Not Enough Spoons…
Living with Fatigue and Burnout
A few years ago, I heard of a woman who was living with a chronic illness, struggling to explain her fatigue to her friends. She lamented that her friends were pulling away, she was becoming isolated, all because they couldn’t understand the constraints her body placed on her. They didn’t find them valid or were too uncomfortable to know how to process the information. This is, roughly, the story she told about a friend calling to invite her to the movies:
I don’t have enough spoons to see you. Every day, I wake up with twelve spoons. That number is fixed. It’s always twelve spoons. I can’t get more spoons. I can’t refill spoons. I have twelve. Exactly twelve.
It takes one spoon to get out of bed. One spoon to dress myself and brush my teeth, etc. One spoon to eat. Two spoons to shower. Now I’m at five spoons — I only have seven left for the entire day. It’s going to take me one spoon to eat lunch and two spoons for dinner — that’s three more spoons I need to budget for. Now I have four spoons left. I have four spoons for the entire rest of my day. This phone call is taking one spoon, so really I have three spoons. Only three spoons left. In order for me to go to a movie, minimally I must get in the car and drive there (one spoon), watch the movie (one spoon), be social (one to two spoons, depending on how many people there are), drive home (one spoon). That’s at least four spoons. But I only have three.
I don’t have enough spoons. If you had called me yesterday, I could have not showered and saved two spoons. Then I might have been able to go with you. But today, I can’t.
The image was so powerful — a tiny spoon, holding a few drops of precious energy that she had to allocate and ration — that it has stuck with me for many years. I imagine her holding out her hands with her tiny spoons balanced carefully on her palms, looking down on them with a loving smile, like a mother holding a newborn. Carefully, gently, tending them throughout the day. Watching as they empty one by one.
One of the things I loved most about her story was how she took care of herself first. Because she did not have a well of energy, she had to actively decide where she would spend it — and every day, she gave herself at minimum six spoons, literally half of her energy, in order to make sure her physical health was taken care of.
Another inspiring element in her story is that she never apologizes for her lack of energy. She has accepted her limits, she lives within them, and while this has had the effect of isolating her from her previous life, she does not lament what she has lost. She does not waste her precious spoons on grief or depression or anger.
Spoons as a Different Metaphor
Her spoons were a metaphor for her energy. The spoons were fixed, the amount of energy was fixed. She could not borrow from tomorrow’s spoons, she could not take a nap and refill a spoon, she could not convince herself that today she really has thirteen spoons.
When I heard her story, I was going through a period of burnout. My first thought was, At least she has an excuse. She has a physical ailment that has real, tangible effects on her. I’m perfectly healthy and still can’t get anything done. This was a great way to further punish myself for my perceived inadequacies, but ultimately not helpful. I started wishing I had energy spoons so I could explain to people what I was going through. Wishing that I had something so valid and tangible to help people understand that while the burnout was a problem in my head, it had real effects on my life.
I started to think about spoons as a reservoir of mental or emotional energy instead of physical energy. If I had twelve spoons of mental effort for the day, how many would getting out of bed expend? How many would showering and eating expend? What about phone calls and mail? What about reading? What about going to the store to buy groceries? What about turning on my computer?
When I started to think of my emotional capacity as fixed, instead of an infinite, renewable resource (which we, as a society, tend to think it is), my “laziness” started to make sense — it was mental/emotional fatigue. If it took me two spoons to get out of bed every day, and six spoons to feed myself (mealtimes are particularly difficult for me), I’m down to four spoons. That’s it, for the whole day!
Let’s just pretend that showering and taking care of normal morning routine things take one spoon each (which was not accurate at the time) — now I’m down to two spoons for the day. Well, reading takes about a spoon per hour. And going to the store is about four spoons. And turning on the computer is about four spoons (because I know my neglected resume is waiting for me, and there are a boat-full of shoulds waiting for me regarding job searches once it’s powered on). The mail is full of bills I don’t have an income to pay — that’s three spoons. If someone comes to the door unexpectedly, I have a panic attack, that’s at least six spoons (someone chopped though my door with an axe right before the burnout started, so yes, doors were an emotional issue). Going for a walk around the block (which is a cure-all, just ask anyone) was about four spoons. Avoiding thinking about mail, bills, the door, the job search, and phone calls was at least one spoon, maybe two.
No wonder I wasn’t able to do so many of these things. Because my mind was in a critical state, everything took more mental effort and more physical effort. My machine was broken, and I was expecting it to perform like nothing was wrong.
When I stopped thinking about mental bandwidth and emotional capacity as infinite, and started to think about them as fixed, it gave me the latitude to give myself permission to be the way I was. Did I like being broken and overwhelmed? No. But suddenly I had a language to talk back to those inner voices that were telling me I should just buck up and buckle down. I was able to quantify my illness, to set reasonable expectations of myself, and to accept when I had reached those limits.
I can’t go the store today, I don’t have enough spoons. I can go early tomorrow, though.
I can’t deal with the mail today, I don’t have enough spoons. But I can sift through it and throw away the junk mail. I can sort it into piles of importance.
On the Mend
Since then, I have recovered greatly from my burnout. I am employed, again. I am able to face many activities of daily life without them taking all my spoons. I like to think that I still have twelve spoons, they are just filled with better fuel. It’s higher-octane emotional gas filling them, so they can do more work. Some things still require several spoons, and I have to accept that about myself, embrace it, plan for it, and allow that “indulgence,” or find a way to make it easier — i.e. less spoon-costly.
One day, my spoons will be filled with premium and I’ll be a power-house of energy and mental bandwidth. For now, I have a way to measure my successes, my progress, and my overall well-being by tracking how far my spoons will take me, by noticing if things start taking more spoon-power, and making adjustments. I have to re-tune in order to make sure the important things have enough spoon-power allocated.
