Anxiety

[mfross]

Anyway, she will do fine in the water for a little bit and then suddenly anxiety will rise and she will want to bolt to the surface. I'm trying to think of some exercises for her to do in the pool to help improve her confidence. Does anyone have any suggestions?

My wife can swim like a fish, but was freaked out by the concept of being able to breathe under water. Lots of pool time, a very, very good instructor and going through procedures and practices until she can do them without thinking got her to the point where she could complete her OW with confidence.

I'm in the fire service, and while not a great swimmer, if I have air I'm happy, be it in a burning building or underwater. And I'm used to drilling in all procedures until they are muscle memory.

It might help if there was some distance between you. I know my wife didn't like me helping her, but when the instructor repeated the same things that I was saying, she listened better and learned more.

Joe
Paramedic/Firefighter

 

[Aggiebq86]

Thanks for the input everyone. We haven't been diving together so I know she hasn't been freaked out by my trying to coach her or judging her performance.

We will try to get in some pool time. First with just mask fins & snorkel. Then we'll move add SCUBA gear in the shallows. Ultimately the goal is to complete the OW cert. Hopefully it won't take a private class to do that. I'll make sure and stand back. I don't want to be compared to those husbands trying to teach their wives how to play golf.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Thanks for the input everyone. We haven't been diving together so I know she hasn't been freaked out by my trying to coach her or judging her performance.

We will try to get in some pool time. First with just mask fins & snorkel. Then we'll move add SCUBA gear in the shallows. Ultimately the goal is to complete the OW cert. Hopefully it won't take a private class to do that. I'll make sure and stand back. I don't want to be compared to those husbands trying to teach their wives how to play golf.

That sounds like the safest and easist thing to do. If she is comfortable snorkeling, then have her do drills, mask clearing... then a mask clear AND a snorkel clear on one breath, then throw the gear into the deep end and have her swim down put the fins on, then the mask, clear the mask and clear the snorkel all on one breath. Almost everyone has the physical ability to do this drill (with a little practice), but you must be calm and methodical or it is very stressful and "hard". When she can do that, maybe add a light weightbelt into the gear recovery game.

Also, practicing snorkeling with no mask, just snorkel and fins, is a good conidence builder.

If she can accomplish things like this (even if it takes several pool sessions) she will develop confidence and skills that will help with the scuba. If on the other hand, she can't (or won't) come close to accomplishing these little exercises, maybe that is a good sign that she should be on top of the water.

As an instructor, I have seen people that were incredibly bad at trying to scuba dive. As soon as the water hit their lips they spit out the reg and start choking etc. It is so ridiculous that you first think that they will never be able to do this (Plus that is what they think too). However, IF they are truely motivated, and given some time and low pressure/laid back support, they can often move past this and learn to be comfortable.

 

[LivBlue]

Maybe diving without you. It's worked for me with people with anxiety issues. I've experienced one person of a couple or group/family that has had issues that needed to be given confidence and empowerment to dive without the person/family members, showing them to be totally independant and encouraging them to take "possession" of thier own dives instead of feeling pressure or guided. (even if you aren't) If she really wants to dive for herself she will!

I was going to add something along these lines. My partner is a rather anxious person. When I got a chance to sign up for a certification class in May, I did so with a friend. I signed her up for a 2hr intro class in March. My theory was if she liked it then awesome she'd still have time to get in on ours, if she didn't I already have a buddy.

While waiting for this class I made only plans for myself and my buddy, I'd say when he and I do this or when he and I go to X location you can sit at the beach and we'll be back to meet you. Thing is I wanted HER to choose to or not to do this. I typically drag her along on land adventures and after she loved them. However diving is a life/death thing. I don't want to drag her on this one.

So last weekend she took the intro class and liked it. She's been snorkeling with me a zillion times so she was ahead of her class. Upon leaving the class she'd signed up for the class my friend and I are in.

Here's the IMPORTANT part. She wants to not have me as her buddy in class. At first that might sound odd. However it's perfect really. She has a chance to not rely on me, I have the opportunity to not take care of her. She can go and work out her issues and not feel any pressure of being watched, judged, failing to meet goals for things like trips and vacations. She will be her own person and gain the skills herself. I think sometimes we forget after being with someone a long time how much we look out for them. She might need to build her confidence with diving on her own a little.

Personally I'd tell her to sign up maybe for private lessons or with another group of women. Women tend to "get" each other and know how it is to have anxiety, wanting to please their partners, ect. Let me her this her own. Own pace, own trials, and own rewards. Hopefully she'll come out as a GREAT dive buddy who's confident and you'll be very happy for it.

 

[NorCalDM]

Thanks for the input everyone. We haven't been diving together so I know she hasn't been freaked out by my trying to coach her or judging her performance.

We will try to get in some pool time. First with just mask fins & snorkel. Then we'll move add SCUBA gear in the shallows. Ultimately the goal is to complete the OW cert. Hopefully it won't take a private class to do that. I'll make sure and stand back. I don't want to be compared to those husbands trying to teach their wives how to play golf.

Good choice to stand back. mfross said it while I was typing. My wife and I have done all our training together from OW through DM and our instructor would seperate us for this reason. She had the same issues in the begining he told me to step back and let him deal with it and it worked and she is one of the best DM's I've worked with. I DM about 6-8 OW classes a year and couples seam to have the most issues and parents with a child aswell. We usually seperate them and pair them up with somebody else. Also in my experience women tend to think things through more than men but when they work it out there is no stopping them. My wife told me she needed to stop listening to the little voice in her head. Men are more willing to jump in and just do it and not over think it. I wanted to face my issues head on and get it over but my wife had to think it to death until she figured out every little detail. We're just wired different. Back off some and let the instructor work with her and don't offer any addvice unless she asks for it. My two cents!!

 

[scubalexe]

Hi,
Same happened to me in the beginning once I was certified . I went back to the pool several times while the instructor taught other people. But being a little away from others I could exercise by myself and felt stronger and stronger. I did same in the ocean with the instructor not being too far away from me but again I did all exercises over and over until I felt completely secure. Sometimes being alone helps a lot. Hope that will help others too. Have fun diving and take all the time you need

 

[boulderjohn]

Make sure the equipment she is using is adjusted properly. If a reg is hard to breathe, CO2 can rise until the diver feels panicky.

CO2 levels will indeed create a feeling of panic, but there can be a human cause for it.

I have had several students have their anxiety rise during diving, and I realized they were not breathing properly. Their breathing was very shallow, so little air was reaching the lungs and little CO2 was being expelled. This is very common for people who are a bit nervous and uncomfortable. Try it yourself--just inhale until the point that the air is barely reaching your lungs and then exhale. See how long you can do this before your anxiety levels rise. In my instruction, I now spend a lot of time in my beginning classes on proper breathing, and the problem has pretty much disappeared.

I once had another student who was having trouble clearing his ears the first time he descended into the deep end of the pool. I went next to him to help, and suddenly he went into a full blown panic attack, discarding his regulator and trying to bolt to the surface, which was really only a few feet away. When we talked about it, he had no memory of what had actually happened--he was surprised to learn he had discarded his regulator. He admitted that he was prone to such panic attacks in his regular life, even when nowhere near the water. They came out of nowhere when he was in a challenging situation.

Taking a clue from the discarded regulator, which indicated to me that in his panic he must have assumed it was not working, I asked him if it was possible that whenever he was concentrating on something like that, he was holding his breath. He gave it a lot of thought and realized he probably was. Thinking about his ear clearing problem, he realized that he had been holding his breath the whole time he was trying to clear his ears. Once he began to focus on good breathing habits, he had no more trouble with the class. I hope the same is true of his regular life as well.

 

[oldflounder]

In the beginning I had a lot of problems with anxiety. It was caused by a lot of things.

For one thing I was very comfortable in the water and I didn't have what I would call a great deal of fear of the equipment or of being underwater. I practiced a lot in the shallows where I could bolt to the surface if need be. I would lay on the bottom of my 48' deep above ground pool just practicing breathing and then start to panic because my breathing got off and I'd start to hyperventilate and over breath my reg. I decided I was doing this because I was intentionally trying to control my breathing and it would get out of control. I read up a lot on gas exchange and how CO2 retention can freak you out.

One way I have learned to deal with this is by intentionally causing this to happen and then practice ways to breath to make it go away. For example I spend a lot of time doing laps in the pool with a snorkel trying to get myself overexerted and huffin' n' puffin until I feel that hyperventilation starting up. My mind says take deep breaths but I will instead take in some shallow puffs and then push out a lot of air out of my lungs to flush out the CO2 a couple of times. [You normally have an excess of O2 in your lungs at all times even when your mind says you are starving for air. Read up on blood gas concentrations in the body and how different sensors in your body monitor these concentrations.] I also try not to think about it and I will try to concentrate on something else like beachcoming the bottom, etc. After a short time the feeling has passed and I continue on. I must say that I have never had anxiety at depth. It has always been in the shallows. Breathing seems to come naturally at depth but it can be labored in the shallows.

Another thing about my early anxiety was that it was very similar to the feeling of stage fright before you go up on stage or before a large audience. You feel that you are not going to meet someone else's expectations, or that you are going to make mistakes and look like a fool, or that you will forget your lines. I used to get this a lot on the way to a dive site or while I was hurrying to suit up and keep up with the pace of the others so that I wouldn't slow them down. I would feel sick to my stomach and anxious. Once I was in, it all went away.

This is an important reason why you should not be her "instructor/trainer/whatever". If this pertains to her maybe she is too anxious about trying to please you. Try the training from someone she has no feelings for and someone that she doesn't care what they think about her.

There are many causes of anxiety and we just have to deal with it or learn how to avoid it as it pertains to us personally. A certain amount of fear is healthy. It is one of your body's self defense mechanisms. It is when it progresses to full blown out panic that you are in trouble.

Like they say - practice, practice, practice. It does go away eventually. Her body/mind is learning to deal with living on a life-support system. It doesn't come easy for everyone. If she wants to learn to do it as bad as I did she will overcome the issues one baby step at a time. It can be a long learning curve but it is doable.

 

[diver 85]

Tell her to stop watching aggie football, that'll help, ---a little......

 

[Aggiebq86]

Tell her to stop watching aggie football, that'll help, ---a little......

I would have said that a couple of years ago, but I think they are definitely moving in the right direction. Plus, we are surprised to see our players on the news being arrested (unlike other programs that shall remain nameless).

Did you go to the Cotton Bowl? My opinion of Jerry's World is that it is a stadium geared towards non sports fans. I think I burned my retinas looking at that huge screen hanging over the field.