Near Miss and Psychological Impacts

[helodriver87]

For me, I had to face the same situation again and again until I could confidently move past it. I went over the series of events countless times in my head and identified everything that went wrong. I armchair quarterbacked it to death, then I went back to the same site, same conditions with the specific goal of avoiding every mistake I'd made the first time. There was a pretty significant mental block at first and I'd start to feel panic creeping up, so I'd have to stop and remind myself why I was there. Over time, the mental block decayed and eventually disappeared. Close calls can be incredibly valuable learning opportunities. They can teach you more in a single dive than you could learn in weeks of focused training, but it's all about how you react to and handle them.

 

[Scoobadoobiedoo]

Side note. I highly recommend adding a pony bottle to your setup. "Spare Airs" are too small, providing a false sense of security. I recommend getting a 19cf pony: provided you're not sucking down air at a crazy rate, it allows you to safely ascend from 100 feet and perform a 3 minute safety stop. Practice using it during normal safety stops to familiarize yourself with it.

 

[CT-Rich]

I going against the prevailing wisdom here, don’t start by analyzing the accident (you’ve already done that anyway). You need to get the accident out side of you. I had a good scare with my Drysuit neck cutting off blood circulation on the surface after a dive. We had a long surface swim and I realized I was not going to make it. I dumped my weights so I could get an orientation on the surface tha letblood flow. Scared the sh*t out of me.

Write a full account of the incident with out trying to analyze it (you will anyway). Get it all out,what you were thinking while it was happening, what led up to it, how you got out of it. At the end, summarize lessons learned, not the nit-picking stuff, but the big ideas. Watch for currents, check air, listen to briefings, know how you use air compared to those around you, bring a pony.

I think articulating what you went through and externalizing it will help putting it in the past. The time you think about it now is just random chuck and emotions. And you never see the whole thing.

Clean the wound thoroughly, bandage it and stop picking at the scab.

 

[-JD-]

Hi, Terry. In coming here you have taken another step in the process of working it out for yourself, but as but as has been pointed out, seeking counsel with a professional might be helpful. If this sort of thinking is not pervading other ares of your life, an experienced and trusted SCUBA instructor may be the "professional" to start with, since they likely have directly relevant personal and/or training experience.

Recognize that re-running this in your head is not necessarily all bad, you can learn from it. Look into Defensive pessimism - Wikipedia. But if you don't use it as a way understand how to best avoid such situations and what your options are to effectively respond to them, replaying that movie as a personal horror show may exacerbate your apprehension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_pessimism

Even if you were completely out of air at 25M in OW (cant't get anything out of the reg), you may still have a survivable solo option - i.e. CESA. Between, the gas expansion in your lungs, the likely ability to get a few breaths from your reg as the water pressure decreases , even breaths from the bladder instead of just dumping the air, you can probably make it to the surface at a safe rate with relative comfort. Some interesting reading, but warning, there is some strong disagreements on safety with regard to practicing CESA (more related to the DCS danger to instructors/DM repeatedly following students): Today's 136ft CESA trial & Frequency of advanced divers practicing CESAs ? [Poll]

As stated, a personally carried, redundant air source is a big comfort and a practical, effective safety device.. 19-40cuft Pony with a Pro-valve and standard reg is hard to beat unless you want to go straight into BM or SM doubles. Personally, after having an instabuddy just swim away without even looking back when I had an issue (fortunately only equalization on a a saw tooth profile), and several separations in the abysmal quarry visibility this fall, one of my ponies simply WILL be with me.

A wrist-mounted computer with air integration that allows you to more easily monitor your air status without having to dig out, unclip your SPG/console might help also.

 

[Murphy in NC]

Terry, thanks for sharing this
My son and I got caught up in some very bad surge in Grand Cayman. I am a relatively new diver ,,, about three years now and the incident scared the hell out of me. It wasn't just us, there were several divers who experienced this. One couple got pushed over a wall and into a swimming pool. My son and I ended up on the rocks bloody as hell. My son was fine, no worries at all. I want to dive forever however I am concerned about surge and current.
Thinking back on it we did make a newbie mistake, we had one dive, it went fine, had lunch and as we walked down to the ladder a wave came through, I paused and moved on, I should have stopped and talked to some others about the conditions, being a newbie we went in and it was awful.

I do my homework now, I research the hell out of an area and the conditions, try to take emotion out of it and focus on logic.
Thanks for everyone who shared, I will look for a professional in my area and see if that will help smooth out some of the rough spots.
I plan on diving forever, I will run into other situations again, its going to happen however I would rather dive and deal with a difficult situation once in a blue moon rather than sit on the couch and talk about diving or focus on golf, diving is an amazing adventure and there aren't any bikinis on the golf course !!!

 

[JackD342]

Hi, Terry. In coming here you have taken another step in the process of working it out for yourself, but as but as has been pointed out, seeking counsel with a professional might be helpful. If this sort of thinking is not pervading other ares of your life, an experienced and trusted SCUBA instructor may be the "professional" to start with, since they likely have directly relevant personal and/or training experience.

Recognize that re-running this in your head is not necessarily all bad, you can learn from it. Look into Defensive pessimism - Wikipedia. But if you don't use it as a way understand how to best avoid such situations and what your options are to effectively respond to them, replaying that movie as a personal horror show may exacerbate your apprehension.

Even if you were completely out of air at 25M in OW (cant't get anything out of the reg), you may still have a survivable solo option - i.e. CESA. Between, the gas expansion in your lungs, the likely ability to get a few breaths from your reg as the water pressure decreases , even breaths from the bladder instead of just dumping the air, you can probably make it to the surface at a safe rate with relative comfort. Some interesting reading, but warning, there is some strong disagreements on safety with regard to practicing CESA (more related to the DCS danger to instructors/DM repeatedly following students): Today's 136ft CESA trial & Frequency of advanced divers practicing CESAs ? [Poll]

As stated, a personally carried, redundant air source is a big comfort and a practical, effective safety device.. 19-40cuft Pony with a Pro-valve and standard reg is hard to beat unless you want to go straight into BM or SM doubles. Personally, after having an instabuddy just swim away without even looking back when I had an issue (fortunately only equalization on a a saw tooth profile), and several separations in the abysmal quarry visibility this fall, one of my ponies simply WILL be with me.

A wrist-mounted computer with air integration that allows you to more easily monitor your air status without having to dig out, unclip your SPG/console might help also.

That is another helpful bit of technology that you might not be using - an air-integrated dive computer with some gas pressure alarms. Turn pressure, ascent pressure, remaining dive time.

 

[scubadada]

Hi @Scary Terry

You've received all kinds of advice from the psychological to gear fixes. We might be able to be more helpful if we knew the circumstances of your out of air situation. It may be as simple of being more aware of your gas consumption and checking it against your SPG or AI computer as needed.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

"This relates to a situation that occurred in March of this year which still weighs on my mind, where I was completely out of air in a ripping current about 25 metres below the surface. It required me to buddy breathe from a DM who was only coincidentally close by. My buddy was too far away to help in the current.

I dived later on the day of the incident, and have probably had about 20 dives since, usually reluctantly and nervously. But most days I still relive / remember what happened and when I do it fills me with dread. I have also become far more fixated on reading about other accidents and near misses."

These are classic PTSD Symptoms. That they are still occurring 8 months later. If you were my student I'd advise you stay out of the water until they were addressed by a mental health professional.

I wrote an essay a while back that may apply here. It's in my second book and available in the files section of the Facebook Group I run. It's titled
Post Traumatic Stress In Recreational Dive Rescuers. In a sense, this was a rescue from a potentially life-threatening situation. It was one that was carried out by you and that DM. Even when an outcome is successful there can be after effects for everyone involved that are dealt with differently by each person.
It sounds like you are having some of those and processing them with some degree of difficulty.
Adding a pony bottle or taking another class is likely not going to be a solution. If anything, doing those may exacerbate the symptoms because you are adding additional gear and in the case of a class, performance requirements that may elevate the stress level to the point where a very bad situation could present itself.
Deal with the underlying medical issues.
You are not going crazy.
You are not mentally ill.
You have apparently suffered an injury. A mental injury that is no different than a broken bone.
You would not dive with a broken leg until after it's been treated and healed.
Don't dive with an injured mind until it's been treated and healed.
I have run into similar situations personally and with other divers I've helped to find the resources they need.
In some cultures and areas a mental injury is seen as mental illness and a weakness.
Neither is a weakness or defect. Anyone who has that opinion is one to disregard as ignorant and dangerous.
Seek out a trained counselor familiar with trauma.
Not all mental health professionals are trained to deal with this.
EMDR is one effective therapy and professionals trained in its use are usually suited to help with trauma.
Don't dismiss this out of hand and think that more dives, gear, or classes are going to help.
Even a single session to get evaluated will be more beneficial than advice from those who have never experienced such an event.
Everyone is different in how they process such events.
Taking the advice of someone who never sought help could end up killing you.

 

[Landlocked123]

As someone stated I would be far more concerned about how you ended up OOA. If you work and practice at monitoring your air all the other fears should go away. If you know you can manage your air then you know you wont end up in the same situation. What were the details surrounding your OOA?

 

[Jay]

I dived later on the day of the incident, and have probably had about 20 dives since, usually reluctantly and nervously. But most days I still relive / remember what happened and when I do it fills me with dread. I have also become far more fixated on reading about other accidents and near misses.

At some point, with more distance from the situation, I may write it up for the Near Misses board to triage where I went wrong and learn more.

I see others have mentioned AI. I love having everything on one unit.

My 2c might be a bit different, and I would also say take from these posts what you feel is right for YOU and ignore what doesn't feel right. My 2c goes like this: don't force reluctant and nervous diving upon yourself (that could be a function of probable currents, location, vis, etc .... your case might be more nuanced). Yes, some apprehension is ok, but if it's bigger than that what you feel is ok, then just say 'stuff it, I'm the boss, and I'll say when I'll dive again / when I'll dive there / those conditions again'. I would also not bother with the distance between now and writing it up. I would just write it, be done with it, and meet that head-on. For me, it would weigh on me more by not doing it than doing it.

You'll find your path ... please have faith in that