How do you feel about hypos?

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Flower

Flower

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
I don’t mean how you feel physically, I mean how do you react emotionally. Are you able to give yourself time to react & recover or do you try and hide hypos?

I still feel ashamed & guilty even after all these years when I have a hypo in company or in public and do all I can to hide it and hide the fact I need to treat it. I know they’re part of injecting insulin and there’s absolutely no shame in them but I’m unable to say to someone if I’m chatting in person or on the phone “I’m hypo give me 15 minutes and I’ll get back to you” I don’t always give myself time to recover properly & overcompensate like Tigger trying to bounce back immediately and carry on.

I know why I feel like that but it frustrates me that I can’t say “I’m hypo give me a bit of time” without feeling a failure. In the same way I still struggle to say I have diabetes or I’m diabetic out loud, that word causes me such issues and I cringe at having to say it.

My parents reacted very badly to my diagnosis and as a young girl I had to hide my diabetes and all that went with it from nearly everyone. I developed an ‘everything is fine’ coping mechanism to avoid having to mention it and that is still affecting me today.

I wondered if anyone else has similar issues & thoughts about dealing with hypos around family/friends or in public. Thanks 🙂
 
I do try to hide them to some extent, I suppose. I’m quite a private person. For example, if I’m feeling low in company, I’d try to discreetly locate my Dextro in my bag and pop a couple in my mouth without stopping. It’s because I don’t want the focus on me and also because my parents used to fuss when I was first diagnosed and I found it embarrassing and almost shameful.

I feel a bit more relaxed now, and I don’t hide hypos through shame, more I just don’t want to have unpredictable comments and have people’s focus on me. Also, sometimes people interfere eg the person who tried to manhandle me to sit down and try to press a glass of water into my hands ‘because that will make you feel better’, or the ones that overreact and start panicking and stressing.
 
I personally don't hide them, I recently had one at work all my work colleagues are aware of my diabetes, I told my colleague that I was hypo and that I was treating it with some fast acting carbs she told me to take a seat, made me a nice cup of tea and asked if there was anything she could do to help, I replied " a nice biscuit to go with that tea would be nice " , and hey presto a packet of digestives arrived. She kept an eye on me until my levels had improved, then we carried on working.
 
I treat them discreetly but carry on with what I’m doing. If you were having a phone call okay then a hypo isn’t likely to suddenly make you unable to string a sentence together midcall unless it’s a particularly fast drop. I’d put the phone on speaker, and do my bg and carbs whilst continuing the conversation. I can’t imagine ever saying I’m hypo and can’t continue the phone call give me 15 minutes to recover unless it’s some kind of extremely fast plummeting bg.
 
I don't actually see people much so maybe it's easier for me, but I have so many hypos I couldn't possibly hide them, even if it had occured to me to do so. I'd probably not use the word hypo and have to explain to someone who didn't know me though (having once made the mistake of saying to someone taking tickets at an open gardens event I was visiting that I was diabetic and needed to sit down and eat something sugary and was there a chair I could use, expecting him to offer his, only for him to try to give me directions to another garden where I could get tea and cake ... I couldn't walk, ended up sitting on the pavement eating my glucose syrup, lucky R was with me). I'd say "I'm dealing with a minor medical emergency" now and not mention diabetes, just explain that I could treat it myself but it would help if I could sit down.

@Flower you might find some of these cards helpful, if you don't feel you can talk to people about it, perhaps it would help to be able to show them? - https://stickmancommunications.co.uk/product-category/keyring-cards-product-type/diabetes/

I always carry some of these and some of the others about ME and brain fog, mainly in case I need to communicate with medical professionals and can't speak (I sometimes can't, or can't coherently).

No use on the phone though, obviously.
 
I don’t tend to have many hypos and when I do I will just say my sugars are a bit low and I’ll just sit down a moment and deal with it. But what I wanted to say is how sad it is that both @Flower and @Inka were made to feel that it was shameful. Thank goodness times have changed. It reminded my of an old neighbour of mine, and when I say old I mean very old, she was 101 when she died. She was a Victorian baby. Her daughter was epileptic and the story goes she took her daughter’s children off her and raised them herself. I never heard this from her but other neighbours. Her daughter came to live with her when she was in her 70s, and she was a “strange” woman, very naive and unworldly, although she had married and had two children. One day I arrived home after picking my children up from school to find her lying on the path outside the house, unconscious and with her clothes in disarray, she’d obviously had a fit and collapsed. We phoned 999, I made her comfortable and sorted her clothes out, they came quickly and took her away to the hospital . She’d come round by this time. I never got a word of thanks from her mother or her own children or indeed herself, when I asked how she was they all fobbed me off. It was obviously such a shameful incident to them. I then realised why she was the way she was. Very sad and obviously must affect the child, however old they are.

I hope @Flower that you can overcome this, although I imagine after all this time it won’t be easy. Would counselling help? Or finding a local group of type 1s to connect with. Sorry if you’ve tried all this but I can’t offer anything else expect a virtual hug and the knowledge you’ve got us to offload to. X
 
Thanks everyone.🙂

I have thought about counselling @eggyg as hiding any evidence of diabetes & hypos went too far. Not being able to talk about it has had a lasting effect on me thinking it was shameful, my fault and has screwed up how I deal with things. Joining this forum has helped me so much to write things down.

I’d love to be able to say “my blood sugar is low, I’ll be fine in a bit”
I can write it down but I can’t ever imagine saying it to someone.
 
I still feel a bit of shsme when I hypo. It's not shame of having diabetes but shame I have made a mistake with my health.
Logically, I know managing diabetes is a challenge most people don't have in their lives and many people would have difficulty with if they did. But it doesn't stop me wanting to get it right all the time (I have similar shame when I go high).

I rarely stop what I am doing to treat a hypo. I just suspend my pump, eat a couple of GlucoTabs and carry on. This is easier when working from home although sometimes I have to turn off my camera if I am on a Teams call. I have even done a pump change whilst continuing with a work meeting and no one noticed.

As the years since my diagnosis have passed by, I still have my hypo awareness but the symptoms are not as cataclysmic so I don't need time to recover. I suspect some of this is physical but also partially mental - it is less shameful if it is not seen to affect me.
 
What a brilliant thread @Flower!

I was very struck by the terms used in a clinical trial I was connected to which was investigating some people’s barriers to hypo avoidance.

Hypoglycaemia Awareness Structured Education Programme | HARPdoc

www.harpdoc.org www.harpdoc.org

These are referred to during the course as “thinking traps” and made accessible to participants using visual metaphors:
  • “The ostrich” with its head in the sand, reflecting minimisation of concern about hypoglycaemia—‘it’ll never happen to me’;
  • “The over-sensitive smoke alarm”, reflecting fear of hyperglycaemia - ‘better to be low than high’ and
  • “The Soldier”, reflecting normalisation of asymptomatic hypoglycaemia and soldiering on – ‘I don’t want to make a fuss’.
I certainly recognised some of my own previous behaviours and ways of thinking in them, and can hold my hand up to all 3.
 
If I'm in company, i just warn folk that I might talk rubbish while I'm eating Dextro tablets. I don't use Jellly Babies in public, It's more effort to explain.
 
Inka said:
Also, sometimes people interfere eg the person who tried to manhandle me to sit down and try to press a glass of water into my hands ‘because that will make you feel better’, or the ones that overreact and start panicking and stressing.
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Thinking about this more, I have actually had a lot of experience of the latter - other people overreacting, and starting panicking and stressing and this making me panic and making my hypo symptoms much stronger because they became combined with panic attack type symptoms. It became quite problematic and was affecting my ability to participate in the activity, because I was worrying about it happening.

In the end, I couldn’t explain it out loud so I sent an email to a few key people from the group (chairperson, first aider, good friend, those type of people) that I knew well enough to be completely honest with. I explained what was going on, that I appreciated people wanting to help but that it does actually make things worse. I reminded that i deal with this by myself all the time and that it’s okay to just check i have everything i need but not to go further as what I really need is space to calm down and sort it out by myself.

It’s been way better since and I’d easily go as far as to say it’s not an issue any more. I can let those people know I’m low if I need someone to keep an eye out that I am okay, they’ll ask if I need anything, or fend others off if other people start noticing / offering things. For the most part though, no one notices if I have hypos there any more because I’m not panicking about other people noticing.
 
I've had some people say to me when i've been hypo that i'm not managing it very well if i have them. I usually treat them to a talk about managing D with insulin, to which they nod but obviously don't take in.

On the whole though, most people just leave me to it. If i'm at work and have a hypo, they just pop their heads into the room to check i'm ok or ask if i need anything. Sometimes my libre alarm goes off and i'll scan, then a colleague might come in the room to check all is ok or if they need to step in while i go and sort things out.
 
Thanks for this thread @Flower

I don‘t have many hypos now and most of time they don’t bother me. Friends are patient and accept that I will simply need to stop and treat it, and they don’t panic. If I am out and about I just find a seat and wait it out. At home it is a chance to stop and check in with the forum.

When I am with people that I don’t know I find it more difficult. Some overreact and panic and make a fuss when I just want to deal with it. I then find it embarrassing as it is difficult to explain but to them whilst hypo. People just don’t get that it can’t wait, which is understandable.

I am always surprised, and get annoyed with HCPs that seem to think that we should be able to avoid all hypos. These are not the specialists, and someone told me ‘your diabetes is brittle’. That sounds so judgemental to me.
 
SB2015 said:
I am always surprised, and get annoyed with HCPs that seem to think that we should be able to avoid all hypos. These are not the specialists, and someone told me ‘your diabetes is brittle’. That sounds so judgemental to me.
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Avoid all hypos really? Nah that's possible because sometimes they happen just because.
 
The other day I was in shopping center felt one coming on felt one coming on so I got somewhere to sit down and checked. A security guard must have known something was going on because they came up to me and asked if I was okay as I fished for my jelly babies.
 
rayray119 said:
The other day I was in shopping center felt one coming on felt one coming on so I got somewhere to sit down and checked. A security guard must have known something was going on because they came up to me and asked if I was okay as I fished for my jelly babies.
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I know where there are convenient seats along my route between home and town. Every now and then you hit on someone who gets it. We were at a flower show. I had a hypo and headed for a chair, asking if it was okay to sit down. Got out the jelly babies. Person just said I will leave you be for 15 min but give me a shout if you need any help. Perfect. His Granddaughter has T1.
 
I had one in Dunelm Mill once, went into the coffee shop and tried somewhat incoherently to explain to the lady behind the counter that I needed to sit down and eat something to follow up my glucose, and she didn't bat an eyelid, just handed me a pack of biscuits - think she must have known something about it too.
 
Another thing I could sometimes feel guilty about when working if I felt like it might good idea to eat something to keep me going I remember one evening I had checked my blood sugar and thought "okay maybe it might be a good idea to eat something now" then a member of the public asked me a question (which I still awsered) well I had a pack of mini biscuits in my head and I thought to myself "I must look so unprofessional now"
 
In company just eat & say nowt unless asked, once over would make excuse then disappear to treat hypo but not anymore.
 
Flower said:
I don’t mean how you feel physically, I mean how do you react emotionally. Are you able to give yourself time to react & recover or do you try and hide hypos?

I still feel ashamed & guilty even after all these years when I have a hypo in company or in public and do all I can to hide it and hide the fact I need to treat it. I know they’re part of injecting insulin and there’s absolutely no shame in them but I’m unable to say to someone if I’m chatting in person or on the phone “I’m hypo give me 15 minutes and I’ll get back to you” I don’t always give myself time to recover properly & overcompensate like Tigger trying to bounce back immediately and carry on.

I know why I feel like that but it frustrates me that I can’t say “I’m hypo give me a bit of time” without feeling a failure. In the same way I still struggle to say I have diabetes or I’m diabetic out loud, that word causes me such issues and I cringe at having to say it.

My parents reacted very badly to my diagnosis and as a young girl I had to hide my diabetes and all that went with it from nearly everyone. I developed an ‘everything is fine’ coping mechanism to avoid having to mention it and that is still affecting me today.

I wondered if anyone else has similar issues & thoughts about dealing with hypos around family/friends or in public. Thanks 🙂
Click to expand...
Hi Flower,

I know exactly how you feel. I was diagnosed in the early 1980's just as HIV AIDs hit the headlines and everyone who injected was called a junkie( how is a 9 y old supposed to react?) It took me a long time to accept my diabetes and several visits to a clinical psychologist to get me over my own demons. You can do it too. If you feel you need help to accept the condition. (it took me over 20 years) the help is out there. Ask your GP or consultant to refer you. there is much more help out there now than in the 80's and 90's. especially as there is more understanding and appreciation of the psychological affects diabetes has on us all.

I now tell those around me who need to know..... friends/family/ work colleagues (especially my manager). If I say I'm not feeling well they understand what I mean and allow me the time I need to deal with the low blood sugar. Do not be ashamed to say I need to eat something or I'm feeling low or however you want to phrase it. Diabetes is part of you, it is part of who you are. Hypo's are just part and parcel of living with diabetes.

Good luck
Piglet
 
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