As the title said, could some please try and explain spoon theory to me? I’ve tried reading some posts and articles about it, but I still really don’t get what it is?
Thanks!
In: 3
It’s a metaphor.
The spoons represent your ability to handle stress.
If you have no spoons, you’re stressed out and can’t possibly give any more because you have no more to give.
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Imagine that everything you do costs something. From taking a shower, to answering a phone call, to preparing food, going to work, those all cost energy. Let’s say all of those cost one spoon. We use spoons as sort of a metaphor for that energy, something we can look at and count.
For most people, they have enough spoons (enough energy) to do all the things they want to do. Spend 1 spoon to get out of bed, 1 spoon to brush your teeth, 1 spoon to get dressed, 1 spoon to eat breakfast, 1 spoon to drive to work, 1 spoon for each person you need to talk to at work, 1 spoon to order lunch, 1 spoon to attend a meeting, 1 spoon to talk to a client, and so on.
If you have lots of spoons, that’s not a problem. And most people have lots of spoons.
But some people don’t have a lot of spoons. They don’t have as much energy, or the amount of energy they have can vary a lot from day to day.
If you only have 10 spoons, you have to choose what to spend them on. If you spend a spoon on cleaning your room, you then don’t have that spoon to use on buying groceries. If you use a spoon on folding your laundry, you will run out of energy later when you need to finish a project at work. It’s not that you’re lazy, or that you don’t care, but that you genuinely don’t have the “spoons”, the mental energy to do everything you need to do.
It’s not really a “theory”, rather just a way to illustrate that someone living with a disability or chronic disease might only have so much energy to do everything that needs to be done in a day, and so they need to budget, decide what to expend energy on.
The “spoons” were just because in the original telling of the story, the person telling it used the nearest thing at hand to illustrate, which was a handful of spoons from the kitchen. Their point was that the handful of spoons represents the energy they have for the day, and every activity costs a certain number of spoons. So do you brush your teeth? Do you shower? Do you go grocery shopping? How much are you willing to skip to save up enough energy to go to the party tonight? How do you spend your limited energy? Which activities do you do, and which ones do you skip?
That’s all it is.
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Perhaps from a different angle.
Instead of calling it spoon theory.. let’s just make it a cell phone battery life theory.
Especially for people with ADHD, some things can require a lot more energy to accomplish than to someone who is considered neurotypical.
To put it from the perspective of a cell phone.
I’ve got a 1000 mah battery, while the average person has a 3000 mah battery.
On top of that, my cell phone’s processor eats up more power than usual, and it’s impossible to get through a day even on low use without recharging.
And some apps take more power than they would on a regular cell phone.
If you text, it takes almost no energy. But on my cell phone, once I have sent and received a few texts, I’m already down 10%.
Spoon theory would say I’ve got a hundred spoons, and I just used 10 of them in a minor social interaction.
I now have 90% battery, or 90 spoons left to get through my day.
I also have no adblocker on my cellphone, so I’ll get a bunch of unwanted videos that eat up a lot of power during the day that I’ve got no control over.
As a result, I may have to leave during a family event, because I’ll get down to 20 spoons and I know it will take at least 12 spoons to get home.
If for some reason I have to use all 20 spoons before I get home, I’ll be pulling over to the side of the road to take a small nap. I have pillows and window covers. I always know where my nearest Walmart parking lot is.
TLDR: imagine people are cell phones, and the battery is how much energy we have for a day. However, because of my ADHD, my apps take up a lot more energy than yours.
Imagine everyone has to pay with spoons for doing something.
Have you ever played The Sims? Imagine a person with mood markers just like a Sim. When the mood markers go down, that’s spending spoons, like… working out makes you tired and sweaty so the energy and hygiene bars will go down, because you’ve spent the energy and good hygiene while working out.
Essentially that’s what spoon theory is. You start the day with a certain amount of imaginary spoons and pay for tasks with certain amounts of spoons. For me personally on a good day I’ll probably have 12-15 spoons. Being at work if it’s a slow day can use 5 spoons, if it’s a bad and busy day it’ll use more. Having a shower will use 5 spoons, more if I need to shave or wash my hair. Watching TV might use 3 spoons, a phone call might be 6 spoons. And so on.
When you run out of spoons, you’re too fatigued/in pain/mentally burned out to do anything else. Resting can help replenish spoons but only if it’s a good rest. Kind of again like Sims, if you wake them up before their energy bar refills they start the day with already depleted energy, if you don’t get a good rest the you can start the day with less spoons than “normal”.
In the chronic illness world, spoon theory is a common analogy. When I was in triathlon world we would use a box of matches analogy, light a match when you need energy but once the box is empty, no more energy. The battery analogy is also a good one and Garmin call it the ‘Body Battery’. A jar of marbles is another analogy using the same concept. Your Energy Envelope is another term you will hear to represent how much energy you have left. There are probably more analogies, but they are the ones I know that represent the same concept.
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