When you are not making progress in your goal(s), it is good to reflect on what is happening. In most cases, lack of goal progress is only temporary and situational: the circumstances in the past week(s) probably were different from what you had anticipated on. Maybe you got the flu/a cold, maybe you were busy at work, maybe your family needed special care… These are no things to worry about, and they will probably not last for a very long time. They will not prevent you from reaching your goal, eventually.
However, when you feel your lack of goal progress is not so temporary, it might be good to revise and adjust your goals. Pursuing unrealistic or even impossible goals is not only frustrating, but even influences our mood, self-esteem and self-efficacy in the long term. Our brain stores all negative experiences with this goal and creates a ‘’negative network’’ in our brain. This ‘’negative network’’ makes us feel negative about this goal and behaviour, and harms our self-efficacy and mood. As a consequence we might even feel resistance towards this goal.
Of course, that is not helpful in any way!
In order to change behaviour effectively, we have to create ‘’positive experiences’’ with the new behaviour. Our brain needs to develop a ‘’positive network’’ about the new behaviour. A network that makes us feel good about ourselves, and influences our mood and self-esteem positively.
That is why it is better to achieve smaller and more realistic goals, than to keep trying (and fail) to achieve bigger, unrealistic goals.

If you think you might benefit from goal adjustment: take some time to reformulate your goal. Usually this does not mean that you will completely have to leave the goal…., it is just a matter of taking a step back. For instance: when your goal was to check your blood sugar with every meal, but you find yourself ‘failing’ every day, it is much better to just pick one meal that you would like to focus on. Pick the most realistic one. So, if you know that checking your blood sugar before breakfast is easier to achieve than during lunch at work, start with the goal to check your blood sugar every morning at breakfast. That is an important and helpful first step in optimizing your blood sugar!
When you realize that you have been able to achieve this goal for some time, congratulate yourself! Your brain has started to create a ‘’positive network’’ on this behaviour.  That will help you in taking the next step.
Successful behaviour change is also about being happy with every small change that you are able to realize, and not putting yourself down for all the things you have not achieved yet.
Good luck!!

We know that many people with diabetes experience negative emotions because of their diabetes. These negative emotions can be any negative emotion, such as anxiety, anger, shame, guilt, failure.
Sometimes these negative emotions are directly related to high or low blood sugar. When having high or low blood sugar, many people experience negative emotions. Research even shows a relationship between higher HbA1c’s and negative emotions.
Many negative emotions, in various diabetes related situations can arise.
You mentioned, that monitoring your glucose gives you negative emotions.
Try to ask yourself: is my negative emotion a direct consequence of my low/high blood sugar? (‘’Do I feel physically uncomfortable, and therefore emotionally negative?’’)
Or is my negative emotion a more indirect consequence of my diabetes (such as feelings of disappointment or failure)?
If your negative emotion is DIRECTLY the consequence of high/low blood sugar, the best thing you can do is focus on optimizing your blood sugar, and not on the emotions. When experiencing high or low blood sugarsour brain is negatively influenced and more vulnerable to negative emotions. We just cannot prevent them… The only thing we can do is try to prevent the higher and lower blood sugar (and we will not always succeed…L), and tell the people who are close to us, that these negative emotions are part of dealing with diabetes….  This is no fun, but it is good to be realistic about these negative emotions, and to understand that they are just temporary. As soon as our blood sugar stabilize, our emotions will stabilize as well.

Click here if you want to learn more about emotions that are more Indirectly related to diabetes. Or, if you want to do it later, schedule an [activity

Our brain has less attention for things that are not important to us, so it is hard to perform a behaviour with less attention.
In general, we can say that doing sports, performing exercise is healthy for EVERYONE, and especially for people with diabetes. But, of course, it will depend on personal preferences and health conditions what type of activities, which intensity and duration are beneficial.
Many people who have always felt uncomfortable or even negative about sports, have difficulty becoming more active.
It is good to understand that ‘’being more active’’ has many definitions. Research on health benefits of ‘’exercise’’ has shown that simple activities, that are not really associated with sports/exercise can even have the same positive influence on health outcomes as real sports/exercise.
Research even shows the positive influence of ‘’standing’’ versus ‘’sitting’’. Even without really moving, we can increase our health by just simply standing more. So ‘’being more active’’ could also simply imply: sitting down less… Try to be creative in thinking of activities that you could perform standing instead of sitting: e.g. reading the newspaper, watching television, making a telephone call.
If you could replace one sitting behaviour by a standing behaviour every day, you can consider yourself successful in a first step to better health. Just start here, and try to come up with more of such small behaviour changes regarding standing, increased activity without necessarily thinking of sports/exercise.

In daily practice, many people with diabetes say that they ‘forget’ about specific parts of diabetes self-management. They forget to monitor glucose, or forget to inject insulin before meals, or forget to take their tablets, or forget to count carbs or to exercise. It is not that they are not motivated, or that they don’t want to take care of themselves, but it is just no automatic response (yet). That is understandable! Diabetes is a complex disease with many things to do, so it is logical that people forget about some things every now and then. Don’t worry. These occasional ‘missings’ don’t influence your average glucose values (HbA1c) a lot.

However, when the ‘missings’ are not occasional, but more regular, you might think about why this happens and how to solve it. The first thing to ask yourself is whether you really ‘’did not think of doing it at all’’. E.g. have you really NOT thought about injecting your insulin, monitoring your glucose etc? No? That is the easy-to-change-part!
You could:

• Create a (n extra) cue to make sure you won’t forget the plan: make a reminder in your phone/computer, put a note/post-it on a place that you see most of the day
• Make sure that your plan is explained/mentioned to at least one person who is close to you. He/she could simply ask how you are doing, and whether your plan worked out.

However, many people do think injecting insulin, monitoring glucose etc. for a second, but then immediately afterwards, think: ‘’I will first finish…..[whatever you are doing] and then inject my insulin/monitor my glucose etc. a little later…’’ Technically speaking, this is NOT really a matter of forgetting, but more of postponing. You WERE thinking about it for a second/minute, but did not want to/could not stop the other activity you were performing.
That is something you could (gradually) change. You are not really forgetting to self-manage, but you will have to try to postpone less, or do it immediately when you think about it.
Practice with : ‘’postponing less’’ first, in stead of ‘’’not forgetting’’ or ‘’doing it immediately’’. For instance: if you sometimes only would inject insulin an hour after your dinner, try to practice with ‘’injecting earlier after dinner’’ in stead of doing it immediately at the dinner table. You are successful in behaviour change, with every minute that you postpone less. You might e.g. create a cue around the dishwasher, so that you are reminded of ‘’postponing less’’ shortly after dinner. This reduce in time can make a significant contribution to optimizing your blood sugar.

Many people with diabetes worry about having low blood sugars (hypoglycaemia, or ‘hypo’s’).
To a certain extent, worrying about low blood sugars is a normal and healthy phenomenon in all diabetes patients on insulin (or other blood glucose lowering medication). However, in some people normal and healthy worries develop into hindering anxieties, that influence their blood sugars and quality of life. Often, these anxieties develop after having experienced a serious hypo, needing help from others, and/or being unconscious. But in some people these hindering anxieties might also develop without having experienced a serious hypo.

Many people with fear of hypoglycaemia worry about:

-having a hypo while asleep (or even dying from a hypo in their sleep)
-losing consciousness in public, while driving or being alone at home
-needing help from others, attracting unwanted attention

In some people these anxieties are so intense that they will make sure their blood sugars never drop below a certain level. They might eat some extra carbs before going to bed, before/while driving, or before going out, even when their blood sugars don’t really ‘need’ an extra snack. Or otherwise, people might use less insulin than they should, just to make sure that their blood sugars won’t drop. Some might check their blood sugars excessively, to monitor potential blood sugar drops.
These are all common behavioural reactions to anxiety, and are called ‘’safety behaviours’’. In the short term, these safety behaviours help to prevent/decrease anxiety. However, in the long term, these behaviours make people more insecure about low blood sugars, and help to develop even more anxiety.
That is why it is so important to limit the ‘’safety behaviours’’ to a healthy and rational amount.

If you recognize these anxieties and safety behaviours, there are a few steps to take:

1. it is good to let others know about it. Best would be to inform your partner/significant other, as well as your diabetes health care professional (s).
2. make a list of the questions/worries you have about hypo’s. Explain what your fears are about
3. make a list of the specific safety behaviours that you perform to reduce your anxiety
4. let a diabetes health care professional educate you about hypogly
5. let a diabetes health care professional help you in making a stepwise plan on how to limit these safety behaviours