What is a new thing, a new something that you have recently gotten into, or that you have been a long time participant in, that you find very entertaining and fun and time consuming and distracting?
What things would we need to purchase to get into that thing?
How did you get into that thing?
I think yours is a wonderful story. SCUBA is amazing, and you can get deeper and deeper (no pun intended) into it and the gear.
As far as its therapeutic value, what are your thoughts on having people who have suffered a trauma engage in a sport that has serious safety risks? You need to keep your wits about you under the water and mistakes can be harmful. I’m glad this seems to have worked well for you but I wonder if it might be risky for a broad population.
I’ve found that the trauma actually causes hyper awareness and it’s not uncommon. https://www.simplypsychology.org/hypervigilance.html
Also while it has its risks similar risk is associated with many activities, but diving is generally a group activity and stresses the buddy system to reduce those risks. A properly trained diver who has certified to depth over multiple dives is probably safer diving that getting on the highway in a vehicle with hundreds of random people of dubious skill and training.
My plan is also to overtrain. There are operations out there who pump out divers who do not have good training and later on need retraining. My class sizes will be no more than two, always. Because I’m not doing the training for profit I can spend as much time as needed to go over all of the little details and train them with the knowledge a rescue certified diver would have in their arsenal with them only being open water certified.
I’m also planning to mainly deal with people who have been referred to me by counseling services or other therapy programs. Funding for non-profits is difficult to begin with so training and equipping a random person who makes claims of abuse isn’t likely to happen.
https://www.doghousediving.org/the-doghouse-diving-vision/frequently-asked-questions-and-the-answers/
Cool, I see you’ve thought it through. Perhaps abuse survivors appreciate risks that they can control. Anyway it’s certainly a physically active and very stimulating sensory experience that gets people outdoors so I can’t imagine that’s a bad place to start in terms of mental health and healing. Wish you the best of luck with it.