OK HUGE POST WARNING!
Burnout! Argh! The horror! The Terror! It’s a real bast@rd eh?
As I've mentioned in many of my posts… I am struggling! Motivation; if you ask me (which you haven't) is the most important part of diabetes care.
My motivation lack of motivation leads to bad control… which has made me feel bad enough that I havent wanted to deal with my diabetes at all and go into denial about everything. I have entirely stopped testing for months on end or other times barely taking my insulin (just enough to not die)… this inevitably ends me in hospitalisation… which does give me motivation again… man, that week after almost killing myself through neglect, I am superb, but the motivation is fake, and so, short lived… the pattern continues.
Things I have tried.
Just setting goals, and being really determined not to not do anything. This does not work, no matter how much I tell myself I will go blind otherwise.
My doctor setting me testing targets, and checking up on them. This really did work for a while; as I didn’t want to let him down and be so publicly failing to take care of myself (and I didn’t want to get in trouble). After a few months I stopped caring so much and started lying.
Setting myself goals for the week (so many tests, so many injections) and treating myself to a comic book I really want if I met them. That first week was the best testing and injecting I had done in years. However, like other positive/negative behavioural reinforcements, after the first week it pretty much became aware that I can ignore these self-emposed treats/punishments; I can buy comics whenever I like.
I hadn't recorded my test results in years. So I got a OneTouch UltraSmart which has internal logbook, which is super useful, and it also records stuff like food/carb intake, insulin taken, excersice, sickness, etc etc. This is a great machine, however it does take the motivation to actually to do the tests (and record any other date you want), in the first place.
When I went months without testing, to get back into it, I was told to test with the machine upside down, to get back into the habbit of doing the tests, without having the demotivator of unhealthy results. Once I had been doing that for a while, I was then to start looking at them, but not to react to them at all and not to be bothered by them, treat them as meaningless. And so on and so forth untill I was back to doing tests like a sensible person.
When my control was good:
I have to credit my ex-bf with this one. He was really supportive and therefore my control was great.
I think this was down to two things. Firstly, the support made me feel like I wasn’t dealing with the diabetes alone, it took away some of the burden and responsibility. It stopped life being so much of a battle between diabetes and normal life.
Secondly, what I was doing was in check. As he was he was being so supportive, it was only right that I did my part and took care of myself. If I didn’t do stuff then I would be really letting someone else down, and I didn’t want to do that! That was a real motivator.
