“Not Enough Spoons”
How to Enjoy Life More When You Don’t Have Much Left to Give
Have you ever heard of someone referring to having or not having spoons, and it isn’t referring to actual spoons? What they are referencing is a metaphor describing the amount of energy, mental or physical, that a person has available to spend. Each spoon is energy to be spent on something, and so we have to ration how much we give in order to get through the day. It was first described in an essay back in 2003, when the author was sharing about her experience living with chronic illness, providing imagery to share more about how her limitations may not be seen, but are felt, and significantly impact her being able to function. Since then, this metaphor has grown to embody the struggles of more than just those people with chronic illness, but those with mental illness, marginalization, and other forms of invisible burdens.
As a person, I completely get this experience. While Type 1 Diabetes has physical stresses, a lot of the burden is the sheer amount of decision-making that is involved in keeping myself alive (I believe that science has estimated that I make 180 more decisions each day than the average person due to my disease). My POTS and PCOS certainly add to the stress, reducing the number of spoons I have available.
As a therapist, I see within myself and my colleagues the impacts of how many spoons we spend engaging in our jobs. Many of us are thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day because we have spent a large amount of emotional energy not only creating space for others’ emotions, but needing to be intentional with our words, gestures, and expressions. It is why many therapists can only feel comfortable seeing 4-5 clients per day (every therapist differs - so some are okay with more sessions, and some need less), otherwise, our ability to provide quality therapy reduces, and our personal lives suffer.
In seeing my clients, I so often see them struggling with shame, because they believe that they should be able to do more, and not doing so is lazy. I could go all into how this is connected with the history of ableism, but in this blog post, I wanted to point out how this “lack of spoons” problem is one we see people coming to therapy to try to fix. They assume that since they are struggling in comparison to others that it must be due to a something emotional, or some unknown reason why they can’t get themselves motivated enough. That simply isn’t true. Sometimes, they just don’t have enough spoons to do everything expected of them. These expectations definitely come from society, but some of the hardest expectations to let go of are those expectations that one has for themselves.
In therapy, we can maybe help you learn more about yourself, assisting you in recognizing your own limits without shame. We process grief associated with having less spoons compared to others or compared with our younger selves. We can strategize how you ration your spoons, figuring out what you value most along with what drains you, and sort out how to give you the most value with what energy you have available to spend. We can assess what emotional barriers might be limiting your spoon supply and addressing the root causes. We can build your capacity to do more with those spoons, making your life more efficient. Therapy certainly helps those people “not enough spoons”, but it won’t change the fundamental amount you have to give.
There can be a lot of sadness, maybe hopelessness when we recognize the limits of our own ability to live life. Most of us feel this at some point, especially as we age and we recognize that our bodies have less energy, and our time is limited. It is often scary to sit with. However, life being limited helps us value it more.
We value what is abundant less and we value what is limited in supply more. This holds true for both items and experiences. Our ability to live life is limited, hence why we value it highly. The same should go for spoons we have. We have a limited amount of energy we can spend, so our energy is valuable.
We understand it easily when we remember that our labor is traded for income, and we feel robbed when we get little in return for our labor spent. Our spoons are labor we give. But not just the labor involved with traditional work, but the work associated with maintaining relationships, self-care, chores, decision-making, and otherwise engaging in the world. Our income is the amount others trade us for our spoons, but how we choose to spend our time and energy is how much we value it. For those of us with less spoons to begin with, we must value them more. If we don’t, we feel worthless, impoverished, and hopeless. Knowing yourself, your feelings, and how much spoons you have and their worth, and setting boundaries with your effort and time spent, helps you respect your own worth and get more out of life.
(If for some reason all that you took from this blog was that you want the pictured spoons, go ahead and pick some up over at IKEA, at 2110 W. IKEA Way, Tempe, AZ 85284 - because sometimes you literally just need new spoons)
