Do you have a rattle?

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TSandM

Missed and loved by many.
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On my thread about my mask woes of the other day, Mike Ferrara did as he so often does -- put his finger right on the main issue. Being without a visual reference rattles me. It always has, right from the beginning of my diving. Every really unpleasant experience I've had underwater has had to do with this. When I had the mask clearing problem the other day, I didn't manage it as smoothly as I ought to have because I was rattled and not thinking well.

So my new determination (now that I've passed Fundies) is to lose the rattle. Whatever it takes -- mask off swimming, blacked-out mask work, midwater exercises -- I am going to exorcise this demon.

Do you have a rattle? Are you doing anything about it, and if so, what?
 
lol - when I saw the heading I thought you meant one of those underwater rattles for getting your buddies attention ...

Good question however...
 
Mine would be, loosing my dive partner(s). I usually keep situation awareness and know where to look when I'm diving with someone, but everyonce in awhile I will look back, over, up... and no one is there. They usually end up being in my blindspot, but it does get me rattled.
 
My rattle used to be diving low visibility. Diving the lakes in Arizona gave me lots of opportunities to do this. For the longest time, I had issues with dropping into the green and not being able to see beyond a couple of feet (couldn't even see my fins lots of times). It was an irrational fear. I can't verbalize what the issue was, just that it spooked me. It was kind of like the boogie monster thing. I limited my diving and even called a few dives because of this. But it bothered me to no end.

So, I joined the local S&R dive team and was forced to dive negative vis. Feel your way along the bottom diving.

Now low vis doesn't bother me. I jump in, drop down, and follow the bottom. My wife found a Frankenstein action figure on one of our dives shortly after I got rid of this rattle and the standing joke now is that we finally came across the boogie man in low vis.
 
Mine os being OOA and having to swim to my partner. So for the last half a year I'm doing freediving training at the pool to fight with it. It brings some results because lately during the intro to cave class we practiced s-drill. I gave my regulator, moved my partner, we started to swim and it took few seconds to realize that I forgot to take my back up
:D
The funniest thing is that I never had any problem with mask off.
Mania
 
I still get rattled when there is a heavy current.

This originated from my third OW checkout dive, almost 20 years ago. That checkout was in current so heavy that (when doing regulator recovery for example) the regulator stood straight out behind you. The downline was achored by a paint can filled with concrete, and it would sway out in the current. It was heavy current and, I think, too much for noobie checkout dives.

Anyway, I have since drift dived, I have rescued and pulled tired divers against strong current. I have dived in current so strong it ripped the mask off your face. But, I still, to this day, cannot get into a strong current without it rattling me at least somewhat.
 
When I started diving again last winter, I had only one. Water in my eyes. Low vis doesn't bother me, overhead, dark, cold water, etc. Just the water in my eyes. I spent hours in the pool overcoming it. For many of my dives I would actually do some portion without my mask. Now flooding and being maskless are no longer problems.

Now I just need to get more fit...


TSandM:
On my thread about my mask woes of the other day, Mike Ferrara did as he so often does -- put his finger right on the main issue. Being without a visual reference rattles me. It always has, right from the beginning of my diving. Every really unpleasant experience I've had underwater has had to do with this. When I had the mask clearing problem the other day, I didn't manage it as smoothly as I ought to have because I was rattled and not thinking well.

So my new determination (now that I've passed Fundies) is to lose the rattle. Whatever it takes -- mask off swimming, blacked-out mask work, midwater exercises -- I am going to exorcise this demon.

Do you have a rattle? Are you doing anything about it, and if so, what?
 
It's funny -- early on, both losing sight of my buddy and getting into current rattled me (and by rattling, I mean causing enough anxiety to raise my respiratory rate and make me acutely uncomfortable). Both of those have gone away -- I mean, I still don't LIKE losing sight of my buddy, and I'm going to find him before I do anything else, but it more irks me than unnerves me now. I didn't do anything specific to solve either of those. They just resolved themselves.

But the lack of visual reference thing, though it is better than it was at the beginning, hasn't improved all that much and THAT particular issue is clearly going to require some specific work.
 

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