pushed the OW back even further - fine with me.

My solution was the pool out my back door, my compressor, and a set of regs and gear - and as much time as she'd like.

NOW, a couple of weeks later, with lots of practice, she can do the mask floods and clears without problems. She still gets some water up her snoot during the mask remove/replace, but its not a choking event any more. She also has excellent trim, good buoyancy control, can hover just a few inches off the bottom of the pool, and is no longer freaked about the idea - having breathed through about a half-dozen tanks in the pool.

She has now pronounced herself "ready", and as soon as she can get her work schedule and the instructor's availability to coincide, she'll complete the checkouts.

DO NOT permit your wife to be rushed.

There are very, very few essential skills in diving - skills that if you can't handle them can kill you outright. Mask removal/replacement is one of the very few you MUST be able to deal with. If you choke at 60' or even 20', you may well die or be seriously injured. A rush to the surface if you're choking on water can be FATAL, as you will likely have your glottis clenched shut (holding your breath!) and the result will be an extremely severe lung over-expansion injury and possible AGE. Those are the most serious of diving-related injuries!

I told my SO that she was welcome to use the pool at the house, my "spare" reg set (which is destined to become hers if she keeps with diving), and that I would fill bottles for her until she was COMPLETELY comfortable with this set of skills. I also told her that I was not comfortable with her doing her OW checkouts until she was completely comfortable, because I'd like her not only to have a good time, but I'm more than a bit interested in her remaining with me in good health

Anyway, that's my solution to this - YMMV of course....

Progression...progression...progression

She should ask her instructor to redo the skill in the shallow end of the pool...start off with the mask on and eyes closed...remove the mask and plug the nose...put on swim goggles for this....with the swim goggles on, unplug the nose and breath in through the reg out through the reg, then remove the swim googles and practice the entire skill as it should be done. Providing her with small managable chunks allows for reduced task loading. This might help her "ease into" the skill. THis type of educational approach works great with any activity being performed in an unfamiliar environment (I've used this approach to teach swimming to people who had had a near drowning experience and suffered from extreme fear of water)....Lastly, tell her to relax and take her time...there's no rush!

Paco,

Even though my experience with killing water anxiety is different than that of OW training, I credit the US Navy for completely "washing" me of the fear during aircrew water survival trainin - six weeks of hell for some poor sod like me who didn't know how to swim at the onset and swam a mile in a flightsuit for graduation.

That was 5 years ago and I've become an avid diver since - no anxiety whatsoever and actually bored during the OW training.

From my experience, if she truly wants to learn to dive, iI make the suggestion that she first spend as much time in a controlled, "low threat" water environment as she can, performing these tasks until they are second nature.

Water anxiety, IMHO, is like over extending your brain with multi-tasking work. There are alot of new things a person's brain is trying to comprehend in this new environment. Simple tasks in the "air world" begin to resemble your first calculus test underwater. The anxiety naturally goes away as one's brain 'reprograms' for the new world.

Let me use a personal story to drive this home... Most of us have seen the helicopter "dunker" on the Discovery channel. It is an oversized (~12 foot diameter) barrel that has doors, windows, and seats like a helicopter. You belt in, it drops in the water, floods, and inverts like a helicopter does in the ocean. Your task is to wait until all motion stops and exit the craft CALMLY, as instructed (through the main exit, or other). We had six 'dunks', each with progressively harder exits.

In short, the first time we were dunked, I have little memory of how the hell I got out. I only know I did it correctly. My brain was overtasked and basically panicked, even though I denied it vehemently. On the second dunk, I have a little more memory and remembered being calmer, but remained highly agitated. The last one (#6) was a fun ride. I sat in my chair and made obscene gestures at my buddy until the safety divers gave us a 'get on with it' sign.

The key was repeated exposure to allow my brain to learn the new environment.

I recommend you and your wife take a day at the YMCA, hit the pool, and practice together. The fact that there is only one person for her to be aware of and that it is safe will allow her to more easily deal with the new environment. There should be no pressure, no time limits, just her, the new world, and the task at hand.

Just my $.02 worth.. Good luck!

James