Five Ways to Feel Less Alone with Your Diabetes

One of the worst parts of living with diabetes can be the feeling of isolation. Despite well-meaning friends and family, most of us feel strongly that we’re struggling with this illness completely on our own.

For me personally, finding others to connect with here on the internet has been a Godsend. As my friend and colleague Dr. William Polonsky (author of the excellent book Diabetes Burnout) says: “There’s no underestimating the value of community support for everyone from the newly diagnosed to the long-term patient who might be feeling burned out by diabetes.”

People often ask me how to go about finding that community support – to offset the loneliness – so I sat down recently and made a list of five good places to start:

1) Recruit an Ally – try finding just one close friend or family member who’s truly open to learning about diabetes. Explain to them the basics of what you have to deal with every day. Then find a task or two that this person could help you with on a regular basis. It could be acting as your exercise partner, or assisting you with grocery shopping and menu planning, or even taking over as the main contact for your pharmacy, so you get some relief from renewing prescriptions all the time.

2) Attend a Meetup / Seminar – Finding local support groups, classes and seminars is usually as simple as doing a quick online search or calling your local hospital. Most of these programs are free or low cost, and they offer a great way to meet and mingle with other people with diabetes and learn some ways to improve your diabetes care at the same time. Many clinics and medical groups across the country now offer top-notch personalized programs as well, which allow you to talk over your biggest challenges with an educator or nutritionist. If you’re here on DiabeticConnect.com, you probably know that you can click on the Events section of this site to view various local happenings. Especially recommended is the nationwide TCOYD (Taking Control of Your Diabetes) conference series. Dates and venues can be found at www.tcoyd.org.

3) Read a Good (Diabetes) Book – This one you can do from the comfort of your couch. It really is worth exploring the newest books on diabetes care, which are not “medical” in nature but rather practical, upbeat guides to living a satisfying life with diabetes. I’m thinking of the brand new patient-written pocket guide “Taming the Tiger: Your First Year with Diabetes” for example, or the bold and colorful “Real-Life Guide to Diabetes” by educators Hope Warshaw and Joy Pape. Diabetes journalist David Mendosa has also written several good books, including “What Makes My Glucose Go Up and Down?” For a real feel-good experience, try Riva Greenberg’s “The ABC’s of Loving Yourself with Diabetes.” Her newest title, “50 Diabetes Myths That Can Ruin Your Life: And the 50 Diabetes Truths That Can Save It” was just published in July. Simply knowing there’s a market for all these practical diabetes guides makes me feel like part of a large community – and a lot less alone in this world.

4) Watch the TV show – if you’re not familiar with it, you’ll definitely want to check your TV Guide for the cable show “dLife,” which airs on CNBC every Sunday at 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern. The show features excerpts on real people dealing with all sorts of diabetes issues, expert advice, recipes and more. You will definitely feel less alone watching this show!

5) Give Twitter a Try – for the real internet enthusiasts… If you’re interested in going beyond a networking web site like DiabeticConnect, and keeping up a constant stream of diabetes-related conversation, visit Twitter.com. You can join for free, set up your own profile page, and then search for other users talking about diabetes by typing the in the search term ‘#diabetes.’ You’ll need that hash sign in front of the search term in order to make it work. There you’ll find a 24-hour stream of “mini-messages” from other diabetes patients all over the country and the world — definitely a great reminder that diabetics are everywhere, and interested in reaching out to help each other.

As an addendum, I’d like to add that it’s worth taking the time to find the right doctor, whom you feel supports you as a person. I plan to address that issue in a separate article, coming here soon.

Meanwhile, let’s face it: in America, we’ve always had an ‘every man for himself’ mentality, so that seems normal to us. So support is not built into our system; we have to make an extra effort to find it and give it to others. Luckily, support resources for those with diabetes are on the rise.