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Diabetophobia (fear of diabetes) is an irrational, sometimes disabling, fear of being diagnosed with diabetes. As with all phobias the impact of diabetophobia on daily life depends on the individual. How you decide to react to your fear, even if that’s not a conscious decision on your part, will at least in part govern how you react when you’re face to face with your phobia.
Some people manage to live relatively normal lives by suppressing their fear reactions and actively avoiding triggers. More severely affected people can experience disabling reactions to the mention of diabetes or anything that brings the disease to mind. The good news is that it’s perfectly possible to change how you react to the various triggers that cause your fear, so long as you know what to do and how to do it.
The root cause of the fear of diabetes may be related to the complications of diabetes or the fear of the treatments for the disease. Complications such as blindness or loss of limbs may be the basis for fear of diabetes, even though you know that most people don’t suffer to this great an extent. Fear of regular insulin injections or the pricking of fingers for glucose tests are sometimes behind the fear of diabetes. Many people are scared of needles or injections.
Modern diagnosis and treatment of diabetes will delay or prevent many of the complications. The fear of insulin self-injections can be eased with insulin pumps. Some of the causes for the irrational fear of diabetes can be eliminated by educating the diabetophobe. Convincing the sufferer that many of the reasons for the fear are ungrounded is a good first step in treatment.
Providing the sufferer with the actual facts and statistics of diabetes to highlight the irrationality of the fear is part of the treatment. Combining this knowledge with methods of reprogramming the unconscious mind to stop the tendency toward fear has proven effective for many phobias.
Some home-study courses for self-treatment of phobias can be found online. These can be highly effective. If you have a fear of diabetes that is interfering with your daily life you should start your treatment with a visit to a professional. A doctor can check you for diabetes to reassure you. He can check for underlying conditions such that can increase your susceptibility to fear disorders. Adrenal insufficiency is one well now contributor to fear reactions.
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