Have you ever had a life or death threatening experience?
Were you given expert care afterwards?
Or were you just patted on the back and the words ‘you’re ok’ said and told to go home?
What would you say if I said that thousands of people in the UK or even millions of people world-wide have all had the same terrifying life or death experience and they have kept it to themselves for years and years and even felt ashamed to talk about it?
The experience that I am writing about is the none other than the trauma suffered by the careless attitude towards young people who have had an accident by being told to jump into the water during swimming lessons without the understanding of what was going to happen under the water, and sometimes even pushed into the water by the teacher simply because the person in charge was determined to make the child/adult get used to being in the water.
When in a local swimming pool being told to jump in the deep end, falling from a boat, in a canal, trying to swim in the sea. What effect does this have when this type of accident happens?
When a person loses their footing or is pushed into the water in a swimming pool, the majority of the people around are not aware of the effect this has. They have no idea how terrified and desperate a person feels when they slip, or are pushed into the water even if the water may only be 3ft deep.
So, looking on they may reason that all that is needed to regain their footing is to put the feet back on the ground, simple! But what they do not take into consideration is the struggle in the water is really a blind panic screaming in their head, frightened because they think they are going to die because they have no idea what to do to stop the water from moving.
In fact, when a person panics in the water they stiffen up the whole of their body whilst trying to grasp onto something firm to lift themselves out of the water.
The action of stiffening the body is the very worst thing a person can do because it has the opposite effect in the water to want they want.
Professional swimmers, up until 2010, wore an all on one suit when they were competing in the Olympic or the British Commonwealth Games. They spent thousands of pounds on these swim suits.
These suits because they are so tight makes the body compact especially around the hip and tummy area, this enables them to travel faster in the water simply because they are now streamlined. (obviously there are other swimming techniques that have to be taken into consideration.)
One English woman swimming competitor ripped her all in one costume trying to get into it before her race but had to pull out, simply because she would not be so streamlined using an ordinary costume
If professional swimmers were to try to swim effectively wearing pair of Bermuda shorts, also relaxing the hips and tummy, the speed would simply not be there in fact, the person would hardly move as they tried to swim, so the need to use huge amount of energy by using their arm stroke and heavy kick this is what would get them through the water, not the technique of being streamlined.
So, let’s go back to the person who is now struggling in the water trying to grab hold of something solid to enable them to breathe, their actions are in fact making themselves lighter because they are tensing up the body in the water and this causes them to feel totally out of control. They just cannot put their feet down because they are more buoyant. Bearing in mind whilst they have their head in the water, they have no idea where they are in the water. They could be just underneath the surface, or they could be deeper. Because they cannot see where they are they are disoriented
So, what happened next?
Suddenly someone becomes aware that this adult/child needs help. It may be the life guard, the teacher or just someone who is nearby.
From my experience of teaching water phobic people to understand the water and helping them to learn how to trust it, in nearly all cases when they were hauled out of the water, (some have been given resuscitation, others after being hauled out are literally shaking from head to foot, totally traumatized) the whole experience is taken far to lightly and nearly all have been patted on the back and told to go home.
Anyone else that has been in such a paralyzing experience would have been taken to hospital or had some sort of counselling, but for some reason none of this is given to the person who, because of what they have been through, just cannot think properly to explain how they feel at that time.
The whole experience is never mentioned again, nobody understands how that person feels and all is forgotten.
But not so for the one who has had the trauma.
If this life or death experience happens to a child of about 7-9 years old whilst they are still at school and swimming is still promoted.
What happens after the accident?
This is what adults had to say when I asked the question “How did you get on after the trauma you suffered especially when you were at school?”
“ I was ok once I had made an excuse or forged a letter from my parents so I did not have to go swimming. I breathed a sigh of relief and was ok for the next 5 days until the swimming came round again and then was stressed out until I managed to get out of it again, this happened for many years until I went to the Senior school where lessons were not promoted”
When I asked how many times they needed to do this, without an exception the answer was “All the time I was at school and swimming was on the agenda”
When I asked them (as adults) why they felt that they could not speak to someone about their trauma when they was a child, the answer was “ I felt ashamed” “No one understood” “I was frightened of my swimming teacher”
This treatment of such a traumatic experience is completely unacceptable and is compounded by the fact of feeling ashamed.
Imagine that! Feeling ashamed for many, many years and this unnecessary feeling could have been stopped if the right action was taken when the accident happened.
When I asked them how they felt about the water, without exception the answer was “The water did something to me” “If I get into the water, I am going to drown”
So, for the rest of their lives water is the enemy until they make that definite decision, as I did, to do something about it.
I now teach adults that the water can be their friend.
