Published May 17, 2021

Carrying the Anger of Diabetes

From Anger To Increasing Peace

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Summary: Diabetes has been my unwelcome companion. From childhood defiance to adult acceptance, my journey has been coloured by anger, frustration, and questions of fairness. Through grief and healing practices like yoga and psychotherapy, I’ve made more peace. Diabetes, though challenging, gifted me resilience, mathematical prowess, and a deep appreciation for life’s complexity. Now, peace, love, and joy are prevailing more often.

When I was little, starting from maybe five or six years old, I used to do everything I could to avoid being diabetic. I believed that, if I pretended hard enough, diabetes would just go away. In this vein, I used to tell my dad that I no longer wanted to be diabetic. I insisted that, from that moment on, I wasn’t going to have injections or blood tests anymore. My dad always responded, in a light but matter-of-fact tone, with “Okay, then. But, just so you know, your fingers and toes will probably fall off so you’ll need to make plans for that.”

And that was the end of the non-diabetic dream (at that time, anyway!!). In its place, came anger and tears, frustration and resentment. Why wouldn’t I be angry? Suddenly, it’s impossible to have any real level of control in my life. The rules of diabetes are far outweighed by the exceptions to those rules. I looked around at other people and wondered why the hell I ended up with this. I didn’t ask for this. Why me? What had I done so wrong?

The Angry Diabetic

How angry was I? Let me count the ways… One one thousand, two one thousands…!!

There were so many things that made me angry. Of course, there were the usual culprits that I think are so common in the lives of diabetics…

Giving the same amount of insulin three days in a row for the same meal and ending up with three completely different blood sugar readings.
Having someone ask for the millionth time if I got diabetes because I ate too many sweets as a child (um, no... I only started solid foods less than a year before I was diagnosed!).
Having your endocrinologist set your targets, you hit them, then they just raise the targets without saying so much as 'well done'.
Being told off by a (usually non-diabetic) doctor for some perceived fault in your blood sugar management when you've already tried everything humanly possible to correct or improve it.
Being told off by a (usually non-diabetic) doctor for some perceived fault in your blood sugar management when you've already tried everything humanly possible to correct or improve it.
Having the embarrassment of a hypo in a public setting. And then the requirement to give reassurances to the witnesses who feel they went through 'so much' watching you hypo (try being unconscious instead!!).
Asking... "Why me?"

Under these obvious losses, though, were the more nuanced ones. The shame of feeling less than normal, of being ‘different’. The times when you miss out on the spontaneity of life as you’re having to think about where your next meal is coming from or if you have enough medication for that spontaneous, unplanned event. It also certainly adds extra dynamics to your dating life and long-term relationships. There are losses everywhere and the grief is felt.

Loss And Grief

I’ve been on a long journey since then. I have got to know the anger in me. I have sat bravely with it when it has roared out in pain. I have given it a voice when I wanted to shut it down most. I have learnt that, under the anger, there exists a gentle soul who is crying out in need. As the old adage says…

The loss that I found hardest of all to come to terms with and grieve was the ever-present distrust of my body. I was living with a physical entity that somehow had a mind of its own. And an existential uncertainty existed in my life that I was aware that my peers did not have.

I couldn’t trust my health. I couldn’t trust that I would be well at any point in time. And I couldn’t trust how long I might live. At eleven years of age, my diabetic consultant told me that I should expect to lose one year of life for every ten years of diabetes I lived through (More recent data suggests it may be more bleak than that.) I had therefore already lost one year of my life, when I’d barely got started. A very sobering thought for someone so young. In that way, my mortality was ever-present to me in a way it wasn’t for other children. Each unconscious hypo (which were pretty common for a brittle diabetic child in the 1980s) reminded me of this lack of invincibility.

Processing The Anger

I have learnt that it’s okay to feel angry. In fact, I now believe that it is vital to feel it. I suspect that deep-seated, unfelt, unexpressed anger may contribute to the development of T1D in the first place.

I have grieved the losses. I have ranted and raved. I have moaned and whinged. I have wept. I have cried out ‘It’s not faaaaaaaaair!’ a multitude of times, both as a child and as an adult. But all of this has also enabled me to make peace with my diabetes.

Personally, I have found a combination of yoga for mental health psychotherapy and the Hoffman Process (in that order) to be most useful for healing my anger. I honestly believe that my body was holding the majority (if not all) of the anger that I hadn’t been able to work through. I have witnessed my insulin requirements reduce with each step along the path to healing my anger.

It hasn’t been easy but I have now got to a place where I am truly grateful to have diabetes. It has made me an excellent mathematician (insulin-to-carb ratios, anyone?? Or, my favourite, my parents testing me on multiplication sums, like 16 x 17, to check I was back to normal after a hypo!).

On a deeper level, though, diabetes has encouraged me to look after myself and my body in a way that I suspect a non-diabetic body wouldn’t have. It has shown me the necessity of defending my needs and the value of true relationships – those who love me enough to willingly help me when I’ve needed it. Diabetes has also given me a fascination and awe for the complexity and beauty of the miracle that is the human body. I also love how it has become my invitation to the journey of healing, something that lights me up in a way that the usual routine of life never will.

Sure, I still have times where I am frustrated, angry even, and want it all to go away. But those moments are no longer long-lived They are now frequently and easily replaced with peace, love and joy.

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Natalie Leader

Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.

Carrying the Anger of Diabetes

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