This image is just to show an example of how the spoon theory might work. The individual ‘spoon reserves’ and other variables that any given person experiences can vary wildly, allowing them to deal with more or less of different amounts of lifes demands on any given day and situation.
The Spoon Theory
The majority of my patients suffer from chronic pain. Whether this may be a life long condition, or a horrible series of years that have been a persistent lack of relief from pain and disability following an injury which hasn’t been resolved. In either case and everything in-between, living with chronic pain or a chronic illness of any kind, has serious effects on how one is able to go about their daily life compared to someone who doesn’t have these extra hurdles or barriers to simply living.
Sometimes it’s the fact that there are certain things that are literally impossible to carry out ones self. Be it getting down on the ground to pick something up, or even carrying out normal hygiene tasks. Other times, demands of life are doable...but come at a significant cost. Increased pain, or just incredible fatigue that can only be pushed so far. Either can easily make any task beyond maintenance (hygiene, feeding oneself, work if you’re lucky) more or less impossible, or lead to pain and fatigue that last days or weeks after such an over-extension that can come from a simple family gathering, dealing with the yard or a dirty kitchen.
If this all weren’t bad enough, our species as a whole tends to be pretty horrible when it comes to understanding chronic pain and any invisible illness. The words lazy come up a lot, or “Why haven’t you just done X or Y,” like any aspect of chronic illness was so easy. A complete lack of at least understanding, but also potentially empathy and compassion for your situation, why you barely got through work and can’t get yourself to make dinner and clean as well, let alone want to go out and socialize is often the default. The same difficulties apply with medical providers, who often won’t even believe a patient is ill, and is making it up. Such responses and behavior are not only unacceptable, but patently disgusting to be present in the medical community as a ground floor assumption for the vast majority of these patients.
There are thousands of pages more to give even a brief discussion of this topic, and this experience, but I’m not here to give some kind of dissertation on the topic, but to introduce those who aren’t familiar, with the Spoon Theory. This is a story of one person with a chronic illness finding a simple, but profoundly effective way for explaining to her roommate why she couldn’t go through her daily tasks without gargantuan effort, and real consequences, despite not missing a limb or having some other more palpable barrier that our culture tends to find more easily understandable for the real difficulties of living with chronic pain and illness.
I’m going to leave it to the original author to describe the spoon theory in depth, but for now I will conclude my own thoughts by saying that it has been an incredible tool for my patients to use to wrap their own minds around the chronic health problems they have to face in day to day life, and invaluable to help friends and family understand some of how going through their life works for them. So if you or someone you know is living with a chronic illness of any kind, please take a read through and pass it along.