How to not Panic?

[Garrobo]

Pretty much what TS&M said. On every dive I exchange regs and breathe off of the octo for a few minutes to be sure that it is in proper functiion. Two birds.

 

[zaberman1]

I've had a few incidents where I've run out of breath without a reg and panicked. For instance:
Situation 1) I was in my OW class in a pool session and we were doing Buddy Breathing, my reg was out of my mouth and i was breathing out slowly. My buddy took a bit to find her alternate, and it turns out the hose was way to short. When this was happening I ran out of air, couldn't clear my reg (didn't even think of pushing the purge) and went up. I should have kept a cooler head and thought it through but didn't. I'm not to hard on myself for that becasue it was my first time doing anything like that.
Situation 2) This weekend I was diving with a rented reg set and when I was down about 5-10 feet the primary filled complelty with water when I breathed in, essentially I inhaled alot of water. I spit the reg out and looked for my alternate. When I couldn't find it quick enough I surfaced. This should not have happened. I panicked too easily. I'm just glad it wasn't deeper. I'm kinda embarressed by it, but to be honost I need advice on how to handle myself better in these situations.

They are both situations in which I had no air left to clear the reg and always forget about clearing the reg by pushing the purge. Is there any advice you can give me about better preparing for these situations? Is there anyway to practice this? The thing is I need to practice it with an element of surprise. If I know it's coming I can be more prepared. Would it be out of line or unethical to ask my Instructor to shut my air off in the middle of a training dive or pull my reg out? Sounds evil and insane i know, but it's the only thing I can think of that would be like those situatuions and let me deal with them in the water. Thanks for any advice you can offer.

I would say that the first step in managing this type of situation is to think it through and analyze potential/actual problems, which it appears that you are doing right now. Your pool session went well (minus that one incident) and you were able to overcome that particular problem with practice and discussing other alternatives. The second situation you are referring to does not relate to 'accepting' an alternate air source so much as having a problem with your primary and choking on water. It is quite scary situation that I have also been in but not unrecoverable or unbreakable. A couple of observations/pointers:

-In your advanced open water, we are going to be performing S-Drills during every dive to practice, not just discuss, air sharing with your buddy. This serves two purposes in shallow water; 1. Mentally prepares you for an air share, 2. gets you familiar with your buddy's configuration and hose routing.

-Remember the discussion on the panic cycle. All it takes is for you to STOP, THINK, than ACT to overcome actual PANIC. To build up on the stop and think part, my suggestion is to practice, practice, practice and get used to using the purge and performing ooa drills.

-In the pool, you moved rather quickly and shoved the regulator in your mouth upside down, preventing it from purging effectively. Practice this drill SLOWLY and it may come as second nature. I don't remember you telling me that was the problem this weekend.

-On your fun dive this weekend, your buddy paid ZERO attention to you. you coming to the surface from 5 ft deep may not have been a bad idea, though calmer would have been preferred . It was right of you to call said buddy out and let him know that he needs to display more awareness. This is one reason why we descend horizontally and facing each other.

-Airway control is critical, as is breathing past small amounts of water. The more we practice drills with the regulator coming in and out of your mouth, the better. Try using your snorkel and practice clearing and swimming on the surface to manage inhaling some water. Than practice the snorkel to regulator exchange with the purge. If you want to start practicing S-Drills before AOW, go ahead. It is inevitable that you will have water in reg and will choke on it, with practice, training, and experience, you may beat the panic cycle.

 

[xeptra]

-In the pool, you moved rather quickly and shoved the regulator in your mouth upside down, preventing it from purging effectively. Practice this drill SLOWLY and it may come as second nature. I don't remember you telling me that was the problem this weekend.

I never realized I had put the reg in upside down in the pool session. I did explain about panicking this weekend, but didn't mention forgeting to press the purge button, becasue of just that, I totally forgot about it. When I was later running through what happened in my mind I thought about what I should have done and that was purge. it seems so simple. But as you and many others have said, I just need to practice, which is what I intend on doing. If something like this ever happens again I want my response to be automatic and safe.

 

[Guba]

You've been given a great deal of good advice and suggestions in very short order with the posts already made, so I can only second those ideas. A couple of things I might add would be to establish a "regimen" of skills to practice on every dive and set aside time just for that. For example, I've found a good time to practice exchanging my primary for my alternate is while doing a stop at the end of a dive. It's also a good time to practice sharing air and even some signals that don't get used very often.

Overcoming panic has basically two elements...knowing what to do in an emergency (having a plan) and keeping a head level enough to execute the plan. The latter is far more difficult than the former. However, as anyone involved in "routinely" handling emergencies knows (police, military, fire personnel, etc...) the trick is to have thought the situation through IN ADVANCE in repeated visualizations enough times that the response is automatic. Practically no current recreational dive training program can rehearse situations enough for this to happen due to their short duration, so it falls upon the diver to take control and rehearse scenarios they find challenging. Of course, do this in a reasonably controlled environment, just for safety. (Therefore, I don't recommend the "surprise attack"--knocking the reg out of your mouth or shutting off your air--as a training exercise. That might be a viable option only after you are much more comfortable with your skill level.)

It's great that you recognize the problem and are being pro-active in addressing it. That alone shows that you are beginning the process by visualizing situations in which you need more work. Keep it up and have fun underwater!

 

[bleeb]

This is a small possibility, but maybe one thing you may want to practice is holding your breath (on the couch).

With a little practice, most people can easily hold their breath for 2 minutes with lungs full or 45-60 sec with lungs empty. (Practice both.) Knowing you have this ability might make panicking less likely, since you know you have a bit more time to deal with problems.

It's not lack of oxygen that makes you want to breathe, it's the build up of CO2, and your body has a wide tolerance of what it can handle for short periods, far wider than the untrained norm. Also, CO2 has a tendency to increase the likelihood of panic. Getting your body used to higher CO2 levels might decrease the chances of panicking, especially if you happened to be naturally sensitive to CO2 inducing panic.

 

[jeter]

I would like to add one other thing to consider. Your breathing patern is very important to avoiding panic. Most open water divers breath shallow and from the top of their lungs. The thought is I must have air so I will keep my lungs full of it. That is why open water instructors stress that we should never hold our breath and continuely exhale when a regulator is not in out mouth.

This shallow breathing pattern does not allow for good CO2 gas exchange. CO2 build up in the body creating the urge to breath. This causes more stress and shallower breathing.

What is needed here is not more practice with the drill but a different breathing pattern. Of course you should always practice your skills. What else is three to do on saftey stop.

Instead breath in and out very deeply. Squeeze every drop of air out of your lungs before you take another breath. This allows for good gas exchange in the lungs and reduces the CO2 which causes the stress. With out the CO2 generated urge to breath you will find you can let your buddy take his sweet time with his two breaths without any stress at all.

Jay

 

[mneal]

Great thread. During my OW we did a controlled swim around in shallow end and at some time (unknown to us) the DI would shut our air off and we swam to deep end then buddy breath on his safe second. Cause I am a lucky guy, I had just deeply exhaled when my air ran out and when I got to buddy air I rushed thru it and put reg in upside down and didn't purge using button. I got lungs full of water and DI drug me to the surface expelling water outta nose and coughing my brains out. I was embarrassed and re-evaluated if this hobby was even for me and I thought of dropping out. Thankfully DI talked me outta it and I still practice reg removal and swap a couple times every time I get in water and helped me gain comfort in the event. Last time I dove I had lingering effects of food poisoning and at depth got nauseous and thought I was going to be sick. I removed my reg and swapped to safe second and it was totally natural. Like everyone says, repetition and logical thought are you best friends. A good friend of mine a certifed flight instructor and he says it is the 3rd mistake that is fatal, typically the first two can be overcome with proper responses to the events happening around you. Panic is almost always event number 3. I think same kinda thing is true with diving, your reaction to a situation is far more important then the event itself. It helps me as a newbe diver to got thru that type of thought process.

 

[Puffer Fish]

I would say that, every time you get in the water, you need to repeatedly practice regulator exchange. Drop your primary, pick up your alternate and put it in your mouth and purge it; take a couple of breaths, and sweep for the primary and put it back and purge it. As you get more and more comfortable with this, try dropping the alternate BEFORE you recover the primary. I would suggest beginning this in the pool. Do it until you are comfortable with a regulator out of your mouth, you can find your alternate with your eyes shut, and you don't even have to think about purging the reg.

This will help with the situations that made you panic, but they do not address the tendency to panic. Somehow, you have to get it out of your mind that the best strategy when you are stressed is to bolt for the surface. One thing that may help is getting your skills down cold. But outside of setting up situations to be stressed and coping with them (which has been a lot of my training) I'm not sure how to extinguish the reflex to bolt.

As always, excellent advice. I'm late getting to this thread, but a couple of key issues regarding bolting to the surface might help

The Military has spent a lot of time and money to better understand how to control panic...it can cost them divers and prevent the mission from being accomplished...so they practice the key aspects of panic prevention, several of which you have covered, but just to cover them all:

1. Know your equipment and be prepared. Rehearse what you would do in any even you might consider happening. Go thru the list every time you get ready to dive.

2. Practice.. practice things worse than you expect ever to see. How long can you hold you breath, if you had to? How far could you swim? Practice on land small pieces. I can do a minute thirty without practice... 2 minutes if a get used to it. In that time, I can take my gear off, play with it and put it back on and still have lots of time left.

3. You bolt because your emotional self does not believe that mechanical stuff will actually give you air, but the big open area on the surface will...you need to believe in the equipment and yourself.

4. Your emotional self needs to be more afraid of going to the surface than any issue you wil have under water...or, panic = bolting to the surface. And perhaps worse, if you go deeper than you believe you can bolt to the surface, you will be a nervious wreck...so take some time to understand what issue might happen to you from bolting...get to really understand, really, really understand why that is a terrible idea...

We used to teach people to breath off a tank valve, not because you would ever do that, but because you knew, that even if the regulator (without an octo) failed, you could still breath......because that was better than bolting.

The only problem I see in our thread starters posts is that he has been teaching himself to bolt, not intentionally, but by not knowing how to purge, not knowing where his octo is and by having gear issues...at this point it will take double the work to reverse that self teaching.

 

[Belce]

You can also practice recovering your regulator on the surface. You can even practice on the surface without a regulator. Make it like a tai chi exercise. Do it very slow and controlled, deliberate. Inhale, exhale slowly and continuously, move hand down right side slow to full extension, back a bit now and then sweep slowly forward, see the regulator and grasp the hose, place in mouth, purge and inhale.

When you practice in the pool or open water try it in a place where you can stand up to clear your head from the water.

 

[Bob DBF]

Hi xeptra,

1.) Free diving (skin diving, snorkeling) used to be taught in more detail in years past as part of scuba training. Among other things, it allows you to get used to and accept an occasional mouthful of water and know that you are still "OK".

I would like to add that freediving also shows you how long and well you can function underwater without the aid of SCUBA. Unlike holding your breath on the sofa, you are dealing with the same conditions you will with SCUBA and get to see the shallower critters. When an evolution goes wrong you will know you have time to think and solve the problem. The time to think and act puts fear and panic down the list.


Bob
---------------
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
from Dune by Frank Herbert