diver 85
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emoreira, ---that one will do, trust me......
how to handle panicky divers in group
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I've heard it said that panic what happens when you don't have a solution. I think there is some truth to that; the more coping strategies you have at hand, the less likely that that initially frisson of fear will turn into full-blown panic. And I absolutely believe that one's tolerance for stress can be developed -- we used to joke that, by the end of the second year of surgical residency, your panic button had been pushed so often that it didn't work any more! But you can't use stress productively until the person being stressed has some skills with which to cope, which is why stressing beginners to try to sort out the ones with short fuses is not a constructive approach.
I am not sure that stress and panic tolerance are comparable, but it sure doesnt hurt. The big differentiator is when your life is on the line instead of someone else. I think that is true even when that other life is a loved one. Perhaps the biggest problem of all is people never think about it until forced into a situation.
My perception is most people working to save another persons life, even when it is their child, hold it together until after the crisis passes. It strikes me that people are more likely to panic (as in unproductive frenetic activity) when it is their life at risk and they are alone.
In any case, I have never heard of an accomplished military or commercial diver panic even the ones that didnt survive. The same is true of military Special Forces members. Come to think of it, I cant recall a story of a police officer panicking.
Part of that is no doubt training and frequent exposure to high risk situations, but people attracted to these activities are also likely to have a high threshold to panic in the first place or some say an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
I encourage everyone to read TSandMs thread and really think about it:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/378868-panic-experienced-diver.html
My perception is most people working to save another persons life, even when it is their child, hold it together until after the crisis passes. It strikes me that people are more likely to panic (as in unproductive frenetic activity) when it is their life at risk and they are alone.
In any case, I have never heard of an accomplished military or commercial diver panic even the ones that didnt survive. The same is true of military Special Forces members. Come to think of it, I cant recall a story of a police officer panicking.
Part of that is no doubt training and frequent exposure to high risk situations, but people attracted to these activities are also likely to have a high threshold to panic in the first place or some say an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
I encourage everyone to read TSandMs thread and really think about it:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/378868-panic-experienced-diver.html
We have an occasional open water student ( out of hundreds each year) who will not show readiness for open waters based upon their pool experience, even though the did all the confined water things ok. These are required to have what we call a mod 6, or additional pool session, usually with a DM reviewing and practicing with them, and discussing the open water dives. That extra session helps them a bunch, and we have few if any panic situations ( none so far this season). But as other s have noted, they can and do happen, to newbies and oldbies alike.
DicvemasterDennis
DicvemasterDennis
I once had an interesting pool experience that may be helpful here. The student let me know up front that he was a bit apprehensive, so I was working carefully with him from the start. He was doing OK, though. Then we went for the first trip to the deep end of the pool, and he was having trouble equalizing. I was right next to him with his head at no more than 3-4 feet of water as he tried to equalize. Suddenly he went into full blown panic. He tore the regulator from his mouth and started flailing. Since I was right there to help, there were no serious consequences.
When we talked about it, he had no idea why he had panicked, and he had no recollection of the details. He was surprised to learn he had thrown his regulator away. He then said that he is prone to unexplained and unexpected panic attacks, even when simply doing office work. The discarding of the regulator intrigued me. It suggested to me that at some level he sensed it was not working. I asked him about his panic attacks. Did they come in moments of intense concentration? Yes, they did. When he concentrates on something, does he hold his breath? He thought about it and said he probably does. When he was trying to equalize, was he holding his breath? Yes, he was. I suggested that might be the answer. Holding the breath brings on a carbon dioxide buildup, and that brings panic. We talked about the importance of breathing, and I suggested breathing exercises before and during activities like this.
Our next pool session was the next day, and he walked in with surprising confidence. He said he had been working on his breathing, and he was amazed at how much it relaxed him. He finished the pool session with ease, and completed his OW certification on a referral with equal ease.
People who are anxious--which is common in scuba instruction--tend to take very shallow, rapid breaths. This causes carbon dioxide buildup, which in turn creates more anxiety. It creates a spiral that can lead to panic. Therapists working with people who are prone to panic often emphasize deep, diaphragmatic breathing to calm nerves and short circuit that spiral.
The worst thing you can do with someone who is in the midst of such a spiral is to go in and start ripping masks off without warning.
When we talked about it, he had no idea why he had panicked, and he had no recollection of the details. He was surprised to learn he had thrown his regulator away. He then said that he is prone to unexplained and unexpected panic attacks, even when simply doing office work. The discarding of the regulator intrigued me. It suggested to me that at some level he sensed it was not working. I asked him about his panic attacks. Did they come in moments of intense concentration? Yes, they did. When he concentrates on something, does he hold his breath? He thought about it and said he probably does. When he was trying to equalize, was he holding his breath? Yes, he was. I suggested that might be the answer. Holding the breath brings on a carbon dioxide buildup, and that brings panic. We talked about the importance of breathing, and I suggested breathing exercises before and during activities like this.
Our next pool session was the next day, and he walked in with surprising confidence. He said he had been working on his breathing, and he was amazed at how much it relaxed him. He finished the pool session with ease, and completed his OW certification on a referral with equal ease.
People who are anxious--which is common in scuba instruction--tend to take very shallow, rapid breaths. This causes carbon dioxide buildup, which in turn creates more anxiety. It creates a spiral that can lead to panic. Therapists working with people who are prone to panic often emphasize deep, diaphragmatic breathing to calm nerves and short circuit that spiral.
The worst thing you can do with someone who is in the midst of such a spiral is to go in and start ripping masks off without warning.
I doubt that would ever happen, or if it did the instructor is so inept that they shouldnt even be diving. That bears no resemblance to any harassment training I have ever experienced or even heard about.
Military instructors have dished out harassment to individuals they suspected werent ready, but long after they should have been. In that environment it is always better for the student to conclude they dont have the mentality for the job.
Your point is well taken that anxious people can be helped to overcome their fears in time. Recreational dive instructors that invest the extra effort to help them are to be commended. The tragedy is when the instructors dont notice the anxiety and graduate them anyway.
Several years ago I got an interesting assignment. The student had completed her confined water classes, moved, and gone almost an entire year without going into the water. She went to her new local shop where they suggested she join the last confined water session of a current class as a refresher before dong the OW dives with them. That pool session featured masks being ripped off and regulators pulled from mouths. She found it traumatic. She tried to do the OW dives with them anyway, and the same behavior continued in the OW. She thumbed her first OW dive and walked away. She moved back and went to our shop, and I was assigned to redo the CW sessions with her. She was terrified. It took some TLC, but she eventually got her certification as a safe and confident diver.
Yes, these instructors do exist.
Please PM that name to me so I can get off the boat when s/he steps aboard. Like I wrote, “the instructor is so inept that they shouldn’t even be diving”.
I think there is a difference between stress tolerance and panic tolerance. I don't think there is such a thing as panic tolerance; panic, almost by definition, is the state you reach when fear has overwhelmed your rational responses and you become irrational. What stress tolerance training does is push panic further away, because the individual has learned that stressful circumstances can be managed, and therefore does not end up in the bottom of the incident pit, where they see no answers. However, again, the key is that the individual has to learn coping mechanisms and be facile with them, before they are confronted with the sudden stress that demands that response. That is why technical classes begin with critical skills dives, done in shallow water in benign settings, until the students are exhibiting a correct, competent and confident response to rehearsed and orchestrated scenarios. Only then is the training taken deeper, and the issues made more real.
In the context of open water, the diver is taught a variety of "skills". If the class is a good one, the diver has considered and recognized the type of situation where that particular skill would be called for. After demonstrating the skill for the instructor, one hopes the diver has then rehearsed it a number of times with the CAs (which is what we do). THEN it is fair game for someone to swim up and demand gas, or to demand the diver's mask. Even in the pool, it is unwise to stage scenarios with a high likelihood of a maladaptive response, like for example swimming up to the student and mashing on the power inflator, to make the student remember to disconnect the hose. You'd end up on the surface with a very startled and unhappy student at best, or an embolus at worst!
It takes bandwidth to assess a situation calmly, rifle through one's playbook of responses, select the correct response and implement it. New OW students are critically short on bandwidth, even if they are talented and doing well. All harassment training would do at that point is destroy confidence and create an opening for panic, where none might have existed before.
We had an OW student's yoke regulator come off. She had installed it improperly, and the staff checking gear (no, I wasn't there!) had not picked it up. When she got a mouthful of water, she calmly turned to the DM escorting her and signaled "out of air". Honestly, he was more frightened than she was. No harassment training, but she had a well-ingrained, adaptive response to the particular emergency she encountered, and she implemented it with great poise.
In the context of open water, the diver is taught a variety of "skills". If the class is a good one, the diver has considered and recognized the type of situation where that particular skill would be called for. After demonstrating the skill for the instructor, one hopes the diver has then rehearsed it a number of times with the CAs (which is what we do). THEN it is fair game for someone to swim up and demand gas, or to demand the diver's mask. Even in the pool, it is unwise to stage scenarios with a high likelihood of a maladaptive response, like for example swimming up to the student and mashing on the power inflator, to make the student remember to disconnect the hose. You'd end up on the surface with a very startled and unhappy student at best, or an embolus at worst!
It takes bandwidth to assess a situation calmly, rifle through one's playbook of responses, select the correct response and implement it. New OW students are critically short on bandwidth, even if they are talented and doing well. All harassment training would do at that point is destroy confidence and create an opening for panic, where none might have existed before.
We had an OW student's yoke regulator come off. She had installed it improperly, and the staff checking gear (no, I wasn't there!) had not picked it up. When she got a mouthful of water, she calmly turned to the DM escorting her and signaled "out of air". Honestly, he was more frightened than she was. No harassment training, but she had a well-ingrained, adaptive response to the particular emergency she encountered, and she implemented it with great poise.
If that were true then panic would be a prevalent problem in Special Forces, aircraft pilots, commercial divers, and a long list of other professionals. There are too many cases where people die with the mic on so we know their last moments are hopeless but their actions dont become frenetic and unproductive. Resigned to the inevitable in some cases, but not panicked.
You could call it fear tolerance, but I fail to see a meaningful difference.
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