Panic - Split from overweight thread

[Walter]

Avoiding panic however still is NOT panic management, its exactly what I did before i got my phobia with syringes dealt with, removing the topic..

As long as it prevents deaths, why do we care?

 

[Thalassamania]

Sorry, but practicing the required SKILLS is NOT the same as practicing how to handle an oncoming panic.
Some people might find it stressfull to remove, replace and clear a mask, sure, but its NOT practicing how to handle a panic situation.
Practicing skills might help you avoid NEEDING the stress/panic management training, but its NOT stress/panic management training on its own.

Effectively teaching skills is a way to help people avoid panic. Skills training, when properly designed and presented by a skillful and knowledgeable instructor, can repeatedly initialize arousal and use those occasions to teach the student how to recognize and deal with it.

 

[The Chairman]

Effectively teaching skills is a way to help people avoid panic.

But one should not ASSUME that a lack of skills was the cause here. When you do you only have a knee jerk reaction to a tragedy rather than something we can learn from.

 

[Cacia]

is there are real proven ways to reduce the chances of panic.

OOOOOOOOO....reduce the chances...

yes, you can reduce it...I agree.
I thought you said prevent it, I think you can raise the threshold and that is about it.

I have totally different mental methods for staving *it* off and taking *it* on.

One involves planning, the other involves prayer, focus, the breath.

oh...I guess I'm off topic again. everything I say is off topic. Maybe some of you are just linear thinkers.
I like to think I have experience handling panic and have something to contribute. First, when you dive alone, you don't have that nice warm comfy cow/herd feeling we all like to some degree....it's like being lost on a lonely dark road instead of in a busy downtown. And I am afraid of my own shadow...so I like to greet fear and make friends with it.
To come as close as you can to whatever could induce panic and to manage it, well, it is not only a big rush, but it is a very useful practice. Living to "prevent" the circumstances does not inch your threshhold upward. Two very different experiences here. I practiced smoozing with near panic yesterday.....stuff like vermiculite was falling all over my body, don't ask.

I feel sooo misunderstood here lately.

I need some hippies!

 

[Walter]

But one should not ASSUME that a lack of skills was the cause here. When you do you only have a knee jerk reaction to a tragedy rather than something we can learn from.

I don't believe anyone has made that assumption. We've all been talking in generalities here. Lack of skills can create problems like this. Did it this time? We simply don't have enough information to know and we likely never will.

 

[Walter]

I need some hippies!

Darlin', you should see the photo on my c-card.

 

[Missdirected]

yes, you can reduce it...I agree.
I thought you said prevent it, I think you can raise the threshold and that is about it.

I agree with this statement; hence, why I like to think/talk things through. It helps me to always learn so I can be ready or rather have that threshold raised.

 

[Puffer Fish]

Now that (easily avoided) is unmitigated BS. There are ways to induce panic in anyone, I guarantee. Usually takes less than a minute.
Rick

Thank you Rick... There is a dive site in Panama that I used to use to show people panic... even the best trained, knowing exactly what it was would do it (Me too, that is how I found it). This is such a tragic event, but one with a not easy for some to understand or accept.

 

[Storm]

Many of you are taking things totally out of context.

... issue from divers who panic as a result of a minor problem that frightens them. Your posts have absolutely nothing to do with the topic I'm discussing.

If the diver is not afraid of his situation, he will not panic. If we can eliminate fear from most diving situations, we can eliminate the possibility of panic from them.

It starts with fear. No fear, no panic.

Walter just a few of the above clips for your review.
I mentioned the "fear" factor as it usualy a precursor to panic and according to your own words you would seem to agree.

Storm, you are discussing fear, not panic. Some fears can also be overcome. I would say your recruit would not be a good candidate for diving unless he overcame his fear of the water. A big first step in preventing divers from panicking is to not certify people with an irrational fear of the water.

What I was taling about, and the point that you missed entirely, was your rather flippant reference that it would be panic would be "easy to avoid".

It was you use of the term "easy" that set me on edge as it smacked of a certain arrogance or filippancy.

Confronting and overcoming one's fears is probably the most difficult things a person can do and to trivialize the efforts is wrong. True, some minor fears or apprehensions, may be easily confronted and put down, but facing one's bigger fears is anything but easy.

However, I do agree that with time and the proper training, many can be brought to a point where they can face their fear, and to a certain degree ovecome it, but it is never "easy"

 

[Cacia]

Darlin', you should see the photo on my c-card.

yea, I bet. Hippies have open minds ,you know Walter

Lawrence Gonzales does such a nice discussion of the panic cycle, in DEEP SURVIVAL I thought he said it was rooted in the limbic brain. and ...primordial reflexes are not an easy thing to "command".

Some of what he says is counterintuitive.