thanks everyone...I have snorkelled before and absolutely loved it, I am 100% fine with being underwater with my eyes open/swimming under water etc in a pool situation and I have no other claustrophobic tendencies, I'm also a very determined person when it comes to my anxiety, I've very much learned to control it and push on regardless so I don't feel I would actually have a panic attack in the water or anything, my main concern is not enjoying it
phobia of suffocation
- Thread starter BXey
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
That being said you are discover diver material. Make sure the first outing is in confined water like a pool or shallow lagoon. Knowing your concerns you don't want a tip hungry DM taking you to 60 feet right off. Depth will not have an effect on your respiration but you want to limit any anxiety while you build confidence in the equipment.
Pete
There are several exercises during the certification process that will require to you respond to "simulated" situations where either you or your dive buddy are out of air.
These exercises start on day one with simple cases of removing the regulator from your mouth and replacing it, which involves keeping your "air way" open by exhaling softly and blowing little bubbles out through your lips. As the course progresses the exercises become slightly more involved.
There are also quite a few exercises that involve deliberately allowing water into your mask so you can learn how to clear that water out again. These exercises require some additional "air way" control because you will need to breath IN through your mouth and OUT through your nose in order to clear the water away.
If these things are things you believe you could do without triggering your claustrophobia then I don't see anything about learning how to dive that would be more complicated for you than this.
If I were you I would level with your instructor on day 1 and make sure that they understand you. It will help your instructor understand your needs and it will help you to get the emphasis in the training that you need.
R..
cb5150
Contributor
Really? Is this new or just something my instructors never did as I progressed from OW to DM? Its sounds like I missed out on some fun.
USFpsychDiver
Contributor
If the phobia is keeping you from doing something you want to do (i.e. dive), you could deal with it directly. Behavioral therapy can effectively deal with phobias quickly and quite well.
CaliDenna
Contributor
PADI training does NOT include any exercises that involve turning off your air. Mask clearing and no mask swim don't involve lack of air supply either as you have the reg in your mouth the whole time (you do have to master the trick of not breathing through your nose but you already swim underwater and snorkel so not an issue).
I disagree that you may not enjoy the training, it may be challenging but it's a whole lot of fun learning new skills, gaining confidence, meeting new dive buddies!
Have a great time taking a Discover Scuba course (and FYI most shops will apply the fee that you paid for it towards your OW class) and let us know how you did!
As a matter of fact, it does.
In module 2 there is an exercise that requires turning off the air to simulate and OOA situation and give the student an idea of what it feels like when the regulator/tank is breathed down. The objective of the skill is to give students a feeling of what it's like to run out of air in controlled circumstances and to teach responding to an OOA situation with the correct hand-signal.
The guide to teaching also suggests closing the valve during the OOA skill in module 3, although a lot of instructors do not follow this advice.
R..
Rob is correct, although I personally believe that the exercise as designed has little value.
My theory (and I don't know for sure) is that when this exercise started decades ago, the quality of regulators was not what it is today. In the pool, as in normal recreational diving, you would find it increasingly difficult to breathe as the regulator got near OOA. This exercise showed students what it was like so they would have a warning before going OOA and thus have time to begin doing something about it. Today's higher quality regulators do not give such a warning before going OOA in the pool and at shallower depths. You are just suddenly OOA. As soon as you feel yourself go OOA and signal OOA, your instructor turns on the air and you will have it instantly. Thus, you experience being OOA for about a second--maybe less. As designed, there is no benefit to that drill.
If you go OOA on a deeper dive, though, you will indeed feel the regulator getting harder to breathe. I have a very fine regulator that I use with a stage bottle (an extra tank carried to increase the volume of gas on a long dive), and on some dives I breathe that down to empty and then switch to the gas on my back. I usually make the switch before I get right down to the end, but on occasions I have waited longer than normal and felt that change. I have gone through several hard-to-breathe breaths before making the switch, so I know it really does give ample warning at depth.
Consequently, I do the PADI training exercise differently than designed. I watch the student's SPG carefully, and as it approaches zero, I crack the valve open ever so slightly. This does indeed give the same kind of hard-to-breathe experience one would feel at depth. In my case, the students are never actually OOA, but they get to feel what it is like at depth.
I think making students keenly aware of this is the value of the exercise.
A few years ago I did a test in my living room while I was watching TV, I attached an old unbalanced piston reg I have from 1972 to one tank and a new high-performance reg to another tank. Both tanks were bled off to about 15 bar and then I breathed them dry.
On the one that had the unbalanced piston I could feel it getting stiffer well before the tank was empty. If I took long slow breaths it was possible to breathe off of it for several minutes after I had first become aware of the stiffness.
On the one with the modern reg, it just stopped. I got one last breath off of it when I realized it was getting stiffer. The tank was so empty that I could open the valve and blow air back into the tank with my mouth.
I use that example when I brief this skill and then use the skill to really drill it home that I wasn't kidding so I can impress on them how incredibly important it is to check the spg regularly and know what your pressure is at all times.
R..
swimmer_spe
Contributor
I had some apprehension about this too.
That first breath in was weird. The air was dry, very dry. It was cold. But there was no effort to it. Also, there was no issue with "hyperventilating"(breathing fast and shallow), or even long deep breaths.
See if your LDS or club offers a Discover Scuba program.
I forked out the money for the OWC and the gear.
Similar threads
