Navigating Diabetes Stigma, Body Image, and Mental Health
What does diabetes stigma have to do with body image and your mental and behavioral well-being? Turns out, a whole lot.
One place where diabetes stigma and mental health can have a big impact is on building a positive relationship with your own body.
At the 2026 Diabetes + Mental Health Conference, discussions about the connection between mental health and these often-overlooked facets of diabetes care took the stage. Here are the highlights and some tips for managing mental health and diabetes.
Shame, stigma, and body image
Living with diabetes can be hard. On a tough diabetes day, you may feel angry or frustrated at your body. When management is going well, you might feel proud of what your mind and body can accomplish together. Navigating your relationship to your body and self-worth is a facet of diabetes care that few healthcare providers discuss, but is something people encounter daily.
“When you’re getting up and you’re leaving home in the morning, it’s not just you. It’s you, your body, and your diabetes,” said Dr. Alexandria Ambrose, a licensed psychologist who has been living with type 1 diabetes since 2004. “You have to take them with you everywhere you go, 24/7.”
Societal norms and expectations about what a “good” or “healthy” body should look and behave like contribute to our sense of self. Diabetes stigma may also factor in by perpetuating myths that people with diabetes are less capable, less motivated, or less deserving than people who do not live with chronic health conditions.
When someone starts to believe in these harmful narratives, it is known as internalized stigma. Greater experiences of diabetes stigma are associated with worse mental health and diabetes management outcomes.
“These narratives about what your worth is as a person, that's all made up. Other people have made that up,” Ambrose said.
While it can be easy to buy into these narratives, self-worth should not be defined based on harmful experiences of stigma or stereotypes perpetuated by society. But building a positive relationship with a body that has diabetes is not always easy.
Redefining your relationship with your body
Ambrose discussed how redefining your relationship with your body can help break harmful cycles and tune back into what your body really needs to be well.
“Sometimes we might feel so focused on getting it ‘right’ that we stop listening to what our body needs and try to live up to the expectations of others or our doctors,” said Ambrose.
Focusing on getting it right can lead to hyperfocus on achieving specific numerical goals or milestones, like weight or A1C. While celebrating those wins isn’t inherently bad, it can create a positive feedback trap: What happens next time if we put in just as much effort but don’t hit the same numerical goal? Or what if achieving those goals was only the result of extreme stress or unsustainable restriction?
Fixating on getting it “right” sets up an all-or-nothing scenario where getting it “wrong” can feel like a personal failure that takes a toll on your self-relationship. One solution comes from changing the way you think about goals. For example, you might try setting non-numerical goals, focusing more on feeling good, or prioritizing effort over results.
If feelings of failure creep in and start to take a toll on your self-worth or body image, Ambrose encourages people to challenge where those negative thoughts and perceptions are actually coming from.
This starts by asking ourselves questions. Are we telling ourselves we’re a failure for missing a mark we set? Is our doctor actually saying that? Or are external pressures and stigmatizing beliefs from society influencing our opinions of ourselves?
It can be hard to quiet those other voices, but understanding that nobody else has the right to define how you feel about yourself and your body is a good place to start.
Having difficult feelings about your body is normal. Perfection or loving your body all the time doesn’t have to be the goal. Practicing body neutrality offers an alternative that makes space to acknowledge the challenges you experience in your body and let go of harsh, negative feelings.
One strategy is to consider taking a “Yes, and…” approach. Make note of the hard parts, and acknowledge something you put effort into or did well, too. On a bad diabetes day, this might look something like, “Yes, I had a terrible blood sugar day, and I’m angry at my body for not cooperating, and I didn’t give up and still remembered to bolus for every meal.”
Rebuilding your relationship with your body doesn’t mean that bad days or negative thoughts aren’t allowed. Practicing self-compassion and giving yourself permission to have hard days and experience difficult feelings about your body make it so the bad days don’t define you. They’re just one part of the ride.
Putting it all together: building a perfectly imperfect relationship
Diabetes can make it difficult to feel good about the body you live in, especially when harmful stigma and stereotypes creep into how we think about ourselves.
Normalizing negative feelings and letting them pass, redefining your goals and self-worth, and practicing self-compassion are just some of the many tools we have for reframing our relationship with our bodies and challenging internalized stigma.
Through all of her approaches to building a more positive body relationship, Ambrose explained that small moments of compassion and self-acceptance can add up to big change. And the best news of all? Nothing has to be perfect.
Learn more about body image, mental health, and diabetes stigma here: