I often see people online refer to themselves as “spoonies” or as “not having enough spoons”, and I have no idea what this means. Can someone explain??
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It represents an intangible resource for doing things. It started out as a way for someone with chronic illness to explain what they felt up to doing in a day. It spread to the chronic illness community and has since drifted into the mainstream.
It’s a good way to explain how certain activities might require little physical energy, but enough mental energy that someone can only handle so many mental tasks, which isn’t always apparent. Like talking on the phone takes little physical energy. But depending on who you’re talking to it could be incredibly draining, like being on the phone with insurance about procedures.
It’s a metaphor for disability: spoons are like currency in this scenario, or ‘mana’; it’s an expression that people with disabilities often have a very limited amount of energy reserves that they expend on completing tasks, e.g. getting up and dressed, travelling, socialising, etc. Unlike those who are able bodied and do not suffer with chronic illness, disabled folks often cannot ‘push through’ feeling worn out to complete more tasks, and their energy levels day to day can vary a lot (so they don’t always start out with the same number of ‘spoons’ each day to spend on activities)
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Looks like I need to start saving my spoons for more important things, like binge-watching Netflix.
The spoon theory refers to an article written back in the early 2000’s that used the somewhat whimsical spoon based metaphor for the energy we have available to do daily tasks.
The idea is that we start out each day with a limited amount of spoons, and everything we choose to do during the course of that day requires us to give up/hand over some of those spoons – many people have large spoon supplies available and can freely spend them doing activities, but many of us have a much more limited supply available to use and need to ration how we use them.
As an alternative you could equally reference the mana/energy systems used in many games, having to spend money, fuel or any other resource – the spoon theory was just a very good description of this idea, and whimsical enough to stick in the memories of a lot of people.
So when someone says they don’t have enough spoons left over, what they are meaning is that they are too tired (either physically or mentally) and need a break.
Funnily enough, the spoons metaphor is basically already an ELI5 on how people with a disability don’t have the energy to do everything that an able-bodied person might be able to in the same time period.
It originated as an explanation between friends. Imagine you start the day with 20 spoons. Taking a shower might take 3 spoons. Making breakfast might take 2. Taking the bus somewhere could take 8. Working for 6 hours might take 15. Once you’re out of spoons, doing anything further becomes increasingly hard and if you can do it at all it’ll be taken out of your spoons for the next day, likely with interest.
Another way to think about it is Dungeons and Dragons’ Spell Slots, especially for a class like the Sorcerer where you can designate their usage on the fly. You might have one high level spell to use per day that normally goes towards work or something, but if there’s enough demands for your lower level spell slots, you may have to put a lower level spell into that higher level slot, leaving you without the ability to get something more significant done.
Who knew spoons could be so deep and meaningful? I better start cherishing them more.
Read [the original](https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/); it’s already an ELI5.
One very important thing to take note of is that knowledge of spoon theory is not an understanding of spoon theory. This is another reason why spoons are effective visualizations, because it helps point out that people have different spoons, and different ways of recovering spoons. Your dishwasher might help you recover spoons quickly, but I don’t have one, and recovering a single spoon is a concentrated effort in doing absolutely nothing else.
The absolute most important thing to take away is that you will never fully grasp the spoon situation of other people, and that simply being understanding is sometimes the best you can do.
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