Finding Hope with Diabetes Burnout

When Jake first came to see me, he was feeling desperate. Five years after his diagnosis, he said he was over T1D. The never-ending work was too much, and he just stopped caring. Jake felt stuck in his burnout.

Then one day, Jake had an ah-ha moment. He realized diabetes burnout was not his biggest problem. It was the fear that his burnout will never go away, and diabetes will never get easier.  Jake had lost hope that things could get better.

Does Jake’s story sound familiar? Do you worry that diabetes will always be a source of stress that never goes away, no matter what you do? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. The worry that things will never get better is almost always worse than whatever was causing the stress in the first place.

I promise diabetes will not always be stressful. Here are three things you can do to find hope that diabetes will get easier:

Remember a time when things were (even just a little bit) easier

Even though it may not feel like it, your stress level around diabetes is always changing. When you’re in a stressful spot with diabetes, it can be hard to remember when you felt different or to notice the small changes in your emotions throughout the day. It’s easy to lose hope if you think things will never change. If you can see your stress level around diabetes is always changing, then you have evidence things can change. Where there is a possibility for change, there is hope.

Learn from others

There’s no doubt other people with diabetes have dealt with challenges similar to yours and have gotten better. If other people have overcome these challenges, there is no reason you can’t do it too. Find ways to learn from others’ experiences and find out how they found hope when things got tough. 

Take action

There is no hope your diabetes-related stress will change unless you are intentional and take action to make it change. A word of caution here. Don’t take action unless you are ready to see it through and make changes. If you start before you’re ready, your changes probably won’t work. You’ll just set yourself up for failure and reinforce your belief that there’s no hope things can get better.

Having hope diabetes will get easier is critical for your emotional well-being, but hope doesn’t just appear - you have to look for it. The good news is, once you start looking, it’s usually easy to find.