Anxious diver

[everlasting]

I recently got my OW certification (which I'm very excited about). However, I have a lot of anxiety before and especially during every dive. Granted, I'm an anxious person in general. I was diagnosed with OCD several years ago. But despite the anxiety underwater, I don't start to panic, and if I'm ever having any problems, I deal with them calmly and never bolt to the surface.

Whenever I do manage to relax, I'm in awe. I love the feeling of floating in the water. I love seeing all the nature and critters.

While I'm hoping that gaining more experience will increase my comfort level, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips to help me relax?

 

[Web Monkey]

I recently got my OW certification (which I'm very excited about). However, I have a lot of anxiety before and especially during every dive. Granted, I'm an anxious person in general. I was diagnosed with OCD several years ago. But despite the anxiety underwater, I don't start to panic, and if I'm ever having any problems, I deal with them calmly and never bolt to the surface.

Whenever I do manage to relax, I'm in awe. I love the feeling of floating in the water. I love seeing all the nature and critters.

While I'm hoping that gaining more experience will increase my comfort level, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips to help me relax?

It's normal to be anxious, since humans can't breathe underwater.

In order to relax and be reasonably safe, you need to regularly dive and practice skills (including gas planning, air sharing, lost buddy procedures, etc.) with a a buddy that you trust.

Once you know your buddy will be there to help if something goes wrong, you should be able to relax quite a bit.

Terry

 

[gcbryan]

Baby steps. Gain experience locally at easy dive sites in shallow water with a buddy you are comfortable with. End any dive when you are not comfortable and go back another day.

 

[dkktsunami]

Baby steps. Gain experience locally at easy dive sites in shallow water with a buddy you are comfortable with. End any dive when you are not comfortable and go back another day.

A big "ditto" here.

 

[jeckyll]

Baby steps. Gain experience locally at easy dive sites in shallow water with a buddy you are comfortable with. End any dive when you are not comfortable and go back another day.

+1

In addition, what are you worried about? Once you identify what concerns you, work out how to deal with that situation should it occur (lost buddy, low viz, whatever it may be).

Over time you may find that there is less and less that you're concerned with because you are comfortable in your approach and skill should the situation actually happen.

 

[spectrum]

Dive within your limits where you want to dive when you want to dive and with buddies you know and can count on.

Diving is an adaptation and the rate of becoming comfortable varies widely. Stay in your comfort zone, do not set yourself up for a bad time and dive regularly.

Pete

 

[bleeb]

+1

+2

Diving the same site repeatedly can help. Part of the challenge is the unfamiliar environment, so getting familiar with the surroundings can help make you more comfortable.

As the other posters touched on, there are a lot of new motor skills involved in diving, and for beginners, it can take a lot of effort since you have to think about doing all of them. Look at how hard it can be for rehab patients to learn to walk. It's not unusual for all that task loading to make people a bit anxious. However over time, most of these things become more automatic reflexes, and you'll be able to relax once you don't have to concentrate so much on the minutia. That's why you want to start with a relatively benign environment and get the basic skills down well before progressing to more challenging conditions.

 

[c r0ck 1]

xanex.. i love it.. it takes the edge of anything! gotta love it.

 

[plumbcrazy]

All the above and one more little tid-bit. Never let anyone talk you into something you are not feeling good about. And I don't mean just knowing it might be something you are not up to, I mean if you so much as feel (that crazy little voice) it's wrong pick a dive site. Dive safe and keep it fun.

 

[paradicio]

Agree with the baby steps comment. The wife and I are newly certified ourselves (April 28, 2007) and are 39 dives (and counting) in now. The first few dives we did on our own (after OW) our dive plans were "30 feet for 30 minutes". Looking back now it seems kind of silly to be so scared we'd keep ourselves so shallow for so short a time. But we had fun with it, and we've grown from there; slowly going deeper, staying down longer, and expanding our comfort levels at our own pace. Once we felt it was time we took PPB and AOW. This let us have new experiences under the watchful eye of our excellent instructor. Now we're totally comfortable diving on our own. We know our limits and stay within them...at the same time we know our goals and reach for them.

Go at your own pace (only you know what's right for you) and enjoy!