Meanwhile… 018
“The Spoon Theory” is a phrase that I came across quite often when I first began my foray into looking into how Autism presented itself in adults when it became clear to me that from what I’d already gathered, it explained a lot of the hurdles I’d had in the past and those that I still have to jump today.
First coined by Christine Miserandino in an essay that she wrote in 2003 to explain the challenges of fatigue when having Lupus, it’s been adopted by many others who face the issue of having fatigue, both physical and mental, when it relates to illnesses or circumstances that aren’t immediately apparent to others.
Very much in line with the phrase of having “burn out”, Miserandino’s spoon analogy is a wonderful one that perfectly explains how what one person is capable of is not the same as that of another, and how each person’s own limits can affect how challenging a “normal” day can be.
Essentially, her essay uses spoons as a visible representation of units of energy, inviting the reader to imagine starting their day with a set amount of spoons – each spoon being the ability to perform a task – and how quickly one can run out of spoons depending on their own personal circumstances.
I’m not going to go into it fully here, as I could never do it justice, but I will add the link to her original article explaining Spoon Theory. It’s worth googling it further also to see how it’s become a valuable means of many people who suffer from fatigue for numerous reasons to explain how challenging it can be.
For myself, Spoon Theory struck a chord because when I began to question whether or not I may have been Autistic, I’d had a change of both home and employment, moving from a small town to a larger city environment – something I’d grown unaccustomed to across 11 years.
With this change, mostly due to work, came greater levels of interaction with greater numbers of people – something I handled well while working, but come the end of each week I was finding I’d be burnt out and sleep for anywhere between 18 to 22 hours. Something which was most unlike me, having long been a night owl well-accustomed to running on short hours of sleep. What had changed for the most part wasn’t even how much interaction I’d had to adjust to, but with how many people.
It’s a problem that many people face. Autistics, those with Lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, depression and many more situations where you really couldn’t imagine that degree of simply not having the energy for something unless you’d experienced that level of burn-out yourself.
Christine Miserandino explained it perfectly, and I’m so glad that she had the spoons herself to do so, because it’s helped make it easier for so many others to explain why what might seem to be simple things to others can sometimes be so hard to do.