When I tell people I am a psychologist who specializes in diabetes (and who also happens to have Type 1 diabetes), they often are startled that there is such a specialty. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “Is there really a need for that?” or “How hard can having diabetes really be?”
It’s no secret to anyone who has diabetes that living with the condition can be really tough – and that the biggest challenges are often mental. Think about it for a minute. There are 8,760 hours in a year, and if you see your doctor every 3 months for a 15-minute appointment, that means that there are about 8,759 hours a year that you are on your own to manage your diabetes. You have to make important (sometimes life-or-death) decisions about your health multiple times a day, every day.
For some people that responsibility can get so overwhelming, frustrating, and embarrassing that some people stop checking their blood sugar and taking insulin. Also, people with diabetes must deal with things like the fear of low blood sugar, how to handle complications, and combating a diabetes-related eating disorder – the list just goes on. When I tell mental health professionals about all this, they often tell me they had no idea how hard living with diabetes can be.
If you have diabetes and you’re struggling, how do you know if you should get help? When someone asks me this, there a couple of things I encourage them to ask themselves:
1) Are your struggles affecting your ability to manage your diabetes? One of the most common reasons that people come to see me is that they are feeling frustrated and defeated by diabetes, and that these feelings make it really hard for them to get motivated to check their blood sugar and take insulin.
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