Spoon Theory

A reminder about this came up in my Facebook newsfeed yesterday.

For those who have diseases of the invisible kind - and there is a wide range of these nasties - chronic pain is only part of the problem. An equally devastating part is what happens when you overdo things. This is where the cost of doing some activity - which for the able-bodied may seem quite insignificant - wipes you out for days. This is why those with chronic pain from any of a multitude of causes have to pull out of social activities or can't do something that seems perfectly simple - and which they managed a few days ago - today. Because it's so hard for the healthy to understand this the sufferer is seen as unreliable and lazy and this impacts on everything from friendship to employment.

You may have heard folk with these kinds of conditions refer to 'spoons'. This refers to what Christine Miserandino calls 'spoon theory', where you are dealt a set number of 'spoons' every day. Each 'spoon' represents a specific amount of energy and how you 'spend' them correlates to what you can do on that day and often for days following. Have a look at her website But You Don't Look Sick where she talks about living with lupus (one of the invisible auto-immune diseases) and if you want to find out more about Spoon Theory in particular it's at this link https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/  It's worth a read.