Sleep and Spell Slots

Depressive episodes are… odd. They strike at completely unpredictable times, then derail your plans and expectations for the day as soon as they happen. They absolutely drain your spell slots/eat up your spoons for the day.

Unless they last for longer than a day. Then you just don’t get to have spell slots for awhile.

If this talk of Spell Slots and Spoons is confusing, then go back and read Spell Slots and Spoon Theory ( https://medium.com/collected-blog-posts-of-a-bipolar-author/spell-slots-and-spoon-theory-f9481abaacd6) where I talk about this in detail, you’ll be caught up quick.

Depression changes the fucking game on you when you aren’t looking, as I’m sure many other people living with it can agree. One minute you’re doing fine, your life is structured and planned, and then suddenly, NOTHING. Everything takes too much effort to do, like you suddenly need twice as many spell slots as you needed before, and Depressive Episodes can last FOREVER. As I’m writing this I’m struggling through a multi-day episode (which is why so many of these paragraphs are super short), and the one respite that everyone dealing with Depression looks forward to has done NOTHING for me.

When we talk about Spell Slots and Spoon Theory, we often talk about the number of things that people can get done in a day. Certain things take more spoons/spell slots, and when you run out of spoons/spell slots you have to rest to recharge them. While individually that time-scale will be different, people generally consider it to be a daily thing, since that’s easy to explain and understand. But Depression fucks with that model. Depression basically says “You don’t get to recharge spell slots until your Depression is gone.”

So you just struggle for however long it takes to break the episode, scraping by on what few slots you have left and trying to manage on what few things don’t require a full spell slot. There isn’t a lot you can do about it. You just… keep going. Eventually it breaks, and things return to normal, but that time you spent depressed is essentially wasted time. It’s infuriating.

There isn’t much to be said about what to do during these times than just ‘what you can.’ Even the bare minimum is something. As per usual; If you can, ask for help. As long as you’ve managed SOMETHING, even something as simple as getting out of bed, then you haven’t wasted that time. Just gotta take it one step at a time until it passes.