[tylerz]

Glad you survived! And secondly glad you are trying to assess things and grow from the experience. Part of that growth, is using the fears to motivate the hunt for details that are, and have been, easily taken for granted.

Elaborating slightly on other comments, a very important thing to remember when freediving recreationally is that dives are subject to large variances in characteristics from sessions to session and even dives within the same session; characteristics such as currents, dive path/profile, hydration, exhaustion, metabolism, blood shift, etc. all come into play at being factors that adjust what is a safe amount of time before you need to hit the surface.

Therefore in a recreational environment you can not solely rely on a static idea of how long you can dive for and how deep. One dive you kick for 10 secs before sinking, another dive you kick constantly, and another you kick intermittently, all affecting your dive time considerably. And it would be a misconception that if you have your dive reflex/response kick in, that these differences would not still play a significant role. The response is variable as well and is not a complete shut off valve that allows you to exert your extremities as much as you wish.

Just as importantly, neither can you rely on a feeling of urge to breathe. Often the deeper one goes the less urge to breathe they will feel. Breathe up at the surface has to have significant consistency to guage whether you have dove without reducing CO2 to low levels. Just determining whether you felt extremely low CO2, as sensed by tingling extremities, is not a fine enough assessment. The whole range between extremely low CO2 to lots of CO2 is not something most people can sense easily or accurately.

Also, as soon as I read your accounts, it also occurred to me, seconding Eric's statement, that your BO would have induced memory loss. So, unless there was a strong enough significance to the details, your brain would not have retained whether you were feeling different in your urge to breathe or not. When you surfaced from that dive, there is a strong possibility that you were sensing a need to reach the surface, and, being so focused on that objective, you would not have noticed, or focused, on much else occuring in your body. On most of my deep dives from the past, when I surface, I have not sensed much of anything from my body. Instead, I am solely focused on maintaining the rhythm of my technique and consoling my mind that everything will be fine towards reaching the surface. Only recently have I begun to attempt to sense what is happening on the way up in my body, and I forget about it still most of the time.

In terms of being traumatized with fear, I would offer the recommendation to:

1. Take some time to digest your existence at this moment. To feel how alive you are. Regain a strength and consistency of sensation that nothing is threatening you more or less than it ever was. Don't think about diving when you do this. Do this until you feel grounded in the realization that things are as they always were.

2. Take some time to digest what you would like to introduce as new into your existence. Information has increased as it always does; a product of passing through moments. Try to see the events that occurred without pursuing or dwelling on the emotions surrounding them. With the information of the events , and the information you are gathering as a product of the events, form what you have learned and what you comprehend.

3. When you have a clear picture of the events and what information is new and valuable, then let your feelings envelop that information and digest what they suggest, reassessing the importance of the information.

Remember that it appears you were diving with a considerable lack of information regarding safety techniques of recreational freediving. Therefore, if you put some time and focus into integrating such things into your dives you should be able to relax, albeit maintaining a healthy degree of caution and awareness to your dives.