Before getting chronically ill, I had never heard of The Spoon Theory. I used to make jewelry and I had seen spoon jewelry associated with chronic illness, but I had no idea how the two were connected. After diagnosis, I had seen people calling themselves “Spoonies” in the chronic illness community, and noticed people saying they didn’t “have enough spoons” that day, but until I googled it for myself, I didn’t know anything about the origin or the full story. The general population, unless told directly about the Spoon Theory, has no idea what it means or how it’s connected to the chronic illness community, and I think that does us a disservice. The Spoon Theory is an important metaphor in our community, and it helps us explain what has been so unexplainable for so long.
Origins of “The Spoon Theory”
A term thought up by Christine Miserandino (who has Lupus) in 2003 while at a diner with a friend, she used spoons to explain how people with chronic illness have less energy than those who are healthy. Using the metaphor of a spoon to represent a unit of energy, she described how each person wakes up with a limited number of spoons, and uses a certain amount of spoons for each activity performed. If no spoons were left, the rest of the tasks would be unable to be completed. A person who is healthy would be able to sleep or rest and feel replenished enough to continue their activities, but for a lot of people in the chronic illness community, rest and sleep does not restore or recharge us.
Due to the deep fatigue common with chronic illness, our spoons would have to be rationed in a way those who are healthy would not have to. It also may take more spoons for us to complete a single task, but only 1 spoon for a healthy person to complete that same task.
Let me give an example to make it stick a little better. A healthy person wakes up and has 20 spoons to use throughout the day. 1 spoon may be used for a shower, 1 spoon to make and eat breakfast, 1 spoon for taking a walk, and so on. They’d go through their day, using a spoon (or multiple, if it’s a larger task like cleaning the bathroom) until they are out of spoons at the end of the day. Now let’s use a chronically ill person wakes up and they are not refreshed at all. They only have 12 spoons to get through their day. They need 3 just for a shower, 3 to cook a meal, 1 to eat that meal, and they already lost 7 spoons. Less than half to go, and it’s not even the afternoon. Going to work may take all the available spoons left. There’s no cleaning, no cooking dinner, not even enough spoons to watch TV left in the equation.
Christine ended up writing a blog post called “The Spoon Theory”, and it took off in the chronic illness community. People started identifying with it, and it took off worldwide. Those in the community even started referring to themselves as “spoonies”. Love it or hate it, it’s been a great way for others to connect and quantify something like fatigue, in a way that had never been done before.
Why It Matters
Everyone is different, and every day looks and feels different, and that obviously has to be taken into account. You wake up every day with a different amount of spoons, and while yesterday it only took 1 spoon to shower, today it will take 3 spoons. Some days, a shower is not even a possibility because you cooked, cleaned, and did something else that took up every ounce of your available energy. This is the reality for those living with chronic illness, and it’s not like our energy can easily be replenished by caffeine or a nap. No amount of caffeine or a nap will ever make me into a fully-functional human.
Almost daily, I wake up with less than 10 spoons. It takes at least 5 spoons just to shower, and another 5 just to cook, without even taking into account eating the food. How am I supposed to live and be productive with so few spoons? It’s impossible.
I think it’s important for those who are healthy to understand it. It’s important to understand that our productive days will not look like their productive days. They may clean the entire house on a productive day, and still have the energy to make dinner, shower, and walk the dog. We may just have energy to cook dinner and nothing else. Maybe not even that. And that’s okay. We can’t push ourselves past our limits, because it will just make us sicker.
It’s also important to know and understand that you’re not alone in your feelings of inadequacy. Not having enough spoons is not your fault. There are countless chronic illnesses that cause the deep fatigue we all have, some worse than others, and that equals millions of us feeling like we’re never able to do enough, not able to be there enough, not able to function to the fullest degree.
The Spoon Theory gives us a way to describe our feelings. We are not simply tired. We are so deeply fatigued, we cannot even form coherent thoughts all of the time. Our fatigue is so intense that sometimes watching TV is off the table, because we don’t have the energy to understand or think about what we are watching.
Sometimes I wake up with less than 5 spoons and I think to myself “how am I supposed to even get out of bed? That alone would take up the few spoons I have….” and it’s that thought, that feeling, that is so important for healthy people to understand. A lot of the time, our normal day is what they feel on their sickest days, when they’re stuck in bed with the flu, unable to get up.
We’re not simply lazy. We’re not avoiding our lives, our houses, our chores, our errands, our friends. We’re not trying to get out of working. We physically and mentally cannot. Our ability to not do these things does not make us “less than”, or incomplete. They just make us human. Sick humans, but still human. And understanding each other is the greatest way to connect with others.
So this post is for all you healthy individuals. Don’t look down on your Spoonie friends. Instead, have empathy and compassion, or at least try to understand why they feel this way. We’re simply out of spoons. And some days, we have no spoons, only knives.
