Bathophobia is the fear of deep water. It stems from the greek work bathios, which means deep or depth.
With its cousin, acrophobia, or the fear of heights, there is a logical reasoning – we are higher, so there is more gravitational potential energy. We literally have more potential to fall.
With bathophobia though, there is no reason.
Once we are in “over our head” so to speak, there is no more risk associated with 200m deep water, or 20m deep.
It is the orientation, the shift in perspective (no bottom that we can see) and the imagination of what might come from below, that generally scares the crap out of us.
Some fears provide us with direction. They are useful, they can save lives.
Other fears, such as bathophobia, provide us with opportunity.
The opportunity is, what is behind the fear, is it reality or imagination? What are we going to do with the fear if we know we want to engage?
A lot of the fears we have today are the bathophobic kind – whether we engage in the deep water, or the not so deep, our actual risk is minimal.*
*note, I would say here that the risk is zero for both, but of course, there is some risk with sitting on the couch even. Furthermore, I’m in no way discounting the fear of deep water. It is real. For me, it was years of freediving and spearfishing only in the shallow water where I could mostly see the bottom, before I was able to move to deep water. Years where I avoided that strong, brutal imagined risk.
