What is True

Diabetes will make me blind.  It will ruin my kidneys.  I'll end up on dialysis.  I'll lose a foot.  I'll have a heart attack.  It will kill me.  

I recently completed an eight week class on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).  I've succumbed too many times to paralyzing thoughts, scenarios, and worries played out in my head.  With more stressors and challenges in store this year I knew I needed a way to cope and lessen the burdens I place on myself.  I needed a better way to manage my stress and MBSR felt like a good place to start.

I've dabbled in the concepts of Buddhism and I've read Viktor Frankl.  I'm familiar with the concept that our stress and suffering is of our own making.  With this background in tow I went into the class open-minded.  I do believe that (outside of actual life threatening situations) our stress comes from how we respond to the situations we are in.  What I found in the class was just how much time I spend in my head and not in the present. Telling stories about the past.  Thinking and planning for what might happen in the future.  Worrying.   I found that these thoughts that bounced between the future and the past were the roots of my stress.  The class showed me that by focusing on present moments the stress that I felt inside my head and physical feelings in my body were lessened a great deal.

One of the exercises we did in class that I found to be incredibly eye opening was to question our thoughts, stories, and worries and to ask ourselves, "Is this true?"  I examined a thought that comes to me from time to time.  Its the thought that diabetes will kill me.  When I asked myself whether this was true my initial reaction was yes. It is a fact.  It is scientific, it is medical.  Diabetes kills people.

But as I mulled it over longer and peeled back the layers of this disease I realized that diabetes only could kill me.  This may seem like splitting hairs - could vs will - but for me it was a breakthrough.  It made me feel lighter.  I really don't know what will kill me.  Its not true that diabetes will kill me.  It could be any number of other things or unfortunate events or simply old age.  It might not be diabetes after all.

I've spent so much emotion feeling doomed by this disease that this close examination of my thoughts was a revelation.  I realized the stories I tell myself about my diabetes are not actually true.  I can't dwell on things that haven't happened or worry about what might happen.  I can only take action on what is happening now - what I eat, the number on the meter, the settings on my pump.

I don't know what will kill me.  That is what is true.