I’ve been type 1 since 1994, for 21 years. My sugars are running good now. They were a bit high before but now they are better. I am having some remarkable anxiety and OCD. My dad and I kept diabetic log books from 1994 to about 2004, but I threw them all away. Now everyday several times a day I get worked up over having done so. They had a lot of nostalgia behind them. The thing is, I am being heavily medicated and seeing a therapist. But it seems like nothing is working. Any tips, suggestions? Maybe I should avoid caffeine.
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I can only respond with what’s helped me: breathing/relaxation techniques, watching mindless comedy before bed (ie: Modern Family), sleepy time tea, no coffee or alcohol, lots of sleep, lots of water, regular (daily) exercise, reading self-help books before falling asleep (particularly those that remind that to live with integrity you therefore do not have to worry/stress about what others think), impeccable nutrition, hobbies (for me it’s art and dance), walks through nature, massage, yoga or stretching,classical music and surrounding yourself with family and friends…and poetry.
That said, this is what works for me. I hope you find the peace you seek.
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should i worry about throwing away the log books?
I threw out mine a long time ago and I don’t worry about it! Diabetes is always changing anyways, so what worked in the past (for me anyhow) won’t be helpful for me in the future. I just try to focus on the present. I don’t think you should worry about throwing away the log books, just look forward 
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my daughter takes vyvanse for ADD, but it is also supposedly for OCD. she hasn’t had a bad reaction to it, and you don’t have to taper down from it. you do need to titrate up, though. she didn’t become addicted and stopped taking it in the summer when school was out with no problems. i believe in going the non-med way first, but if that doesn’t work, i start researching meds. my daughter is not diabetic- don’t know if that would be a factor or not.
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oops. i just reread your post where you say you are heavily medicated. adding a med probably isn’t a good idea unless you can switch another med out.
I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense to keep a logbook from decades ago. We are so much more than our bg numbers.
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i have OCD also. i find it very anxiety producing w/ regard to managing my BGs. i keep thorough food logs on which i write down every morsel of food that i put in my mouth, what time of day, how long i have pre-bolused for, dual boluses, temp basals, etc.
highs or lows cause me to feel like a failure. constant BGs in range make me feel like a million bucks.
one thing that the logs DO help me w/ is that i can look backwards and see things i could change from the last time when something didn’t quite work. everything is an experiment.
my D girlfriend keeps telling me that “i am not my number.” sometimes this helps me to relax, sometimes i ignore her.
most people on this site are more laid back than i am, and i envy their attitude: do your best, let it go, and when it doesn’t quite work out, make a correction and move on. always better to err in the side of hyper than hypo
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yep. i had a foreign doctor say “Better a bit too sweet than not sweet enough” lol
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i hear ya. they wouldn’t help me manage my diabetes today. but i feel like my dad and i put a lot of “work” into them. i might need to talk to my psychiatrist about this more so than my endo.
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just speculating, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that your dad was involved- like the log books were a symbol of love and care and you feel like they should have been treated with care since that’s where they came from. is your father still with you? this is not exactly parallel, but i can’t throw out all my daughters’ baby clothes because they remind me of sweet memories and its like i’m erasing those memories if i throw all their clothes out (or give to good will). this might have a little tint of hoarder mentality as well on my part.
maybe if you could find an old photo of you and your dad working together on something that would be a way to honor the hard work that went into those log books. you could look at the photo to remind yourself that all that loving care/hard work was real. or you could look at photos of yourself from the years connected to the log books and think ‘i grew to be healthy and strong because of the work me and my dad put into those log books and these photos are the evidence of that hard work.’ we need to commemorate what is important to us. it’s like how a tombstone can comfort us because it is a symbol that the life that has passed once really existed on the earth. we make it out of stone because we don’t want it to wear away just as we don’t want our memories of the person to wear away.
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he is still living. i am 28 and he is 76. i was 7 when diagnosed. that’s when we started the books. i ripped them up and threw them away 10 years ago. i am not sure what sparked this remembering. i feel like i did make a big mistake throwing them away. and i will regret it even more when he passes. there is nothing i can do to get them back. i must understand that. but there were 8 notebooks total. we logged time, finger location, site location, blood sugar, comments, etc. notes, doctor appointments, a1c’s, exercise. they were detailed and nothing can bring them back. i feel terrible.
i’m sorry about the books. they were a big part of you and your dad’s life and they were like a masterpiece of hard work.
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I will get over it and it will probably bother me again later. but i have to realize how many other things i’ve thrown away : homework, pictures, cards, etc. I might be too sentimental about the books. my dad and i share other great memories together.
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my not wanting to throw stuff away is from an anxiety about time passing too quickly- does that have anything to do with your log books?
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not so much. mine is more about the materialism. the actual hardcopy of the notebooks, the words, the numbers. seeing the pencil lead written from 21 years ago. i feel like i lost a valuable stamp or something from my collection. i talked to my dad. he said to not worry about them. i know he isn’t worrying about it, but i am for whatever reason. i have bipolar in addition to diabetes, so this is most likely a psychological issue and of course keep my sugars under control.
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The only reason I could see for doing that is the nostalgia you mentioned in your original post. In such cases I would suggest trying to extract a smaller, less bulky symbol from the items to keep with you. Something you can use to reflect back with, but which won’t take up as much space in your current life. Aren’t the memories the import thing, not the actual objects?
I find that the more I save, the less often I actually interact with whatever I saved. It just stays boxed up and untouched.
Somewhat similar to how lots of us will feel more upbeat and happy on bright sunny days but more gloomy and morose on dark overcast days. The difference being that I don’t recall anyone who said they felt shamed because they were personally responsible for the bad weather. That the weather was their fault. That the sun was not shining because they had failed to do the “right thing”.
Given how irrational humans can be, I suppose there probably are some folks out there who feel personally responsible for the weather. I probably just haven’t crossed paths with any of them yet. 
I do have my first insulin pump from 2001 and the old school infusion sets that required tons of tape - the winged kind. and an old one touch sugar meter. i work with my dad at his hardware store everyday. maybe he himself could be like a symbol, just like the log books were.
I like some of these suggestions. I will say that as I grow older and start having some memory lapses–just natural ones at this point—I am glad to find items or pictures that nudge the old retrieval system into pulling up more info and/or images.
That being said, after caring for my mom in her last months and then clearing out her home of decades, I wanted to come home and sell my house with everything in it–LOL. It’s hard to find a balance sometimes. I think the notion of spring cleaning has a definite place, though I like the major cleaning for fall when one is about to be indoors a lot.
There is a certain amount of OCD inherent in being a dancer. My D dx definitely compounded that, especially as I learned to count carbs. That’s better now, but I’m still a baby at this—an Old Lady Baby, perhaps, but still new…I appreciate your struggle…And I’m happy for you that your dad is still with you!..