Article: Stress Management in Scuba Training - What can be done about the Panic Response?

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Greetings,

5 ways to minimize the possibility of panic:

1. Preach & practice a conservative diving philosophy ( baby steps, crawl, walk, but do not run! )

2. Preach & practice excellent equipment familiarity & redundancy

3. Study your breathing / manage your gas

4. Buddy dive rather than "vicinity dive"

5. Honestly, regularly evaluate your personal capabilities & limitations - know when to say no!

Panic u/w is a reality that we all face - an ounce of prevention does indeed outweigh a pound of cure.

Regards,
DSD
 
I know of at least one diving fatality that could otherwise have been avoided if intra-relationship dispute and/or the associated stress wasn't a factor. It's worth bringing up buddy relationships when considering dive safety - especially where those relationships exist outside of diving and may bring issues into the underwater equation.

Likewise, it's also worth bearing in mind that overall stress levels, which certainly impact on a divers' stability and ability to cope with underwater incidents, must include pre-diving stress that is brought into the water. Marital arguments, financial stresses, medical concerns etc etc - all of these things serve to destabilise the diver psychologically and lower their stress management threshold - bringing closer the potential of acute stress reaction (panic).

I normally give myself an honest physical and psychological examination at the beginning of every diving day. Any factors arising from that self-assessment help to shape the nature/limits of my diving that day. If I'm having "a bad day", I take it easy in the water.



I think there's two primary methods:

1) Stress management: Targeting and reducing stress prior to and during the dive. Mental visualisation, breathing exercises and 'mantras' all help with this. I always have a pre-dive routine of stopping activity (think 'stressed and super-busy instructor' here) before getting kitted up. I do everything I have to do, but then stop everything... retreat 'into my shell' for a few minutes before getting into kit and into the water. Likewise, if an incident happens underwater, the first thing I do is STOP and THINK. My initial thoughts are directed towards psychological control - calm my mind, calm my breathing. My mantra then is "I have air, I can breathe, I am alive". Time and gas are critical - so I seek to maximise them by staying calm and controlling my respiration. Once calm, I approach the problem solving needed to resolve the incident.

2) Comfort Zone: It's important to associate your personal limitations in respect of your comfort underwater. Familiarity with conditions/sites/equipment, along with confidence in your abilities to mitigate potential risks and resolve all reasonable contingencies is a large part of your 'comfort zone'. It's important to be aware that comfort zone exists in both best-case and worst-case scenarios. Generally during a dive, we are aware of our comfort zone in respect of ideal circumstances. However, we should also strive to ensure that our comfort zone extends towards dealing with the foreseeable 'worst-cases'. That means effective initial training and post-training practice and repetition of necessary contingency skills and procedures. There's a wide gulf between saying "I am confident to cope with this dive" or saying "I am confident to cope with anything that may go wrong on this dive".

Another method/approach combines both of the above. It is to prepare and familiarise yourself with stress. In essense, to develop a comfort zone that encompasses dealing with stressful events and situations through stress management. Under controlled circumstances, safely apply dive stress through task loading, role-play or other methods so that you can gain more capacity to operate and control your psychological balance under those circumstances.



That's a good idea of comfort zones. There really is no right answer - it's a personal decision based upon how you feel you are developing. Diving should be fun - if you don't enjoy doing something, then you shouldn't do it.

However, if you want to challenge yourself and/or have a direct need to increase that capability (current diving), then you should attempt to increase your familiarity in those conditions, gain positive experiences and extend your comfort zone to encompass those conditions. It's vital that these experiences are positive, otherwise you'll only reinforce negative connections you make with those conditions - your comfort zone won't develop... worse still, it may retract and/or become more intractable.

For that reason, you must ensure that any development you make is going to be positive - that could mean a more progressive and measured approach with staged exposures to gradually increasing stressors over longer timescale. On other occasions, for other people, it may mean 'jumping in feet first' and simply proving to yourself that there was nothing to be worried about in the first place.

Of course, you must also remember to consciously apply all aspects of your personal stress management strategy during those occasions - that's good practice and also helps ensure a positive outcome.

Another factor in developing your comfort zone is the benefit of external support. Most divers feel more comfortable when supervised by an experienced divemaster or instructor, or when diving in the care of a more experience and capable buddy. In this respect, the diver is utilising the existence of support to off-set certain personal stressors. Put simply, you are never quite as concerned when you know you have someone available to get you out of trouble.

Using assistance to off-set stress can be a useful tool in developing comfort zones. It allows you to develop familiarity with the specific stressor conditions, without an over-load of stress that could otherwise make the experience negative. Of course, it does also increase your safety in very real terms. The only downside to using assistance to reduce stress, is that it can be easy to become reliant on that support. Once the original stressors become familiar and your comfort zone expands to encompass them, then you still have to gain the confidence to deal with them without support. Having your metaphorical hand held is a good thing for a while, but can become a bad thing if allowed to persist as reliant behaviour.

Thanks for your thorough reply. Sometimes I feel that when it comes to practice skills my buddy and I are keep 'diving' around in a circle...We keep talking about improving our skills and then we practically reach a certain point and then get stuck there unable to move forward...and then we start all over again from the same starting point..It's a bit frustrating.
 
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