Spoon Theory (or how trauma has helped me better understand my son’s life experience)

The other day I went out with a group of moms in a post-covid get together. They are an awesome group of women, all supporting their 2SLGBTQ+ kids in a world that can be cruel and hard for them. In some ways I was really looking forward to it. In other ways, I felt like a misfit.

When people get together, they talk about their shared interest. Baseball fans talk baseball; Musicians talk music; parents talk about their kids. You can probably imagine how difficult that can be for someone whose reason for connection is gone.

I tried my best to find other points of connection. I tried (and failed) not to cry. I smiled whether or not I felt like it. In other words, I spent a lot of energy trying to be “normal”.

Then I came home and shortly thereafter passed out. I slept for 12 hours.

This experience helped me realize that sometimes the most “normal” of activities become quite “un-normal” when experienced through the lens of past trauma and loss. Just trying to be upbeat and positive and working to hold back the tears (most of the time) is exhausting.

That’s when I made the connection to spoon theory, and to the everyday experience of my autistic son.

Spoon theory*, created by Christine Miserandino to help explain living with chronic illness, has been adopted in mental health circles as a metaphor for living with mental illness. Spoon theory posits that healthy individuals have an unlimited supply of “spoons” but those living with illness have a set number of spoons for the day. The choices they make, whether to shower or not or whether to stop at the grocery store on their way home from work, for example, are decisions made based on the number of spoons a person has that day. The number of “spoons” required for each activity varies from person to person and day to day.

Spoon theory has also been applied to autism. It is well documented that autistic individuals expend a great deal of energy managing the stress and anxiety of adapting and figuring out how to behave in different situations, coping with sensory issues and more. They have to adjust their day’s activities to account for the number of spoons required. Once out of spoons, they are done for the day, and often meltdowns and/or shutdowns result. For James, sensory overwhelm, accompanied by chronic pain, leave him exhausted after the most mundane of activities. When he was younger, a day at school would exhaust him to the point where he would sleep for hours after getting home.

Similarly, living post-trauma takes a lot of energy and one’s capacity for activity is reduced.

I have found that being upbeat and social takes a lot of spoons. Charlie is present throughout so many of my thoughts. I carry her with me like a 50 pound bag on my shoulders. When Charlie is there, (and she always is) it takes extra spoons for me to keep from falling apart. I don’t begrudge her this. I just need to remember to expect less of myself, give myself grace because living and coping takes more energy than it did before she died.

So today I understand James’s experience of living much better than I did before December 2021. I understood it intellectually before. Now I really get it.

*https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/