Blanket terms make me nervous, whats the definition of burn out vs. something similar but distinct and different???
My version of "burnout" seems to go on for a while before I actually realize I have actually given in to it. I am going along doing all I should and having great results. I feel confident and on top of the world. I am looking better, feeling healthy, then Bam! something unexplainable hits me. What? Perhaps I feel so great I am above reproach. I turn in nearly an instant into someone who apparently does not care about control, positive results, or what anyone, including myself thinks. Self destruction? Perhaps, but looking back I can see the burnout point. The discovery of the trigger has yet escaped me. At times I do know that it is eating out with someone and wanting so much to order something fun and tasty but other times, I have no idea. I just reach that burnout point and when the rebellion runs it's course, I am so sorry, and must, with my tail between my legs, return to what I know is right. Perhaps it is cyclic.
It seems that way for me... I'm following every rule and then something comes up (dramatic event, work stress, ...) and I slip a bit. Then a bit more and I'm so busy coping with life, that the diabetes care falls by the wayside. And I never saw myself let it go. I know I'm trying to do too much, and I am trying so hard to cut down. But some life events you cannot escape. Maybe I need to do a Saturday reset - look at the past week and what I probably did wrong and try to correct my course.
For me "burnout" means the point when I seem to cave to all of the temptations which normally and for so long I have been able to resist, to ignore and stay on track. When "burnout" strikes it is if something has taken away all strength of control.
Daricel, I think you have a very good idea. To schedule a reset each week may be just the thing that could help me stay on track. OR -- at least stay on track longer and more often than I have been able to. The thing is that as long as I had a great fear that I would die from this insidious disease, I could stay on track. When something happened that allowed me to get way off track and I did not die, it opened the door to slipping so much that it seemed to become more a way of life than being on track.
Hello Carm
Thank you for contributing to my question. Apologies for not seeing it in a more timely manner. Diabetic this long, I cannot think of any temptations per-se, but I can no longer remember not being diabetic, and I am not old, by any means.
I am a skeptic... I find "control" a clever illusion of the mind. Wishful thinking imhv... I like the image though.
What does it mean to one's control, when we get taught FAILURE regardless of "having it", of being "in control" yet being handed our head (or other parts) at some point I wonder?
What then???
Are you burned out or something else? Something a little smaller, or something even more dangerous you think? What defines burned out aka mental "burnt charcoal" if you will versus something else?
Looking at myself, I am not truely "burned out"... I do care still. I have known folks tho' who honestly don't care about their diabetes maintenance at all. One person in particular who took shots without checking his blood sugar. Ate huge bags of M&Ms in one sitting. Did what he pleased when he pleased despite pleas from his wife and Drs. That is burn out. Don't care no how no way. Unfortunately one morning he didn't wake up. Too much damage to his body for it to get going again. Again, that is burn out.
Hello Daricel:
Well, eating whatever, works, IF all you're doing is covering the food by itself (eg know the math you use to cover eating food). Its old school, but works just fine... the habit of only doing that.... I could smell burn out in that scenario, sure.
When burn out directly causes death, its more than burn-out, in my book anyway. That's called Dia-cide: Deliberately, actively pretending one is not diabetic any longer. We all know of someone...