Anxious at safety stop

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Perhaps as your getting ready to do your safety stop, have something in mind to think about to occupy your mind; hiking, pets, favorite book, things you need to get done at home, anything that keeps your mind focused on something positive.
 
i have added extra weights to compensate but it’s really not helping.

This is the problem, not the solution. I'd suggest that find a good instructor and doing a few dives with her/him 1 on 1 would set you straight.
 
This is the problem, not the solution. I'd suggest that find a good instructor and doing a few dives with her/him 1 on 1 would set you straight.
with 1000 dives and talking about recreational diving and a safety stop there is zero an instructor could do for this person.

It is a new stress factor. scuba divers cant help her with that. It is odd that it is only at a safety stop that there is stress.

This sounds like something she or I would not be able to figure out on our own. The human mind is far more complex than a bunch of us rubes can figure out.

I would suggest honestly to get a full physical. Check yourself out. Maybe your mind or body is saying something we cant translate. Maybe its inner ear. Maybe its a visit to someone that can analyze your thoughts and feelings, maybe its changes in the body i.e. loss or gain of weight that makes the safety stop not as easy as ten years ago.

For most of us its a fine balancing act at safety stop, i gained 25 pounds during covid. Can I safety stop at the same amount of weight in my bcd? Not a chance. Is that mental? No. Is that a psychological issue if I am used to alot less weight and I added a bit but not enough? Could be.

Id suggest first thing checking your ideal nuetral boyancy. If no changes then id suggest talking to someone, maybe there are other stress issues.

This did not just pop up on its own. Maybe the safety stop is a point to contemplate and at that point only do you then think wow....this may be stressing me more now that im not 20 years younger even though i have 1000 dives.

Man, or Woman, all im saying is this isnt a dang scuba instructor solution when the person has literally 1,000 freaking dives.

She knows the ins and outs.

She needs to rule out the obvious ie weight change and or illnesses and then maybe life changes that may have caused stresses in life then after all that talk to someone to get to the root of it.

Were all mortal and even though she is by no means old as we get older we do get less adventurous less risk taking as it were. As a people. Not as an individual. Most humans get more risk averse as we see our mortality approach.

I know I do.
 
I understand where you are coming from @dismith. What about a distraction since it’s psychological. A game or two of rock-paper-scissors may help distract you.
 
I would suggest a game of touch football with all the other hangers, having the ball weighted neutrally for 10 feet where you push the ball with your finger
 
How interesting. I’ve been following this thread. Was there a gap in diving (between your dives) when you first noticed the anxiety? Even though you have a lot of dives, was there a huge gap of time between dives? Maybe getting back into it is was what created the new anxiety.
 
Something has changed but the anxiety might not be entirely dive related, just arises at that point. You are not afraid of heights or the "blue" void, meaning you have no visual reference points sometimes in a hang and the lack thereof is causing the anxiety?

I too have developed some sort of anxiety, mine is that I am not getting enough air. And it seems to get worse at depth despite the fact I own some of the best regulators ever made and known to be top performers. Yet I feel I am not getting enough air. Beats me but it is disturbing, I feel for the OP who is certainly an experienced diver to have this problem. During the last year of the Pandemonium I did not dive my usual amount, I am just not as comfortable in the water as I have always been either. As we get older our performance envelope shrinks, doing the things we have always done easily now places us closer to the edge of the envelope, a little voice in the back of our minds is saying watch out, you are closer to the edge than you want to be! The mind is a strange thing. I do not know.

James
 
Our psyche is also controlled by hormones. A person with overactive thyroid gland will be more anxious and prone to panic attack. Common and more frequent condition for women. I agree that best start point is to check the changes in general health.
 
Something has changed but the anxiety might not be entirely dive related, just arises at that point. You are not afraid of heights or the "blue" void, meaning you have no visual reference points sometimes in a hang and the lack thereof is causing the anxiety?

I too have developed some sort of anxiety, mine is that I am not getting enough air. And it seems to get worse at depth despite the fact I own some of the best regulators ever made and known to be top performers. Yet I feel I am not getting enough air. Beats me but it is disturbing, I feel for the OP who is certainly an experienced diver to have this problem. During the last year of the Pandemonium I did not dive my usual amount, I am just not as comfortable in the water as I have always been either. As we get older our performance envelope shrinks, doing the things we have always done easily now places us closer to the edge of the envelope, a little voice in the back of our minds is saying watch out, you are closer to the edge than you want to be! The mind is a strange thing. I do not know.

James
Hi James, yes this getting older I’m sure has some sort of subliminal impact. I am not in a position to just go and spend sometime working on the problem so at this point am just making the best of what I have to work with.
I will eventually sort the problem out and this discussion has given me some great ideas to try.
Regardless, whether I resign myself to being a line hugger or do resolve the issue I refuse to stop diving at this point.
thanks for your support and comments though.
Di
 
When your say line, are you talking about a boat mooring line or your DSMB line?

If you can use a DSMB for your stops, try clipping the spool (so it can't run out) at the stop depth and then let it go. Stay horizontal a couple of feet away and watch it do its little dance as it reacts to surface conditions. That will give you a visual reference and something to do while you are waiting.
 

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