• Fresh Views

    SUPPORT: Today’s word to jump-start solution-focused practice

    April 15, 2020
    The Pont du Gard, a spectacular bridge that supports an ancient Roman aqueduct system built in the first century AD to carry water over 30 miles to Nîmes, Provence, France.

    April is national Stress Awareness month, and around the world stress is at an all-time high amidst the COVID-19 crisis! Since stress during an infectious disease outbreak such as this can worsen chronic health conditions as well as mental health, getting support is essential.

    It’s timely that today’s word is SUPPORT 

    Putting COVID-19 aside for a moment, diabetes is a complex and challenging condition – one that requires attention every minute, every hour, every single day. According to an October 1, 2015 blog posted by Manny Hernandez, people with diabetes (PWD) spend only 0.007% of their time over the course of a year with healthcare providers and emergency departments. They spend the remaining 99.993%  time self-managing their condition on their own. And thus ongoing support is critical. People who have a strong support system in place tend to be healthier (and recover more quickly when they are sick.)

    Asking for and accepting help (support) is a sign of strength.

    In solution-focused practice, it’s vital to step alongside the person with diabetes to guide them in selecting the resources or activities that best suit their needs, and that works for them.

    Support comes in many forms: 5 ways to guide your clients to engage in ongoing diabetes support

    1. Check in with loved ones often. A common reaction during this time of physical and social distancing is feeling socially isolated, especially for those that live alone or are in a community setting that is not allowing visitors because of the outbreak.Virtual communication can help you and your loved ones feel less lonely and isolated. Maybe it’s connecting via video chat, text messages, email, social media, mailing letters or cards, or a good “old fashioned” phone call. It may help for you to share specific ways they can support you (such as “Do join me in making healthy lifestyle changes, but please don’t offer unsolicited advice about my eating.”)
    2. Reach out to your diabetes health-care team. Call on them if stress gets in the way of your daily activities for several days in a row. They are dedicated to helping you take an active role in caring for your diabetes. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic many healthcare providers are using telehealth, so you don’t have to leave your home to get the help you need.
    3. Support yourself by taking care of your own emotional health. Last fall we wrote about a solution-focused approach to healthy copying. You can find 6 ways to deal with stress and cope with life with diabetes in a healthy manner here. This is even more important for those caring for a loved one during this health crisis, which can take an emotional toll. 
    4. Learn about free resources that are available. There are many resources available to support stress management and coping, and some of them are free! There are free versions of mindfulness apps for your phone to help with meditation or sleep. There are many YouTube videos available that are freely available to watch, including videos for self-help as well as videos that just make you smile and laugh. During this COVID-19 crisis there is a wonderful free resource from Livongo called myStrength. Anyone can sign up (no credit card required) to participate in a series of small lessons ranging from coping with stress to learning how to communicate while being physically distant from your friends and family.
    5. Connect with others with diabetes for peer support. Connecting with others in the vibrant online diabetes community is an opportunity to learn from others facing similar issues, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when it is convenient to engage. Peer support using social networking sites improves glucose management, especially in people with type 2 diabetes. Other avenues to gain peer support are through a “support group” or participating in a diabetes program or workshop. The American Diabetes Association has an online discussion board that allows people with diabetes to share their ideas, questions, and opinions on a variety of topics. These settings provide great opportunities to discuss common problems and concerns as well as share helpful advice, offer support, and celebrate success in diabetes self-care. The Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists website has lots of resources about online peer support here and you can download a handout here.
    Tami & Deb staying connected via Zoom

    THIS WEEK’S SOLUTION-FOCUSED CHALLENGE

    We often close with inviting readers to participate in a solution-focused challenge. This week we challenge you to incorporate these questions around support into your conversations with clients.

    1. What types of support are helpful to you currently?
    2. What types of support could help you now?
    3. Where will you get it? 
    4. When will you take the step to see this support?
    5. On a scale of 0-10, where 0 means not likely and 10 means very likely, how likely are you to engage in a support resource to help you?

    We welcome anyone interested in our approach to Subscribe to our blog and we’ll email you when a new post is published!

    If you are a health care professional and interested in learning more about our solution-focused practice and approach, when you subscribe to our blog, we’ll send you in return a FREE resource of 10 Solution-Focused Questions to start a solution-focused discussion with your clients. 

    Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @AFreshPOVforYou

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  • Fresh Views

    Seeing with new eyes: Perceptions of life with diabetes

    October 2, 2019

    The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust 

    A view of La Sagrada Familia through an arch on the roof of Casa Mila in Barcelona, Spain

    #EASD2019 is a wrap! Hi this is Deb this week. I represented @AFreshPOVforYou at the 55th Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) conference in Barcelona where I was excited to share the results of our study (more about that below). I learned much at the meeting, connected with friends and colleagues, and met Twitter followers in person for the first time! I also had time to do a little sightseeing and take in the food and culture of Barcelona!

    Front entry of the EASD 2019 meeting, Barcelona

    Our abstract, Perceptions of life with diabetes revealed through a solution focused brief therapy exercise via Twitter, was presented on the final day of the conference in a very large room. Often many people leave for home the last day of the conference so I feared the room would be empty, but it was not! Given that this was the only session addressing the psychology of diabetes, there was a great crowd. The presentation focused on the use of the Miracle Question, a solution-focused tool, to help people overcome challenges by using “solution talk” rather than “problem talk.” We wrote about it in our blog post about our AADE presentation here and here describing our World Diabetes Day 2018 #DSMA Twitter chat.

    I try to start all of my presentations with a slide reminding the audience (or sometimes educating them for the first time) that #LanguageMatters when speaking with or about people with diabetes. You can read our past blog posts related to this here and here.

    #LanguageMatters slide

    I asked for a show of hands to see how many in the room were familiar with the Miracle Question approach. I only saw one hand raised. Since this was a 15-minute research presentation, it was hard to cover a lot of the background, so the focus was on the study outcomes. It was exciting to see lots of Tweets about the presentation and that the concept of a solution-focused approach was being spread across the Twitterverse. You can read the full abstract here . 

    We have submitted the complete data to be published (fingers crossed that happens soon!). However, in brief, when we employed the Miracle Question approach during a Twitter chat there were five themes that evolved.  That means that these were the most common threads, thoughts, comments that were expressed by those who participated in the chat. The themes were: more of living life; laughter and humor; self-compassion; resilience; and support.  

    Deb at the podium presentation

    There were several questions at the end of the session and many people came up to talk about the approach. In fact, several researchers shared with me about their research and how they could see incorporating a solution-focused approach into their research study.  It was very exciting to see the interest in this tool.

    Most of the comments and questions were positive. Interestingly, one questioned the value of having people “think less” about their diabetes, and worried that diabetes management would be hurt. I responded by saying that Dana Lewis (creator of Open APS) might disagree. When I heard her speak earlier in the conference she indicated that with her Open APS system, she thinks less about diabetes, including not having to bolus when she eats carbs.The theme of “more of living life” meant different things for different people.  The Grumpy Pumper (Chris Aldred) commented, “For me, the issue isn’t how often I think about my diabetes, it’s the type of thoughts. Looping hasn’t made me think less, but my thoughts are more positive because I’m seeing the results I want.”  This was a great perspective. The overarching message was that they wanted to focus on the positive aspects of life.

    It’s important to acknowledge that people engaged in a diabetes Twitter chat are likely very engaged in their diabetes management. There was a question if the process would still be successful in others. We agree that we have the same questions and hope to conduct additional research in this area in the future.  

    We also had a Diabetes Online Community (DOC) advocate @Blue_sugar_cube reach out and ask how she and the DOC could get involved with our work. That was exciting! As well as seeing a few new subscribers to our blog!

    And lastly, a big thanks to @WeRateTalks on Twitter who gave our talk an 11/10!  Wow! We were honored!

    We’ll be seeing some of these diabetes friends in Busan, South Korea for the International Diabetes Federation Congress where Deb will be speaking on two panels, one on #LanguageMatters and one on digital health. 

    Kellie, Karen, Grumpy, Renza, Deb and Donna at the end of our presentation

    By sharing a solution-focused approach to diabetes management with a worldwide audience we hoped to inspire people to think differently and consider incorporating a solution- focused approach in their practice.

    We began this post with the quote, The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes by Marcel Proust . We’d like to encourage health care professionals to “have new eyes” when they think about diabetes management, and be open to new tools and solutions. 

    If you’re a researcher and would like us to consult on a future research grant, please reach out – we’d love to chat!

    We welcome anyone interested in our approach to Subscribe to our blog and we’ll email you when a new post is published!

    If you are a health care professional and interested in learning more about our solution-focused practice and approach, when you subscribe to our blog, we’ll send you in return a FREE resource of 10 Solution-Focused Questions to start a solution-focused discussion with your clients. 

    Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @AFreshPOVforYou

    Disclaimer: A Fresh POV for You is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. 

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  • Fresh Views

    Let’s learn from the Diabetes Online Community (or the DOC for short)!

    November 12, 2018

    We are big believers in “collective wisdom”, or rather the ability to learn from a greater community.  When sharing thoughts and experiences we can learn from others. Would you agree? As we are delving into the use of Solutions Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) in diabetes we want to engage the DOC in a Twitter chat so we can learn first-hand from those living with diabetes every day!

    One practice used in SFBT is called the “miracle question.” This method helps people use the resources they already have and leverage “exceptions”. Exceptions are simply times when life works better, or times when problems are less likely to take over.  Focusing on personal “exceptions” means focusing focus on situations that went well in the past, or on positive things learned from past experiences (things maybe even forgotten about). Managing diabetes is challenging. Constant focus on “problems” can eroded confidence. We hear that repeatedly from clients we engage with. By  instead focusing on abilities and the possibilities, there are solutions ready to use right in front of us. We can envision the future differently.

    So, here is the miracle question: “Suppose tonight while you sleep, a miracle happens. When you wake tomorrow morning, what will you see yourself doing, thinking, or believing, about yourself that will tell you a miracle has happened in your life?”  We challenge you to think about it. How would you answer it?

    By focusing on “exceptions”, goals become different. Focus turns to what is desired in our life instead of what “won’t happen” anymore. To modify this question for diabetes management, let’s consider the following:  If you could fast-forward to a time where you feel satisfied with your diabetes management, what will be different in your life that will let you know things are better?

    Weigh in with your thoughts to these questions and others on Wednesday, November 14, 2018, World Diabetes Day, as we moderate the 7:00 pm ET hour of the #WDD2018 for #DSMA.  During the chat we will be walking through a modified miracle question exercise to learn from all of you. We have received IRB approval to use the de-identified Twitter Chat data (that means we remove the Twitter handles before we review the data) for a qualitative research study to explore the perceptions of the DOC on incorporating the miracle question approach to strengthen resilience and confidence needed to manage diabetes. (And for those of you that may not be familiar with IRB approval, that just means a review committee applies research   ethics by reviewing the proposed research methods to ensure they are ethical). Don’t worry, if you want to participate in the chat, but prefer for us to not use your answers in our research study, you can do that too. We’ll ask who wants to not be included during the chat and will remove your answers.

    Please join in the discussion and let’s learn if this approach resonates with you!

    If you’d like to read more about the Miracle Question, we loved this book!

    Disclaimer: A Fresh POV for You is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

     

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