Spell Slots and Spoon Theory

So if you know someone who has a chronic/mental illness of some sort, you’ve probably heard them talk about not having enough Spoons at some point. Sometimes tabletop RPG players will refer to it as spell slots, but in essence the principle is the same; They don’t have the energy to do anything else for the day, or until they rest for a bit.

Spoon Theory was first put forth by Christine Miserandino in her essay, The Spoon Theory. The idea is that everyone has a set number of Spoons for a given day, and performing actions uses up those spoons until you get a little bit of rest or just go to sleep for the day. When the TTRPG community heard about this, it sounded very similar to the idea of Spell Slots (a mechanic in some RPGs that restricts how many spells a character can cast in a given day), and so they applied that terminology to it.

There’s no codified difference between Spoon Theory and Spells Slots, but by shifting the analogy from Spoons to Spell Slots the application becomes more specific. Different tasks can be assigned to ‘higher’ spell slots (they take more effort to do, so you can only do a few of them) while others can be denoted as ‘cantrips/0 level’ slots (things you can do regardless).

For ‘healthy’ people, they usually have enough Spoons/Spell Slots to get through the day, and then a few extras, but for people suffering from a long term illness (chronic pain, mental illness, etc.) their Spoons/Spell Slots get eaten up by just dealing with the reality of their situation. As an example, standing up may be a ‘cantrip’/not require any spoons normally, but for someone with a long term illness it could take higher effort due to pain, depression, or a number of other factors. Spoons and Spell Slots serve as useful terminology for people with long-term illnesses because we can use it as shorthand to tell someone we just don’t have the energy for something, and it is (generally) less frowned upon than simply saying “I don’t have the energy for that,” and requires less explanation.

So why am I talking about Spoons and Spell Slots today? Because writing this blog is a cantrip, and I am completely out of spell slots for the day. And because I feel like going over exactly what I can’t bring myself to do today can help people who aren’t familiar with the idea understand just how much people can be held back by long term illnesses. So here’s a short list of the things I haven’t managed to do today because I’m out of spell slots:

I can’t bring myself to take a shower
I can’t bring myself to cook food
I can’t bring myself to order food
When I can bring myself to look at delivery apps, I can’t decide what I want
I can’t bring myself to get out of my chair
I can’t bring myself to watch anything on YouTube
I can’t bring myself to have a conversation
I can’t bring myself to turn on music

Things I CAN do right now

Write this blog post
Share other people’s work on Twitter
Post stream of consciousness posts on Twitter
Browse Facebook

And that’s about it.

Now I’m sure I’ll get the energy to do some of these things later, once my energy isn’t spent fighting off depression, but until this depression passes, I’m pretty much stuck here. And a lot of other people have this experience every single day. So if you see someone struggling with something you think is incredibly basic, maybe help them out. Just because someone has less spell slots than you doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.