QC CORNER DREAD AND DELIGHT

CONFRONTING THE “EEKS” IN ADVANCED DIVING

Brad Beskin feels at home in caves but addresses the need to understand and recognize fear as a human reaction to unusual circumstances.

Our brain can often be our worst enemy; it regularly pits logic against emotion in a convoluted and confusing barrage of mixed signals. And diving presents many opportunities for battles between anxiety and excitement, fear and elation, dread and delight.

Despite the depth of training and experience GUE divers obtain, few are immune from the occasional recognition they—cruising beneath the waves—are not supposed to be there. At some point, most technical and overhead divers will encounter the sense of discomfort that often accompanies this realization. Whether this manifests in a sense of unease, dread, or fully fledged panic, what we commonly call “fear” is a mental and physiological risk we must address.

However, I am more concerned in this column with the risk posed by the societal pressure to bury the sensation, ignore it, or even explain it away. In addressing this subject, The New York Times cited Leon Hoffman, co-director of the Pacella Research Center in New York: “Our culture valorizes strength and power and showing fear is considered weakness. But you are actually stronger if you can acknowledge fear.” Murphy, Outsmarting Our Primitive Response to Fear, The New York Times (Oct. 26, 2017). So, to that end, let us talk about fear.

The “eeks”

Admittedly, this sensation is familiar to me. Despite more than 28 years of diving experience and many, many overhead dives, I still get what many cave explorers call the “eeks” from time to time. I have, on occasion, been quick to dismiss them: “it’s not that I’m afraid…must have been CO2…everything was fine.”

In reality, something in my brain triggers the need to question—honestly, directly, and involuntarily—whether I truly want to be on that dive at that moment. My vision narrows, my breathing increases, and my mind wanders down an irrational and unwarranted slippery slope of horribles.

The solution is straightforward: I know the symptoms and can see them coming from the first hair that raises on the back of my neck. Stop, stabilize, signal. Wait. Breathe. Check gas and flow check. Wait. Breathe. In approximately 30-60 seconds, all is right. Rational thought returns; remaining dread dissolves to delight, and the dive continues.

Why does this happen? I am literally writing this in an office surrounded by pictures of cave diving—both of my heroes and of me—thinking of how I can squeeze in another trip to High Springs or Mexico in short order. I don’t consider myself to be afraid of diving—even the overhead or technical sort. Yet, dread and I have become casually acquainted as I extend my limits. Why?

Brain matter matters

Physiologically (and this is admittedly a reductive take), my amygdalae appear to be the culprits: those almond-shaped structures in my cerebral hemispheres, which are considered to be the root of what we identify as fear (the involuntary and often irrational kind of fear). The amygdalae principally define and regulate emotions. They also preserve memories and attach those memories to specific emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness). These emotional remembrances are the reasons I feel anticipation when I hear my high school sports team’s warm-up song for the first time in years, or why my heart flutters when my nose is reminded of my grandma’s cooking.

The amygdalae are also responsible for our fight-or-flight response. The quickening pulse, clenching, pupil-dilating response is automated; it reacts before conscious processes (like logic) have a chance to come online. These reflexes have been tuned throughout evolution to keep us alive. They are, in a sense, a safety mechanism that overrides (or “hijacks”) the voluntary, rational, and analytic functions of the cerebral cortex. See Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Random House (2005).

In activating the fight-or-flight response, the body doses itself with chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. Blood flow to muscles increases (assumedly, for strength or speed); the airways expand to increase oxygen to the blood; blood sugar increases to provide you immediate energy; and pupils dilate. Respiration and heart rate increases. Perspiration sets in. The mind grasps for information, and the response thereto is often out of sync with reality.

Of course, not everyone experiences fear the same way. “The complex neurological and ecological foundations of our fear perceptions and responses means a continuum exists whereby fear for one person may insight bravery and courage, and for another fear may insight terror and vulnerability.” Reed and Smith (2021). And each individual’s response is geared to specific stimuli (e.g., small, confined, dark, and labyrinthine spaces).

We must also acknowledge competing chemical realities. Advanced diving requires the assumption of certain risks. Some risk takers’ brains may be naturally lower in levels of dopamine and/or serotonin (see Manly, What Makes Risk Takers Tempt Fate?, National Geographic (Aug. 15, 2016))—important neurotransmitter regulators of the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, as well as its physical and emotional responses.

What matters here is the fact that certain sensations of fear (and our physiological responses to them) are directly attributable to involuntary responses to stimuli. They are natural, beyond our control, and invariably human.

I suppose this raises the question: Why would we engage in an activity that involves fear? But each of us understands why we might risk an encounter with dread. Pat Jablonski wrote a compelling piece in InDepth’s October 2022 release addressing specific motivations underlying risk-taking in extreme sports like ours. She said, “diving forces divers to pay complete attention to a task, to focus with laser-like precision in order to conquer misgivings, and to attain a skill that few others have. Confidence comes with accomplishment. Leadership emerges. Fear is overcome.”

She’s right; there is nothing akin to the sense of accomplishment that comes with completion of a challenging dive, and I venture many of us undertake advanced dive training to, at least in part, prove to ourselves we can do it. Whether we overcome our fears or merely learn to manage them is the question; our fears likely remain an integral part of many of us. And, of course, a healthy dose of fear may raise awareness and ensure thorough preparation; why else would we religiously analyze gas and adhere to standards?

Talking about Fear

It is essential that those of us who encounter the “eeks” talk about it with our teammates and peers. “Sharing negative emotions can lessen their impact [..], build empathy[…], encourage others to open up about their own negative emotions, and help others recontextualize and overcome those struggles — ultimately boosting morale and performance…” Howe, Menges, and Monks, Leaders, Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About Your Fears and Anxieties, Harvard Bus. Rev. (Apr. 18, 2021).

The alternative is untenable. “The more you try to suppress fear, either by ignoring it or doing something else to displace it, the more you will actually experience it.” Murphy, supra (citing Prof. Kristy Dalrymple, Alpert Medical School of Brown University).

Nevertheless, there is a taboo surrounding the discussion of emotions, and this permeates high risk activities and environments in a detrimental way. Cultural pressures often dictate that “[a]dults are supposed to control their intense emotions” and “fear is supposed to be curtailed”; these pressures have made the curtailing of fear an “automatic response” to avoid demonstrations of behaviors that might be viewed as “embarrassing” or “aberrant.” See Brymer and Schweizer, Extreme Sports Are Good for Your Health, J. of Health Psy (2013). For males, this can translate into symptoms akin to “toxic masculinity”—wherein somehow the acknowledgment of emotion weakens virility. This fallacy may also dictate the avoidance of emotion for women because high risk activities have no room for “weakness.” This is, of course, arcane and absurd.

Nevertheless, this fallacy (that emotion is somehow equated to weakness) is widely reinforced (at least in the United States) by societal attitudes, which makes it a reality many confront daily. For example, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center found respondents attributed protective behavior as a positive trait for men, while being emotional was viewed negatively. See Walker, Bialik, and van Kessel, Strong

Men, Caring Women, Pew Research Center (July 24, 2018).

Let’s change that. Let’s talk about fear…the “eeks”…the dread that creeps into our delight. In April 2022, a friend of mine—an experienced diver and instructor in Mexico—wrote a social media post about this topic and his own unexpected encounter with dread. He focused on the importance of human connection—the ability of simple eye contact or a reassuring touch to thwart an amygdala hijack. The response to his post inspired this column: dozens of comments reflecting appreciation for acknowledging this reality, personal stories of similar experience, and a shared acknowledgement of this ever-so-human condition. These came from divers all over the world-renowned explorers and amateurs alike.

The message is clear: each of us is human. We are the product of ability and limitation, strength and weakness, amygdala and cortex. We deserve healthy discussion and acknowledgement, both in ourselves and from our peers, of each side of this equation.

Have you encountered the “eeks”? How did you respond—not in the moment, but once the truck was packed and the dive gear put away? I hope you talked about it (and if you didn’t, I hope you will do so next time). On the other hand, can your teammates approach you to talk about their experiences? Do you create a culture of taboo on your team, or do you acknowledge your teammates are human—a product of their dread and delight.

Brad Beskin has been diving actively for approximately twenty-eight years. He first became involved with GUE by taking Fundamentals in 2002, and then Cave 1 with Tamara Kendal in 2003. He is now a proud GUE DPV Cave diver and is looking forward to undertaking the GUE technical curriculum in 2023. When he is not diving, he earn his living as a civil litigator in Austin, Texas, and he also finds time to act as Director of Quality Control and the Chair of the Quality Control Board for Global Underwater Explorers.