Out of the many pursuits I have in my life as a 30-year-old, being an avid scuba diver is one of them. I look forward to discovering the beauty that is hidden underwater and the adventure that awaits in the deep blue waters. Problem? Breathing underwater through a set of gears makes me so anxious that it had resulted in panic attacks. I felt limited and disabled by my condition, but I wasn’t gonna settle with that fact (yeah, now that I think about it I sound kind of crazy).
I wanted to face it, I want to be fearless. To make things worse, I went on a solo trip to get my diving license — well, because I couldn’t find any friend that could go according to my schedule, and it could be a fun addition to “the things I’ve done solo”.
So there I was, signed up for a two-day diving course at Padangbai, Bali, that consisted of five dives, and a stack of theory readings. I arranged my solo trip (which I take pride on) from booking a car with a driver to take me to the dive spot and researching decent hotels around the area for the one-night stay. The instructors at the dive center were friendly, I met two new diver friends, and that was enough of good company to make my solo trip worthwhile!
Things I realized during my dive
Each dive had something fun to offer which temporarily distracted me from my looming anxiety; such as turtles, a squid, or a shipwreck, but it also didn’t stop me from feeling it. Being underwater, unable to talk or hear anything other than my own breathing, I was forced to be alone with my thoughts and feelings. I realized that my panic attacks were a build up of negative thoughts and emotions, that at one point the tension becomes too much and I would “explode” and start panicking and wanting to get out of the water.
In these moments, it is crucial not to ascend as quickly as possible, as the rapid change of water pressure may injure or kill you (yes, perhaps another reason why I was scared of scuba diving). The only thing I could do was to inform my instructor using a few hand signals (since we can’t talk underwater). I was forced to deal with my panic attack underwater, which is the only way to deal with any problem in scuba diving. My instructor would then make prolonged eye contact with me to give me assurance, told me to calm down… and breathe… and just like that… my panic attack disappeared.
Breathe
The key was to breathe, how mind-blowing-ly simple is that? After taking a few deep, orderly breaths, I snapped out of my panic attack and everything felt alright again, I could enjoy the colorful corals and fishes around me. I started noticing why and when I would start to feel uncomfortable, it’s mostly because I wasn’t being present — I wasn’t actively appreciating my surroundings, but my mind was racing and overtaken with negative thoughts such as “being trapped underwater” which became my main focus, and probably messed up my breathing patterns too.
Whenever I started feeling uneasy, I would focus on my breath again, counting 1,2,3 while inhaling as slow and deep as I can, and count again as I exhale slowly. There is something very calming about breathing that I didn’t know before. I learned how to be“present” — being in the here and now; above and around the corals, instead of being flooded with thoughts that had nothing to do with my current situation. It is much easier to be present when you are calm. You can control your thoughts and you should.
Negative Thoughts
How did I harvest so many negative thoughts? I’m not sure really, sometimes I feel like it’s a protective mechanism to prepare myself for the worst possible things that can happen, but rarely ever happens; so it just takes up your inner peace. After each panic attack that has been managed and dispersed, I feel a little silly, thinking, there was never anything to worry about to begin with, it was just all in my head — this, was probably the most powerful thing that I had learned — that my fears aren’t real. My gears were working all just fine, no shark was coming my way, it was a calm and quiet day underwater, diving with a trusted instructor and two new friends!
The most powerful question I can ask myself going forward is probably, is there really anything to worry about or am I just making things up? I started noticing when these thoughts arrive and attempt to manage them by challenging their truth, and control my mind to stop ruminating and dispose these thoughts away.
On Perfection
At the end of the trip, I got my Advanced Open Water diving license. From someone who swore “diving is not my thing”, who is mildly claustrophobic, with a fear of heights and depths, and having to manage a series of panic attacks underwater, getting this license is a big milestone for me. I am entitled up to 40 meters of depth and qualifed to most dive spots around Indonesia (or maybe even the world?)
However, there was one last little thing that bothered me, I didn’t think myself as a “true diver” because my dive didn’t go 100% smoothly due to the panic attacks. Without realizing, the standard I had posed on myself is the “perfect” diver. Yet, even the requirements of the course never said anything about being free from panic attacks to earn the license. It was my limiting beliefs upon myself that I wasn’t good enough, that I had to be perfect at scuba diving to call myself a diver.
All these years I could never confidently call myself an artist, a surfer, a writer, because I focus so much on what I couldn’t do more than what I could. I couldn’t call myself an artist because I don’t paint faces and never had an art show, I couldn’t call myself a surfer because I still couldn’t do some of the advanced maneuvers, I couldn’t call myself a writer because I’m not published and just write for fun.
I realize now that you don’t have to be good or perfect at everything that you do
I look at my fear of depths, tight spaces, and inclination to panic attacks as a weakness but not a disability — which means I have to work a little harder than others to stay calm underwater, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t dive. I may struggle a little more but it doesn’t make me less of a diver.
Life after Dive
I returned to my place in Canggu, Bali, after the two-day trip, feeling many different things — extremely exhausted, a huge relief that felt like “mission accomplished”, but also an empty mind — which felt weird because my mind is never empty, it’s always in a race. I faced my biggest fear and learned how to manage my anxiety.
My life seems to change after this dive. For the first time I felt like I was ready to go home to Jakarta and start a new life there. For context, I was flying back and forth between Bali and Jakarta for the past nine months since the start of the year, never settling in one place for more than a month. This dive trip was towards the end of my three week trip.
The idea of flying back and forth seems tiring and pointless, and well, costly too. I’m starting to understand why it would be difficult for me to form a proper relationship or have subsequent progress on my work if I’m always flying around, especially that I can’t really take my work with me. It’s also difficult to build a relationship if I’m half here, half there, hindering and slowing down progress because relationships happen through shared experiences, which happens when people are in the same place.
Living in two places just didn’t make sense anymore, at least for now. Being gone for almost three years now from Jakarta, a lot has changed. It feels like starting over a new page of life and a new set of experiences that I never thought I would look forward to. Maybe it’s the stability and predictability that I crave for over novelty. Maybe I want to build something that I can hold on to, whether it’s friendships, relationships, or career.
