I am so happy that this topic is part of Diabetes Blog Week. I don’t think that this is a topic that is discussed enough. Whether it’s because people who are going through mentally don’t want to talk about it on their sites or the fact that there is just not enough coverage, studies, etc. that go into mental health awareness.
I tend to have pretty tough skin (no lancet pun intended), so I have been able to learn how to let things go and not fret the small the stuff. This has been something that I have learned over the years of dealing with stressful situations in business, diabetes, and life in general.
Diabetes has more of an emotional and mental impact on my wife than it does on me. She worries constantly about my blood sugars, worrying about them going low in the middle of the night and not waking up, or traveling somewhere and not having Skittles or other forms of sugar on me (she carries that stuff when we are together).
When I have a high blood sugar or just having one of those diabetes days, I just try and count to 10, think about the positives in the situation and realize that what is getting me down is probably not as big of a deal in the long-term picture than it feels at that time. I then think about that and it relieves me of my stress or negative mental feelings that I may have at that time.
Being an entrepreneur and knowing that every single day, I am in charge of where the finances for my family are going to come from, weighs heavily on me and my mental capacity. But, like I said above, I have learned to deal with each situation and not spend too much time thinking about one single issue. There are much larger issues that others are dealing with, so I think to myself, “it could be worse”.
I am so glad that there are advancements in digital health and digital therapy, especially in the mental health area. Therapy with ThriveTalk is one of the companies that is helping to connect people in need of mental health support with highly skilled and vetted therapists.
It is not easy, I have not always been able to talk my way through these stress and negative thoughts, but it has taken time, a lot of time.
There are definitely times when I say, ‘damn, I hate this disease because it sucks so damn much.”
But then I stop and say, “well, it’s not going anywhere, so just deal with it”
It may not work for everyone, but it works for me. If it’s not something that I can directly be in control of, then I can’t waste time stressing about it because it is out of my control.