Un-controlled Diabetes: It's All In Your Mind

Diabetes is frightening. Complications from diabetes are frightening. Trying to control or prevent diabetes and complications can be overwhelming and discouraging.

That's why most uncontrolled diabetes is psychological more than any failure of information or diet or medical treatment. Because diabetes control is a self-managed disease, even the very best doctors, diets and exercise plans cannot succeed unless you, the diabetic, have the right attitude.

Now, by "attitude" I do not mean your feelings and emotions. Feelings and emotions certainly do play a part in your attitude, and can even determine what your attitude is, but they are not the same thing.

Your attitude is actually less subjective than your feelings and emotions. You have far more control over your attitude than you do your feelings and emotions. Attitude has more to do with your mindset. In fact, your attitude is your mindset. It's what you establish for how you will face each day and how you will face circumstances as they occur.

Most people do not consciously establish their mindset. They let the default setting establish it for them, which is a mindset and attitude based on their feelings and emotions. This allows fear and doubt, anger and frustration, and all sorts negative feelings to rule them and to color their decisions and their will-power.    

This cannot help but weaken your diabetes control, your diet, your blood-sugar testing and so on. Which leads to poorer control, which feeds your negative feelings about your diabetes, which leads to an even more negative attitude and worse diabetes control.

There is a way out of this mess. You don't have to stay trapped in the negativity cycle.

If you have let the default setting of feelings and emotions determine your attitude, you can re-establish a new attitude for better diabetes control. In fact, you can re-establish a new attitude for a better life all around.

The keys to re-establishing a new attitude are first based on what I said before. You have far more control over your attitude than you do your feelings and emotions. Learn to separate feelings from thoughts. Feelings are in your body, thoughts are objective, and in your mind. Thoughts are more propositional, that is, they can be expressed in an idea.

What thoughts should you think? Start with yourself. There is more to you as a human being than a mass of changeable and uncontrollable feelings. You have a heart, a soul. You have convictions. You have beliefs. You have desires and expectations from life.

Think about your convictions, beliefs, desires and expectations. Think less about what you feel than about what you believe and what you really want for your life. You will find your feelings have less and less rule over you as your conscious mind takes over.

Use this habit of mind over emotion to develop your new mindset and attitude. Your convictions, beliefs, desires and expectations can certainly focus into determination. Determination is one of the most important keys to your new attitude.

Now start to apply this to your diabetes. You know what you need to do. In the past, you let your feelings be the motivation to do it. When your feelings were good, you did well, but when your feelings were low, you did poorly.

As you develop an attitude that does not take its orders from the feelings in your body but from the convictions of your heart and mind, your motivation will also change. You will overcome feelings and do what you need to do.

You will still often "not feel like it", or even still feel some degree of fear, doubt, discouragement. Recognize these things as feelings seperate from your attitude. You have determined what you will do, and determined it on better things. So no matter how you feel you'll do what you have to do.

And the funny thing is, you'll feel better about doing it. As it turns out, feelings are more a response than the cause of things in your life. When things in your life start to turn around because of your new attitude, your feelings will tend to turn around as well.

Your whole disposition will brighten and your diabetes control will improve. All because you learned how to separate thoughts from feelings and live by what you believe instead of what you feel.