How many here were scared to death and still completed OW classes?

[Coztick]

My first open water dive was in P.V. after book and pool work at home.
That first decent was spooky.
As the surface light dwindled, the bottom was still beyond the green abyss.
I paused on the line for a moment and seriously thought about bailing. Once the bottom was visible, the fear subsided.
That fear really caught me by surprise as there was none up to that point.
Since then, Scubaboard has scared the crap out of me plenty!
So many things to learn!
OW gets you in the pool but barely scratchs the surface of things to know about scuba.
Thanks to all the pros and enthusiasts here who have educated this diver.
I'm well aware of what I don't know and dive within my comfort zone.

Cheers, Kevin

 

[TMHeimer]

Yes, going down an anchor line the first time (to 70+ feet in Gulf of Mex.). Not too scary, but I just kept my eyes on the line vanishing into nowhere. Was nice for sure when the bottom first appeared.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Scariest thing I ever did but now it is the thing that I do that relaxes me and gives me the most peace!

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I think a lot of the anxiety is from people being thrown into the ocean without pool work and/or not having enough pool work prior to ocean. One of my gripes with the industry is that in certain situations, standards are written in such a way that they allow divers to be thrown in the ocean as long as it gets classified as "confined water." An ideal course IMO would be a course where you are trained to dive in a pool to more or less the same extent as you would be diving in an open water scenario. In the open water conditions you are not doing anything you have not done before except for depth related work like ascent rate control etc.

 

[ofg-1]

I was scared. I had just seen a rerun of Sea Hunt where they discovered a new breed of vicious octopus, and I knew that if Mike Nelson was scared, I should be too.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I think a lot of the anxiety is from people being thrown into the ocean without pool work and/or not having enough pool work prior to ocean. One of my gripes with the industry is that in certain situations, standards are written in such a way that they allow divers to be thrown in the ocean as long as it gets classified as "confined water." An ideal course IMO would be a course where you are trained to dive in a pool to more or less the same extent as you would be diving in an open water scenario. In the open water conditions you are not doing anything you have not done before except for depth related work like ascent rate control etc.

Agreed that adding the marine environment does complicate things.

However, not all anxiety issues are ocean environment related. We do confined water in the pool up here,. Surprisingly, folks have trouble clearing their mask while breathing underwater. The water on their face freaks them out. It's a good survival reflex, since face in water is usually incompatible with survival. For some folks, overcoming the anxiety is harder than for others

 

[drbill]

I didn't get certified until nine years after my first dive. I'd been a competitive swimmer and had SCUBA experience by the time I took the course. Given that I wasn't scared about much relative to the course. However I did have a slight twinge of fear as back then my instructor would sneak up behind us and pull our reg hose out of our mouths or shut the valve.

 

[icechip]

An early-to-diving big fear for me was looking foolish in front of the others, like I somehow didn't belong or know what I was doing. So I used to arrive super early and get my gear together and on. I'd get myself so amped up by the time the actual dive began that I'd become physically drained before it even started. How nuts was that?! Had to learn to pace myself, enjoy all the facets of the process like even putting your gear on slowly and methodically, enjoying the weather, etc. That "slow everything down" mantra really helped.

 

[GreggS]

I did my OW training just prior to my 58th birthday. I was never scared during OW or AOW training as I had done some Discover Scuba dives over the previous 12 years so was very comfortable during training. But for whatever reason, and I'm not really sure why, since then I have had a couple of anxious moments while diving, and generally it has been while just beginning descent on ocean dives. I suppose it was that the viz was somewhat low and I couldn't see the bottom when submerging even though I had an anchor line to go down. But I was able to quickly get my senses about me, get over the anxiety, and continue with the dive without incident. Now, instead of just dumping my air and going under, I will stick my face into the water for a few seconds, look around, get used to breathing, and then dump my air. It's usually so quick nobody notices I'm doing it. And it's only on the first dive of the day. After that, i'm fine on subsequent dives.

One incident, tho, was worse than others. Me, my wife, and another lady were diving together in a local quarry. We had been in the water only about 6 minutes and were following lines at 30 ft to a sunken sailboat at the far end of the quarry. There are many tees off the line to different things in the water and I realized I had missed the tee I needed to follow. Just as I turned around to go back, I started hyperventilating. My only thought was to get to the surface, which I did. I don't know why I started hyperventilating; I wasn't scared or uncomfortable, it just happened. We decided to not continue for the day, and for the next few dives, I had that incident in the back of my mind and had to work my way thru anxiousness for a few dives, especially around the 6 minute mark of the first dive of the day. It was just a mental thing I had to work thru.

 

[TMHeimer]

Agreed that adding the marine environment does complicate things.

However, not all anxiety issues are ocean environment related. We do confined water in the pool up here,. Surprisingly, folks have trouble clearing their mask while breathing underwater. The water on their face freaks them out. It's a good survival reflex, since face in water is usually incompatible with survival. For some folks, overcoming the anxiety is harder than for others

I was gunna say something like that. IMHO I think that someone who freaks out with water on their face is someone who has very little or maybe even no experience being in the water. Maybe it happens because they have to do mask skills underwater and they have no experience being underwater, either with past snorkeling or even swimming. Always a mystery to me why someone in that situation would jump right into scuba.