I feel exactly the same way.
I got into diving because I was too scared to tip over the sailboat for the small boat sailing class in boy scouts when I was younger because there was nothing but black water under it (left the class incomplete) and I despise being beat.
Its also the reason I like my 19cf pony and two vintage aqualung rambo dive knives (well that and two big unnecessary knives puts DIR people into seizures
).
Fear is an engineering problem in my book.
I often tell people who think they like scary places to take up diving in the north. Want a haunted forest? Try diving in 50 degree water in low light in the submerged dead trees in lake wazee (its a full on dead forest) and maybe you take a wrong and end up over a few hundred feet of blackness.
Want a haunted house? Try some of the deeper more intact great lakes shipwrecks (not something I have experience with yet) they look creepy as hell and people actually died in them.
If you handle the fear even with the unexpected shocks (like its dark and deep and where the hell did my buddy suddenly go) and don't hyperventilate your air away then its all good. I think a lot of that type of diving trips hard wired genetic fears from way back that aren't very easy to completely remove if its even possible.
EDIT: and I totally get the water type deciding it all. I could solo in the Caymans at 100 feet with zero issue if it were allowed by the dive boats.