ruminative mode: [health] On the Spoon Theory...

[paradisacorbasi]

First things first: I am not trying to make anybody feel bad by what I say below. I am trying to work through my own thought process here, so any offense is purely unintentional.

ambelies linked me to a couple threads[1] by people I don't follow, speaking to the idea that it is cultural misappropriation to use the spoon theory if you are:

• able-bodied
• not

Comments

[joellevand]

Confession: at work, I tell my boss I have migraines and hypoglycemia to explain my deep, depression-related fatigue. I can take a day off for a migraine; if I would try to call out too depressed to move, I'd be written up. Such is the continuing stigma of mood/psych disorders.

[paradisacorbasi]

Same here. I think it is really sad how misinformed people are.

[missysedai]

cultural misappropriation to use the spoon theory

"Cultural misappropriation"??

I'm sorry, that's horseshit.

Indigo, I - as someone suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, and thus apparently "allowed" to use spoons - hereby give you full and unbridled permission to use "Spoon Theory" any godsdamned way you please. It's a perfectly good way to explain things to people who don't understand the toll of invisible disorders, and just because your invisible disorders don't leave you writhing in pain, doesn't mean your invisible disorders are any less troublesome than mine.

ETA: I often find the "disability Olympics" attitude frustrating, the "I'm sicker than you are, so you don't get to use this!" entitlement attitude. Frustrating and baffling. What does it accomplish? If I sneer at you that being depressed is not like my pain and mobility issues, what am I getting done, exactly? Is it helping me get around any better or hurt any less? Or is it just bitchery?

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which one it is.

[nsingman]

Kudos.

[cdaae]

Absolutely agreed. I think the spoon theory is completely applicable to depression (which often has chronic fatigue as a symptom, as well as a side-effect of certain medications). When I'm severely depressed, my limbs feel like lead. It takes immense physical effort just to move my mouth muscles enough to speak. It is exhausting. So is going through the day with your head screaming at you to just give up and die already.

Aargh.

[angrylemur]

This. Anyone who says that depression does not have a crushing physical component is, ahem, misinformed.

I also think the dismissal of anxiety-disordered people from using the spoon theory is troubling, too - as anyone who's had an anxiety attack can tell you, anxiety disorders can have severe physical components too, and I'm not talking just about my compulsive skin-picking. Anxiety attacks, which I risk doing shit like, um, going out in public when I have no anxiety-disordered-person-spoons, are terrifying and have occasionally caused me to black out

[paradisacorbasi]

It wasn't specifically developed. Somebody asked her disabled friend what it was like living with the disability and the person who came up with the spoon theory came up with it on the spur of the moment because they were sitting in a diner.

That's how I understand it as having come about.

And now that I think of it, it's on a website called But You Don't Look Sick.

The website isn't confining its content and membership only to people with physical disabilities, so why should the spoon theory be confined only to the physically disabled?

[reynai]

I have usually-mild but oft-variable depression. Stagger that atop anxiety and occasionally-severe introversion (to the point where hearing someone talking in the next room can make me wince), and this means that I have 'normal person' days and 'spoon-counting' days. Having been ill lately, I've been feeling the spoons more than ever

[annlarimer]

As someone who suffers 3 types of depression[2], I can tell you that it does cost me a spoon some days just to get out of bed.

Oh HELLS yes.

[annlarimer]

Happily I have teeny green buddies that help me with that, when necessary. And God bless 'em and whoever invented 'em.