Diabetes, emotions, resilience and mental health - DBlog Week Day 4

Today's Diabetes Blog Week topic recognises that living with type 1 diabetes is not just about looking after our physical health,  "What things can make dealing with diabetes an emotional issue for you and / or your loved one, and how do you cope?". Read how others have responded to this topic by visiting the Day 4 link list.

Today is also described as 'Throwback Thursday' in that this topic was also covered a few years ago, in 2014, which coincidentally, was the last time I took part in DBlog Week. You can read my previous post here, and to be honest I think I feel pretty much the same today.

It's important for us to recognise that living with a long term condition, particularly one as fickle, irritating and contrary as Type 1 Diabetes makes each of us more vulnerable to depression.

It is OK not to be OK. And it is very much OK to talk to your clinic, Doctor or care team about it. You need to do that. It won't be easy. It will take courage, but if you are struggling emotionally you deserve to be supported and to receive the help you need.

Many of us are familiar with the ebb and flow of emotions from gently pottering along with diabetes just being part of the background noise of our lives and with a general sense of well-being set against feelings of despair, hopelessness and that diabetes is a weight that simply cannot be carried. Many of us too, will know that the dividing line between those two states is sometimes precariously fragile. Your mental health is just that, health. We need to look after ourselves as whole people, and that means looking after our minds, and paying attention to them, just as much as we put effort in to blood glucose management, eating well and exercising.

I think part of the challenge for healthcare professionals is that it is much easier for them to focus on the numbers. The hard facts that can suggest how 'well' a person with diabetes is managing their condition. From the outset we begin to be surrounded by a cloud of numbers, targets and measurements. Each supposedly able to predict our long-term future health. And it is almost impossible in that context not to see those checks and data as some sort of reflection on whether you are 'succeeding' or 'failing' as a person. Whether you are 'trying hard enough', 'doing well enough'.

It's a toxic environment.

And much has been written about the language we use in relation to these pieces of information. Test. Target. Control. Compliance. Adherence. So many opportunities for self-judgement.

And it's important to remember that fluctuating glucose levels have a profound effect on the brain and on the emotions. So at the very point we see those frustrating numbers, where we know we did everything we knew to try to avoid them, our minds are less able to cope with the situation.

If we are not careful we put ourselves in an impossible position where every day is filled with opportunities for perceived 'failure'. Where we see our best efforts as never 'enough'. Where we feel that we are failing before we begin.

But this is absolutely not the case.

You need to recognise how well you are doing. How resilient you are. How you are able to live your life and simultaneously perform the function of a major bodily organ every single day.

Some times it works well and you are happy with how your BG behaved, other days... not so much. But you battle on, you brilliant, tenacious, feisty, beautiful piece of humanity. And tomorrow you will do it all again.

And make no mistake, the juggling of all those complicated factors that go into every single one of your self-management decisions would fry the most genius of minds. And the out of range results you see are so often not even down to you at all. Well, OK, that one was. But hey, we knew that before we did it eh? And life is for living, right? But for the most part, if managing type 1 was simply a matter of eating the right foods and taking the right doses and everything always worked out all the time and never changed we would have had this licked a long, long time ago.

The variables in your life will overlap and interact. Some cancelling each other out, others magnifying. And your diabetes itself will not have the good grace to sit still and behave predictably.

Perfection really is not possible. You are doing your best - even on the days when you can barely manage to do anything. You can do that. You can keep yourself going. And tomorrow you can go again.

Never neglect your state of mind. Get the right professional support if you need it, and reach out to people in the #doc to share the burden. Commit to being careful with your own inner voice and taking time to affirm yourself and acknowledge that despite the difficulties type 1 diabetes brings, you are winning small victories every day. You are able to achieve more than you can imagine.

“To achieve greatness, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
Arthur Ashe