How I Overcame Fear of the Water in My 50s
I only have a couple of memories from those first swimming lessons in the early 1970s, sometime between 3–5 years old. I was in a pool full of other kids successfully swimming freestyle, with the instructor holding my torso at the surface of the water while I flapped my arms to go through those same motions. My only other memory from those lessons was that I was always cold inside the pool, cold outside the pool (indoors with air conditioning), and always getting sick as a result. Needless to say, I did not learn how to swim from those lessons.
My father and my non-swimming mother watched the lessons from the bleachers. My father had learned to swim by either jumping in or being thrown in off the docks, as was typical for those growing up poor in the city back then. The story about my mother that we heard as kids was that she and her sister were at the beach and got bird droppings on her head and never went near the beach or water ever again. What I have found out just recently, almost a half century later, is while they were sitting on the beach, someone was out in the water drowning. Rescuers pulled the person to shore, right to where my mother and her sister were sitting on the beach, with the blue dead person clearly visible to them.
I don’t specifically recall any traumatic experiences from those first swim lessons — due to her trauma my mother would have remembered everything in detail but she passed away long ago, and although my father is still alive my lessons would not have been as memorable to him. Since I was not able to float at that time (and still could not at the time I wrote this), I assume that I must have had a really bad experience with attempting to learn to do so. But even if I did not have a traumatic experience in the water myself, it is likely that I picked up the secondary trauma of my mother’s experience, possibly due to seeing her reactions and body language at my lessons and/or overhearing her conversations with my father afterward. The fear of the water and shame from not knowing how to swim certainly persisted, since after that I made every effort to avoid the water and would make up excuses for doing so.
In the early 1980s, the local YMCA had just completed construction of its new aquatics complex, prompting my father (by then my mother completely removed herself from any decisions involving the beach and water) to proclaim it was time for us boys to learn the important life skill of swimming. Every Saturday morning during that summer, my father would take me (age 14 at that time), along with my brothers aged 11 and 7, to a group lesson which was probably taught by a high school student who was only a few years older than me.
The first lesson I couldn’t even walk up to the edge of the pool without trembling with fear. When I went back to my father to tell him I was too scared to go in, he would just yell at me to get in the water. Somehow I eventually made it into the water at the 3’ deep section (which was a challenge even though I was already 6’ tall at that time) but couldn’t do any more than that over the course of the summer. Every subsequent Saturday morning I woke up in fear of going to the YMCA and begged my father to let me stay home, but to no avail. My mother probably felt my pain but couldn’t help me. Eventually I figured out that the path of least resistance was to just get in the water to keep my father happy, stand aside, and get out of the way of the rest of the class.
These lessons were the most humiliating experiences of my life. Watching the other students (including my two younger brothers) succeed while I did not resulted in me carrying the shame of failure and of not knowing how to swim and that it was all my fault. (Only very recently did I learn that my brothers did not succeed as well as I had imagined back then — one didn’t do much better than me, and the other could float if his life depended on it, but that’s about it.) Furthermore, not only did I relive the trauma experienced during the prior lessons, but I suffered additional trauma during these lessons from having my emotions and feelings invalidated, essentially being gaslighted (even if this was not the intent) into believing I was simply being uncooperative.
After that experience, into high school and beyond, I avoided the water at all costs. Growing up in New England, it was actually quite easy to do so. The beach was easy because there were enough things to do in the sand far from the water. As for pool parties, I would either avoid them entirely, or if I knew the weather was sketchy and/or not everyone would be in the pool, I would go and just say I forgot my swim trunks. Due to the shame I carried, only a couple of people knew my secret, largely on a “need-to-know” basis.
But being fearful of the water affected me in other ways which I did not expect. After high school, I had narrowed down my choice to two colleges which were similar in many ways. Normally it would have been a tough decision to break the logjam, but the fact that one had a swim test requirement and the other did not made my decision easy. Of course, I didn’t tell my parents (or anyone else for that matter) my reasoning but made up some other reason for the decision. (Later I found out that the non-swimmers found creative ways to get around the testing requirement, and after a number of years the swim test requirement at that college got dropped.)
I didn’t give any further thought to the topic of swimming until sometime in the early 2000s, when I was in my early 30s. My wife and I were going to start a family soon, so I figured I needed to learn to swim if for no other reason than for the sake of my future children. I found a group class for adults at a local community college, and there were eight of us in the class, mostly in their 30s and 40s. Over the years I had come to the realization that my earlier failures were not my fault, and so I was able to approach this class with a lot more confidence. Still, although I did much better than in my past experiences, it wasn’t enough (more on that in a minute). Out of the eight original students, two of them had dropped out before the end of the class, and out of the remaining, only one was actually swimming by the last class, and the remaining five of us were doing something in the water but you couldn’t really call it swimming.
After that class, I came to the realization that typical adult swim classes which start off by teaching floating and then quickly move on to teaching different swim strokes really miss the mark. I will grant that approach works in some cases, as was the case for the one successful student in the class who immigrated to the US as a late teen and whose only issue was that she didn’t have any opportunity to learn when she lived in Russia. But all the other adults in my class had a prior negative experience in the water and clearly needed a different approach to learning. I concluded that if I wanted to progress any further, I needed one-on-one private lessons that focused on facing my fears and getting comfortable in the water, rather than teaching, say, the butterfly stroke, which I could care less about. But at that time, I had no way of finding someone I felt would be qualified to do so — it wasn’t like I could look on Yelp reviews or anything like that back then. I gave up on the quest of learning to swim, not due to lack of confidence, but for the more pragmatic reason that I didn’t think I could find anyone to help me. I have been at peace with that decision for the last several years.
Almost a couple decades later, the pandemic turned our world upside down, which later in 2020 lead to anxiety issues which got bad enough for me to seek professional help. It seems that the pandemic had caused my old traumas to bubble up to the surface, as was the case with my social anxiety that I described in a prior post. (I’m doing much better with that now, some new folks at my running club even describe me as a social butterfly and assumed I was popular in high school!) Furthermore, at various points of writing this story, I felt like tears (due to losing a piece of my childhood) and anger (at the pain my father and instructors caused me, even if unintentional, and why did he wait until I was a teenager before getting me in another class, and when seeing my struggles there, why didn’t he have a clue and get me out of the group class and into one-on-one instruction) wanted to come to the surface, but those emotions felt trapped (I felt them only as chest pain, which is how anxiety manifests itself physically to me), which is clearly a sign of repressed emotions and trauma. I feel like this is a hurdle which I need to overcome for continued improvement.
After writing my story above, I felt that I needed to investigate adult swimming lessons again. Sadly, even twenty years after I checked last time, most adult swim lessons are still largely about teaching strokes rather than addressing the needs of fearful adults. But what has changed is that the internet has allowed those few instructors who “get it” to be noticed, if they make the effort to be noticed, and if you look hard enough for them. I found an article from Psychology Today which discussed fearful adult swimmers, and from there I found Miracle Swimming.
I read through all of the pages on the Miracle Swimming website, followed by purchasing and binge reading their eBook. As an adult fearful of the water, both of those really spoke to me, and so I knew I had to take their weeklong beginner class as soon as I could! I was planning on flying to Florida last minute for the next available class, but then a spot opened in their relatively nearby (two-hour drive) Palm Springs class. So after reserving a spot and making some last minute rearrangements to my schedule, I was already in Palm Springs the following week for the class!
The class consisted of 24 hours of instruction over the week, with about 1/3 of that in classroom discussions and the other 2/3 in the pool. The outdoor pool at this location was mineral water (no chlorine!) maintained at a temperature of 90–92°F and therefore perfect for learning. The weather was in the high 90s most of the week, which is typical for the desert at this time of year, and it made for a comfortable time in the water.
There were six students in the class, most of us in our 50s, and the oldest in her late 70s. The instructor was very calm and patient, which was helpful as most of the students in the class had similar prior experiences as mine. The main takeaway from this class was learning how to be calm and stay in control (rather than panicking) when trying something new in the water, and then the learning will follow. This was a welcome change from past lessons, where I was being pushed to do too much too soon (at least for me), which lead to frustration, disappointment, and sometimes panic.
Therefore, the class progressed at what seemed to be a slow pace at first. But things like spending the time I needed just feeling what it’s like to get my face wet was instrumental before getting to the next steps. Even after the first day, I had accomplished more in the water than I had in the last fifty years! So we were basically going slow in order to go fast!
The experiences and discussions around floating were instrumental for me. I had this picture-perfect image that floating meant that the whole body is at the surface of the water, reinforced by past instructors who would just say “oh, anyone can float” but with no further explanation. But at 6’-2” and 175 pounds, my feet will touch the bottom of the shallow end of the pool whether I’m in a front float or a back float. Yet I know I am floating because I can feel the water holding me up.
I recall one moment in the class where slowing down and relaxing before trying something new was particularly helpful. I was trying to do a roll from a front float to a back float, and I was flapping my arms vigorously to do so. I told the instructor that it felt like I was doing more work than it should have been. She then suggested to me that I should take a moment to return to that place of calm and try again. I did so and then executed the roll perfectly, with much less effort!
I can’t swim freestyle the length of the pool after taking this class. But I know what I need to do to be safe in the water, even in the deep end, without panicking and losing control. Besides, that’s really the most important thing anyway. And that’s all I can really ask for from a class like this, and I am forever grateful!
Finally, taking this story back to a more personal note, I have been dealing with anxiety issues for the better part of a year, yet this week’s class was the most anxiety-free week I’ve had in a long time! Furthermore, the process of being calm and being present in the moment when learning something new in the water is very similar to what I’ve been learning elsewhere to deal with anxiety in general. Also, just being in the water itself has been relaxing. I definitely need to find a pool and keep making more progress!
