They are both situations in which I had no air left to clear the reg and always forget about clearing the reg by pushing the purge. Is there any advice you can give me about better preparing for these situations? Is there anyway to practice this? The thing is I need to practice it with an element of surprise. If I know it's coming I can be more prepared. Would it be out of line or unethical to ask my Instructor to shut my air off in the middle of a training dive or pull my reg out? Sounds evil and insane i know, but it's the only thing I can think of that would be like those situatuions and let me deal with them in the water. Thanks for any advice you can offer.
I haven't read the other responses yet so forgive me if I'm repeating.
First of all let's start with this simple truth:
everyone has a breaking point. If you don't then there is something wrong with you. The only question is how far up the "threat" scale you have to go to trigger it.
So HAVING a breaking point isn't your problem and in that sense there's nothing to be embarrassed about. The problem you're seeing is when you get the trigger to panic when the situation doesn't warrant it (yet).
To understand that better you have to understand one thing about the nature of panic attacks, namely that your mind can't easily distinguish a "real" threat (you are
really about to drown) from a perceived threat (you're not about to drown but you worried that you might). In your mind it's all the same and it triggers exactly the same fight-or-flight reaction in your body. Realistically, however, it's the worry, the fantasy, the "perceived threat" that's the real issue.
And right there you have the first handle on how to look at this. The trick is to learn to
consciously and realistically assess the REAL threat to you.
So How?
There are several techniques, but they the most effective ones seem to boil down into two main approaches:
1) get informed. If you're scared of spiders, it will help you to relax if you learn more about them. The same goes here. If you're worried about having the regulator out of your mouth then it's good to know how long you can "hold out". Try it at home on the couch. Take a breath and hold it in and see how long you can do that. Do it with full lungs and with empty lungs and with exhalinging slightly (like making bubbles) the way you would without your regulator in your mouth, do it while walking up and down stairs. That will give you a baseline of *information* that you can use to calm yourself. If, for example, you then get a regulator that floods then you can think to yourself.
"OK, xeptra, nothing wrong here. You now have 60 seconds (or 2 min or whatever) to solve this problem". Knowing how long you have will help you keep calm because you will know that there *is no threat* ... yet. Incidentally, on a side-note you can train yourself to extend how long you can do without inhaling by quite a lot. A freediving course might help or just practicing during commerical breaks while watching TV. I'd advise at least a few freediving lessons because they literally teach you how to fight the urge to inhale when CO2 levels are rising in your body.
2) Get exposure. Strangely, one of the best ways to get over a fear of spiders is to hold them in your hand. Likewise, learning how to be calm without the regulator in your mouth will involve.... practicing taking it out of your mouth. Frequent practice of key skills (regulator clearing with and without purge button, regulator R&R, AAS usage and buddy breathing) are all skills involving taking the reg out of your mouth.
Start small. If your issue is spiders then you don't want to start out on day one climbing into a box full of tarantulas. You'd start out by holding one small, harmless, slow moving spider on the palm of your hand.
Likewise with these skills. Frequent exposure will do two things. (a) desensitizes you to the issue of percieved threat levels and (b) gives you a growing base of experience to handle the regulator skills quickly and adequately.
I said start small, but look for the boundaries a bit too (make sure you get a buddy to help keep you safe). For example, try the regulator R&R by thowing it over your shoulder and getting it back right away. When that's comfortable, throw it over your shoulder and count to 5 before starting to look..... then work on pushing that. Try counting to 6...7....10....15... for as long as you know you can. When you do this make sure your buddy is there holding his octopus ready for you incase you need it....
Likewise with other skills. Purging is easily practiced by switching from your primary to your own octopus. Once again start small and build up. Maybe first in the pool and then in deeper and deeper water until you're comfortable doing it at any time at any depth.
Same with AAS. Do it with your buddy (with correct technique) until you're comfortable and then start slowing it down more and more, pausing between steps and moving slothlike and see what level of "slow motion" AAS handovers you can achieve together with your buddy....
get the idea? And never forget. Safety first when you're doing this.
Practice like this for as long and as often as you need to to get the comfort level you're looking for.
Hope this helps.
R..
