Marine trauma psychotherapy - returning you to the water
As a scuba professional with over 35 years of experience in both diving and sailing, I merge this with Brainspotting Psychotherapy to treat all trauma related to water.
If you have a love of the water, have had an injury or traumatic incident which has compromised that somehow, you have come to the right place.
At 2nd Opinion Psychotherapy, I offer a unique and highly specialised approach to treating marine trauma. As a Master Scuba Diver and Instructor with personal experience overcoming trauma, I bring a deep understanding and expertise in this specialised area of psychophysiological distress.
Injuries that compromise our confidence and relationship with water, have a deep impact on our lives, water being essential to good health and living well.
Understanding marine trauma
To treat this very common and fundamental injury, we go directly to the source of the distress held in the nervous system, and accessed through the eyes utilising Brainspotting Psychotherapy -
Surfing accidents / oceanic accidents
Scuba diving incidents
Boating or sailing incidents or emergencies
Near-drowning experiences
The witnessing of water injuries
Barotrauma (pressure related injury at depth)
Weather incidents and subsequent loss involving water (floods / tsnumanis)
Swimming and learning to swim incidents
Childhood overwhelm involving the introduction to water
These experiences can lead to symptoms such as anxiety, PTSD, panic attacks, or a debilitating fear of water that impacts daily life and cherished activities.
Water is not a resource.
It is a source.
- Veda Austin
My specialised approach to marine trauma therapy
"To restore someone to their ineherent and innate love of water, is to return them to the family of nature."
Marine trauma psychotherapy defined is the treatment of traumatic experiences and shock involving water.
This specific niche in therapy is curated by my extensive involvement in water sports, and an understanding of the high risks involved, particularly in open sea, or confined water areas like caves or lakes.
I am a Clinical Psychotherapist specialising in trauma treatment. My background also includes professional scuba diving instruction and I've studied recreational diving extensively, enjoying many marine environments, ranging from open ocean to coastlines and jetties, with temperatures between 10C to 27C. I have led groups on yacht charter to deep destinations in the Similan Islands, and taught hundreds of students in the beach shallows. As an active diver today and psychotherapist, I can assist you to recover your confidence and love of the water by alleviating post-traumatic stress.
You are made of water
Whether you live miles from a large body of water or not, there is an ocean within you that is impacted through a traumatic incident that involved water. When you understand your co-existence with water, it makes vital sense to address any psychological injury you have sustained.
Human blood has a chemical composition startlingly similar to seawater. An infant will reflexively breaststroke when placed underwater and can comfortably hold his breath for about forty seconds, longer than many adults. We lose this ability only when we learn how to walk."
James Nestor, 'Deep'
"After a diving accident last year in May, getting anywhere close to the water was feeling like a heavy challenge. Living on an island and loving the ocean, it just wasn’t an option. I was lucky to have met Anne in the very same place the accident occurred a few weeks prior to it, and I immediately reached out to her. We began trauma therapy straight away, and by June, I was back not only in the water, but also on a dive. Thanks to her help, my trauma free self was able to get back to what holds us the most here-the ocean."
Irmeline BG, North Stradbroke Island (2024)
Why choose specialised marine trauma psychotherapy?
As such, we are at times humbled, humiliated and injured in order to stay salient of this ambivalent fact.
It's never personal, and always profoundly educational.
At times traumatic.
When an accident happens in water, it is very easy to pivot the incident on everything else that occurred, and overlook the impact that the water medium had overall.
It's very easy to blame your skill level, things you should have known/done, your equipment, was it faulty somehow? Did you not understand the plan? Were you simply foolish, irresponsible? What will they think? Should you bother trying again?
But the one question that underlies the incident afterwards, is how do you feel about the water now?
When an injury occurs, the water may become personified as a powerful force that you no longer trust. So things become unavailable to you.
It is this trust that needs to be restored.
That overwhelming emotion you get when seeing the ocean is your body having a homecoming moment. It's your internal ocean recognising its source."
Anynymous
Returning you to the water, confident and secure
Contact me today for a complimentary 30 minute consultation.
