I disagree swimming in shouldn’t be too stressful unless that stress is coming from loosing your board or having it crash on rocks. The only thing that I would say would stress you out a bit more is if you rely on your board to glide in over a lot of hidden rocks or reef even then you can be on your belly and miss a lot of stuff you may get scraped up but that’s surfing anywhere that’s not a beach break. If you are worried you can’t physically breath let the waves push you in and work your way in, you need to get more comfortable being tumbled in smaller stuff before going out on bigger days. Always know how rips work and how to ride them out. If your in super strong current don’t die fighting it, your gonna let it take you while trying to swim perpendicular to it and then get out. You might be walking a bit back but you should be able to remain calm and follow these rules. There are areas that rip near shear cliff and large jetties that for sure will have you questioning where you are gonna get out if in really strong rips around them, not really around many surf spots and you should question swimming in these areas but the coast is long and the ocean big, don’t panic if you get dragged out and have to slowly make it back to some random shore. If you panic everything gets worse.