‘Diabetes & Friendships’ with Dr. Wendy Satin Rapaport L.S.C.W., Psy.D.,

We’re excited to announce our special line-up for Divabetic’s World Diabetes Day edition of Diabetes Late Nite. Wendy Satin Rapaport, LSCW, PsyD, a social worker and psychologist specializing in diabetes for the past 28 years will stop by the studio and the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin will provide musical inspiration. Join us here on Wednesday, November 14 from 6 – 7:30 PM.

“Dr. Wendy” recently co-authored a new wisdom-filled guide, Friendship Matters: Memoir, Life Lessons, Laughter, to provide insight on how to create more meaningful relationships. Divabetic’s founding principle encourages an entourage of support to help make the difference between someone living with diabetes feeling overwhelmed or empowered. We were intrigued and asked Dr. Wendy to share some advice on the subject prior to our podcast interview.

Q: How can our friendships help us to better manage our diabetes?

Dr. Wendy Satin Rapaport (WSR): There is nothing worse than feeling alone in the world. I wrote a book with my friend Dr. Sandra Bernstein (also a psychologist) as a celebration of our friendship. We also wanted to highlight the superpowers of friendship in general: improved health and longevity; enhanced capability in relationships and decision making; the pleasure of a sweet loving connection. Friendship includes someone who is a good mother to you – has your back, is interested to really know you and is worthy of your trust. He/she genuinely accepts you as you are, good diabetes care or not, and still with the goal of partnering with you to change to more positive attitudes and habits. That is the setting for you to take better care of your diabetes and to help someone else take better care of their diabetes.

Friendship enables us to share vulnerability, normalize it, feel understood, remind us to feel compassion, and then move forward to problem solving. It’s a gift which is often reciprocal to us and the other person. When we have friendship, we can share our fears and our roadblocks to taking care of diabetes. Friends might just listen or offer up good ideas. The prerequisite is being open-hearted and open-minded. We can have good boundaries by being interested in, and not taking over the problems of diabetes. When we have a truly strong and effective friendship, we realize the skills in giving and getting criticism. If a friend says, “You are always eating the wrong things,” you can smile and say, “I know you care about me, and perhaps worry. What I would find helpful is asking not criticizing.”

The moment I meet someone with diabetes, I “match” them with someone else…it may be someone with more or less success with handling the diabetes…I just know the connection to each other is relieving and uplifting.

Q: What advice can you offer to someone living with diabetes who is interested in telling their co-workers and employers about their diabetes?

(WSR): First, get your self-esteem, resilience, and sense of humor intact. People say things unwittingly that can make us crazy. Anticipate possible scenarios and prepare for them. You might begin by asking “Do you know anyone who has diabetes because if you don’t, now you do.” Next you can ask what that means to them or what they know. You want to be ready with what kind of help friends can give you, as well as how they can reach out to you. Realize what you need can change over time. Formulate a response when someone seems intrusive and say the true positive (authentic) first such as “Thanks so much for your interest -caring…I’d rather not discuss that now.”

Q: In your book, Friendship Matters, you discuss ’emotional regulations’ and ‘emotional literacy’. Can you explain what these terms mean?

(WSR): Emotional literacy is our capacity to know how our emotions function such as what pleases us, aggravates us, turns us passive or aggressive, or throws us into frustration and despair. This self-awareness allows us to regulate or tamp down with acknowledgement. We also want to recognize our self-talk to eliminate negative behavior toward ourselves, as in making poor diabetes choices. For example, when testing blood sugar and it shows 240, we might say to ourselves, “I give up. I am not testing. It just depresses me.” Recognition allows us to instead apply compassion and reason and say, “I am a good person with elevated blood sugars. I am so glad I tested. Now I know why I am irritable. I will call my friend to meet me and take a walk to get it down and cheer myself up by my discipline and her friendship.”

It pays to be emotionally literate because we make better choices and feel better about ourselves and our friends as well as bosses, partners, children, etc. It works everywhere, with consciousness, practice, and forgiveness of ourselves and friends.

Q: Why do you feel a psychologist should be the first person you see after your initial diagnosed?

(WSR): I want people to start out with a psychologist (social worker or coach) because they need to mourn and accept the diagnosis. It’s good to do it with a party who is trained to hear and not judge and help the family go through it together. Our goal is to get you to realize you are a terrific person, with diabetes. The professional can help with coping skills for handling problems and prevent the burnout which often can come with the labor-intensive work involved in taking care of oneself. To prevent the potential loneliness of having to live with a chronic illness, I recommend a support group. It helps people feel the connection, normalcy and the mutual high from being able to help each other. My doctoral dissertation was on humor as a coping mechanism in diabetes and I recommend the groups be fun as well as cathartic and instructive on being more successful with the diabetes and with just being a person!

I also love the concept of prevention…avoiding problems that might occur by initiating support, constructive ideas, and good habits. When I start out right away with a family, I teach them to stay positive. For example, when their child has a 300 blood sugar, they might say “I’m so glad you tested. That might explain your feeling tired and irritable.” If I don’t teach that right away, the parent might be screaming, “Why don’t you care about yourself? What did you do? What did you eat?” The child will repeat the same critical response in his/her self-talk later. The criticism leads to sneaking and shame whereas the acceptance and interest leads to behavior change and problem solving such as “Thanks for letting me know that you didn’t want to test in front of your friends, so you ate something without checking it out. This is a problem we can solve.”

Authors Dr. Wendy Satin Rapaport and Dr. Sanda Neshin Bernstein are both clinical psychologists who co-authored a wisdom-filled guide, Friendship Matters: Memoir, Life Lessons, Laughter, which shows us how to have more meaningful relationships. Through examples of their own friendship, they explore the power of this connection and show that, while friendship takes work, it should be celebrated for the ways it can improve our lives and help us grow. Close friends are lifelines—the people who help us through the worst days and who cheer us on during the best. We can learn to nurture our friendships most effectively by keeping a few principles in mind. With good friends by our side, anything is possible!

FREE DIVABETIC GIVEAWAY: We’re giving away a copy of Dr. Wendy Satin Rapaport and Dr. Sandra Neshin Bernstein’s Friendship Matters: Memoir, Life Lessons, Laughter on November’s Diabetes Late Nite. Tune in (using this link to win!

We’re celebrating World Diabetes Day with a special Diabetes Late Nite musical inspiration from Aretha Franklin on Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 6 – 7:30 PM.

There are many reasons that Aretha Franklin is the legend of legends, a groundbreaking singer with the fortitude to transcend race and genre, using that tremulous voice as the bulldozer to break down every barrier set up in her way.

Aretha’s own health journey is sparking a discussion about the uncertain connection between pancreatic cancer and diabetes. Long-standing diabetes can be considered a risk factor for pancreatic cancer. It causes a modest increase in risk of 1.5- to two-fold. Some of the other risk factors for pancreatic cancer include smoking, chronic pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), family history of pancreatic cancer, obesity and certain genetic syndromes.

Guests include Poet Lorraine Brooks, Dr. Wendy Satin Rapaport, Diabetes Strong’s owner Christel Oerum, Beautyphonics CEO and “Beneath The Makeup”Author Suzanne Perez, Mama Rose Marie and the Charlie’s Angels of Outreach.

Throughout the podcast we will be playing music from Aretha Franklin’s ‘Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics’ courtesy of SONY Music.

Diabetes Late Nite is a fast-paced, full-filled hour of diabetes education and wellness advice that encourages listeners to “laugh a little, learn a lot.