How Does Diving Make You Feel

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

How do I feel when diving? Generally like killing and capturing, especially if I have no buddy to distract me.

Pretty much anything that is good to eat. Sometimes I feel a little guilty when I can recite the Genus and species of the animal, before trying to slam a steel rod through the head - I'm not sure WHY having this tidbit of knowledge yields a feeling of guilt, but it often does.

When stalking and hunting and then making the final approach on an unusual catch, my heart rate will be screaming as the adrenaline surges, yet I strive to ignore and suppress my feelings of excitement and anticipation and suspense as I try to force my respiration to be slow and deep (or sometimes completely suspended).

When I am stalking and hunting on breathhold dives that exceed a depth of 50 or 60 feet, I am constantly reminding myself that this fish wants to kill me (by getting me to play too long or too hard)..so I have strong feelings of distrust and vulnerability to a (dangerous and potentially self-destructive) ego that manifests itself as an elusive "fish".

Sometimes when stalking a fish and being unsure if it is in or out of shooting range, I undergo tremendous emotional turmoil. I (more often than I like to admit) experience terrible physical pain in my trigger finger. It aches intensely and is increasingly unbearable as I hesitate and second guess and then when I finally pull the trigger (or disengage from my quarry), the pain is instantly and completely relieved and forgotten..until the next time it happens.

I've never understood WHY my finger feels like this - I have seen characters in old western movies refer to an "itchy trigger finger", but the pain that focuses on my trigger finger is very real and feels nothing like an itch.
 
Diving makes me feel Like I can fly! That I am visiting a very special place, very few others have ever seen (another planet!) Privileged, humbled, thrilled, often awed beyond words, and soooo thankful! (And that dreams can come true!). :D
 
Diving--the hobby--makes me feel poor. Diving--being in the water--makes me forget all about money and the material world.
 
I don't spend much money on diving, so it's not diving that makes me feel poor.
 
Last edited:
I do spend a lot of time, energy, effort and money on diving... But it makes me feel alive!! So I am no longer poor but rich, no longer bored but fantasized..no longer present but enhanced!
 

Back
Top Bottom