Though Fearful, Press Onward

s a psychology major in college, I had an overwhelming desire to experiment with what I learned on myself and those around me. I used college as a four year counseling session, as many psychology majors do. When I learned about aversion therapy I decided this was the very best method to cure myself of a fear of being under water.  This was an unfortunate fear for someone like me who grew up constantly in the water.

      

In retrospect, I think my Dad had some serious aversion therapy training. He made me face my fear nearly every weekend of spring and summer. He didn’t just bring us swimming, but he intensely worked on my fears. Over and over again he would lure me into the deep water to have “underwater tea parties." I was a sucker for tea parties and was willing to face down any fear to do anything my beloved father asked of me. We spend hours underwater having tea.

We often went swimming in large man-made lakes in Texas. They seemed enormous and the squishy muddy bottoms added to my apprehension. At one lake, we would swim across the seemingly gigantic body of water towards three towering diving-boards. My heart raced as we swam the entire length of the lake in anticipated fear of the jumps I would be asked to make. I never thought to say “absolutely not” to my father despite the tremendous amount of fear I was experiencing. 

There were several things that scared me about diving from these boards. They were incredibly tall and that in and of itself was enough. But I have severe vision problems. My eyes told my brain that I was jumping into an endless pit. I was unable to see the water below me. I had to trust completely in my father and believe him that the jump was safe. The climb to the top was extremely long so I knew that I was very, very high in the air. I also had a fear of falling, coupled with a fear of being under water. This all caused me to shake from head to toe as I climbed one rung of the stairs to the next. 

Despite years of aversion therapy under my father’s care, I remained afraid of being underwater even when I was in college. I set out to cure myself once and for all of this ridiculous fear. My senior year in college, I took a SCUBA diving elective for the sole purpose of driving this fear from my life. On day one my SCUBA instructor pulled me aside to ask if someone was forcing me to take this class since I had fear written all over my face. I informed him that I was forcing myself and confided my fears in him. He allowed me to do my early underwater training in the shallow end of the pool and told my classmates I was having trouble with my ears. 

It was a long hard road for me to go from the shallow end, to the deep end, to the murky deep cold waters of the Puget Sound for my final test. I had come too far to be willing to accept failure. My instructor informed me that he was going to be extra hard on me.  It is dangerous to give into fear while SC UBA diving and he needed to be assured that I would not panic deep under water. The currents were especially bad during the weekend of our testing. The waters were so murky that we could not see more than 2 feet in front of us. 

During a dive 80 feet under water with no visibility my instructor turned off my air and knocked off my mask. Every fiber of my body wanted to panic and swim to the top as quickly as I could.  Instead I turned toward my diving partner and signaled to buddy breathe. And instead of freezing with fear, I calmly cleared my mask  My instructor rewarded me by turning back on my air and signaling that I had passed his final test.  In the deep dark waters of Puget Sound I succeeded in conquering a life-long fear. Fear lost its grip on me when I stood up to it. 

Don’t let fear hold you back from anything. Have absolute impatience with fear that forces you to fight back against it. Do not allow a fear of failing keep you from starting. You can only fail if you don’t try. Even if it takes years to succeed and you fall down many times along the way, you have not failed as long as you get back up and keep going.  The Goad's song Never Be Afraid to Dream is a great theme song when you are struggling to keep your dream alive.