Many of us (people living with diabetes) share a story: we have experienced periods of isolation due to diabetes-specific challenges. Some of us went years before ever meeting another person living with diabetes. And perhaps most pertinent to Diabetes Online Community (#DOC) members, we know that magical feeling of complete relief when we are finally able to say it like it is to those who understand.
When I consider my own experience as a DOC community member as evidence of the power of peer-support, my assumption is that the DOC works for two main reasons:
- because it removes the barrier of isolation and
- because it is stacked with insider-generated knowledge on how to live better with diabetes
There are MANY additional reasons that explain why the DOC helps people with diabetes. You probably have a laundry list of reasons and I encourage you to add them in comment form here. Another part of the story we share as people with diabetes are the reasons why and how our sources of support serve us. A question I’m trying to answer through my own research, is “what is it about participating in the DOC that most benefits people with diabetes?” I want to find that one magical bean that keeps all of this growing and thriving.
A new article published in Personality and Individual Differences, The Official Journal of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID), offers a perspective I hadn’t previously considered. The open-access article is called, Understanding the need for novelty from the perspective of self-determination theory, and can be found below:
This article proposes that novelty, explained as a drive to ‘seek out new experiences’, could be an intrinsic and universal human need. The findings suggest that seeking new experiences is a mechanism of self-motivation necessary for optimal self-realization.
“Furthermore, if people do not seek novel activities within the tasks they do in the workplace or in leisure time, they will likely experience boredom and maladaptive outcomes like low self-worth, negative affect, low life satisfaction and psychological well-being.” (González-Cutre et. al, 2016).
If their assumption is correct, then its application toward the diabetes self-management corpus is a natural fit! Doing the same diabetes-tasks over and over leads to burnout. Our lived-experience shows us this. If my insurance wont cover alternative therapies like insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), oral medications, etc, and or my doctor isn’t comfortable prescribing them, then how can I integrate a variety of novel tasks into my self-management toolkit that could potentially reduce the frequency of burnout?!
When my self-management becomes monotonous and boring, I do experience maladaptive outcomes like those mentioned in the excerpt above. My perception of self-worth decreases. That is to say that in burnout I literally feel like I matter less, am worth less, deserve less. Experiencing this sensation is incredibly maladaptive and generally leads to a slew of other problems. My health suffers, but so do my relationships, scholastic capacity, dependable-ness, and inner-drive.
Burnout, therefore, is a HUGE reason I need the peer-support I seek. I need to not only talk about the challenge, but also to hear novel ways in which others like me have transcended the process.
With that said, my experience is only one perspective and is not representative of the diabetes community as a whole. My question to you then, DOCers, HCPs, researchers, is could it be the novelty?
Could it be that when a person with diabetes encounters the world of the diabetes online community, that the novelty itself is a mechanism of its success?
If we, yes, agree that novelty is one aspect of why the DOC works, then what else can we know? Is novelty directly related to burnout cessation, to a decrease in diabetes-related distress? How can we use this as a community to inform the resources we offer?
Citation:
David González-Cutre, Álvaro Sicilia, Ana C. Sierra, Roberto Ferriz, Martin S. Hagger, Understanding the need for novelty from the perspective of self-determination theory, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 102, November 2016, Pages 159-169, ISSN 0191-8869, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.036.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916307863)
The Chronic Scholar 
Hey Heather, this is a super interesting post!
When I’m in burnout mode, diabetes related or otherwise, the one thing I can always count on to snap me out of it is travel—whether that means a 20 minute car-ride to a town I’ve never seen before, or a flight to another country. So yes! I wholeheartedly believe in the power of novelty, although I’d never thought of it in terms of what the DOC offers. But it makes total sense. Just like travel gives me the perspective I so often need to get out of my own head (there are other people in the world and their lives are different than mine!), the DOC provides me with endless new and different perspectives of the ways in which people live with diabetes every day… and while I’m more partial to reading personal stories, the news about new tech and research that circulates around the DOC makes me aware that, as sucky it is to live with this disease, at least treatment options are constantly evolving.
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