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Welcome to the A to Z English podcast.
My name is Jack, and I'm here with my co-host,
Sochal.
Today, Sochal and I are going to talk about something called Spoon Theory.
I don't really know what this is, to be honest.
I am kind of ignorant on this topic,
but Sochal is going to explain the meaning of Spoon Theory.
And then, we are going to complain like a couple of old people
about all of our physical ailments that we're dealing with.
Right?
So, okay, awesome.
All right, what is Spoon Theory?
Sochal.
So Spoon Theory is a metaphor,
and it describes the metaphysical or mental energy
that you have available for daily activities.
So, if you live with chronic pain or chronic illness,
whether it's mental or physical or both,
you're kind of limited in a way that other people aren't.
And so, the idea is that you have a set amount of spoons.
Let's say you have 10 spoons for your day.
And then, things that other people don't realize take up energy
because they have a more fit body,
do take up energy for people with chronic pain.
So, let's say, getting up and out of bed,
taking a shower, making something to eat,
even getting ready for bed,
getting dressed, all those things can put strain on your body
and eat up your spoon.
So, maybe by the time you even get ready to go to work,
you're down five spoons,
and someone who doesn't have chronic illness
might have just used a spoon or half a spoon of energy
to do all those things.
Yeah, and let's just quickly unpack a little bit
of the vocabulary.
Chronic means always constant.
So, chronic pain means you're always in pain.
From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed,
you have some kind of pain issue.
And so, social was describing like,
spoons are not literally spoons.
We're not talking about real spoons.
We're saying they're like metaphors.
You got 10 spoons.
They're like units of energy, basically.
Units of energy, writes exactly.
And so...
Like hit points on a video game
when your character has like a little green bar.
Yeah, right.
Energy, your power, it goes down,
and goes down.
If your character is a healthy character,
let's say they did all their tasks
and their bar is still green.
But if your character has chronic illness,
then by the time they're done with their morning routine,
they might be down to yellow.
They might be down to half points.
Right.
And let's say your energy level for the day
for a person with chronic pain is 10 spoons.
Like social said,
getting ready in the morning,
making breakfast, taking a shower,
getting dressed,
that might be five spoons.
Which means you only have five left for the whole day.
So, you get the bus, get to work,
open your computer,
you know, there's three more spoons.
Now you've got two spoons left.
You don't even have enough to get home, you know?
Right.
Until you hit the wall, right?
And you're so exhausted.
Yeah.
And a lot of people get through their day
today on like a spoon deficit.
So, but your, the concept basically suggests
your borrowing spoons,
your borrowing energy from your next day.
Which is how people who have chronic illness
might end up pushing through a five day work week
and doing 40 hours a week.
But then on the weekend, they're just laying in bed
the whole two days.
Right. They're just totally wiped out.
Okay. I love the idea of spoon theory.
I think it's a really good,
I'm not sure why they call it spoons.
Like you spoons is the,
right?
As the example.
But it could be anything.
I just think maybe because you run out,
you run out, I don't know if this is true or not.
But, you know, when you're doing dishes,
like you only have a certain amount of spoons,
then you have to do the dishes again.
Oh, yeah. That's right.
That's probably it.
Yeah. I think that's the sense.
Yeah.
So,
I'll start with myself here first.
I've been dealing with a chronic,
chronic back pain for probably 20 years.
I would say I had my first surgery,
my first back surgery for disc problems
when I was 27.
And then,
probably about 10 years later,
maybe 15 years later,
I had another back surgery for more disc problems.
And now, for the last, like maybe three weeks,
I've been dealing with some serious chronic pain,
just all the time,
with my back and my discs again.
So,
what I find is when you're in pain all the time,
you're more tired.
You can't exercise.
So, when you eat, you get bored,
you're sitting around.
So, for me, I'll eat more to comfort myself,
which makes me...
How's it going to do, right?
Yeah.
Gain weight, which makes my back hurt more,
which makes me more depressed,
which makes me want to eat more,
which makes me not exercise more.
And it's like a horrible spiral,
you know, as I just go down the drain, you know?
And things are getting worse and worse.
So, yeah.
I know what the spoon theory thing you're talking about
is like, there are times where I go to work,
and I run out of spoons.
You know, by my third class,
I'm just like...
I don't... whatever.
You know what, guys?
Just take a rest and, you know,
draw a picture on your paper,
whatever you want to do.
Talk with your friend.
Like, I'm completely...
I'm done.
Like, I don't have the mental capacity
or the physical capacity to do this anymore.
And it's a really depressing way to live,
because living with pain all the time
means you're kind of always thinking
about the pain.
It's always in your mind.
And then that leaves a little bit of space
for you to think about it.
At Parker, our purpose is simple.
We want to make the world a better place
by working more efficiently,
by using more sustainable practices,
by developing better technologies.
We keep moving forward,
with each new idea,
innovation, and partnership.
We're one step closer to fulfilling our purpose
every single day.
To find out more, visit parker.com slash purpose.
Parker, engineering your success.
You can deal with other people.
So I find that I'm really short-tempered with my wife.
I'm like, short with my wife.
You know, my wife will ask me a question like,
what do you want for dinner?
What?
You know, that's my response.
It's something like that.
And it's like, it's so rude.
And so, disgusting of a response.
But it's not because I was mad at her
or anything to do with her.
It's just because I was in some pain,
just like, not able to focus.
Like, what did you say?
Like, I can't even hear what other people are saying to me.
And I really hate being like this.
Like, it really makes me frustrated.
And I can't get good sleep
because I can't lie on my side.
It hurts.
If I lie on my back, it hurts.
If I lie on my other side, it hurts.
So it's really, I've been dealing with this.
And I know that you also have understand what I'm saying
because I think you've dealt with some physical issues as well.
Yeah.
Definitely, Jack.
I completely understand what you're saying.
I was born with borderline hip dysplasia.
I'm both hips.
And that just means my anatomy is wonky.
So my bone is like here instead of being gear.
It's like on the edge of where it's supposed to be.
And every time I walk, it like beats up the other bone, I guess.
So it like pinches.
And it's really bad in one hip specifically,
which has become weaker due to the pain.
But it's really hard to do physical therapy with it
because I'm in pain.
So it's hard to start doing exercises around it
because it hurts more and it's more tiring.
And I have like a very limited
amount of what I can do in one day,
which means that I'll, if I feel like I have energy
to do something, I'll do as much as I can in one day.
And then I'll end up borrowing spoons for the next day.
So I'm totally crashed out the next day.
I have no energy.
And I know what you mean.
I can also get really short tempered.
One thing a lot of people don't realize is that it affects your sleep.
Right.
So imagine that you had really poor sleep.
For like a week straight.
At that point, if you're only sleeping
far less hours a night than you're supposed to be far less comfortably,
you probably start getting confused, agitated, irritable.
And unfortunately, people around you suffer
because you can snap at them.
I expect that.
You're not going to snap with strangers.
You know, you're going to snap at the people that you love
because you know that they can't abandon you.
And you know, it's like you're comfortable with,
you're comfortable around them.
And you're also interacting with them more on a daily basis
than you would with any strangers, right?
So it does, it is really hard.
It's one of the reasons that I have a hard time finding
a full time job that I can do is because I only have so many
spoons in a day.
And I really struggled with college when I was in college
for the same reason.
And it's not that the work was too hard for me.
It was that I would just get so burnt out in a day
from I didn't, I like, I won't sleep well.
I'm not eating well.
I feel terrible.
I can't walk well some days.
I really have to drag myself around just get anywhere.
And I think it really puts a strain on what you can do
in any given day.
And a lot of people just don't understand,
especially when it's kind of an invisible disability.
So like people like Jack and I, we might look fine
to people on the outside.
But we're suffering internally through all these physical
and emotional stressors because it does affect your mental
well being as well.
Yeah.
Chronic pain is, it doesn't just affect your body.
It affects your mind as well.
It plays games with your mind and changes your personality
and your outlook on life and everything.
So yeah, trying to overcome it, if you can find some way
of dealing with physical therapy or some kind of,
if there's a way out of it, I highly recommend pursuing it
if it's possible.
And staying away from pain killers and opiates
and that sort of stuff because that stuff is just
masks the pain for a little while.
But then that'll send you down a whole, you know,
could say-
Another wormhole, right?
Yes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So there isn't really necessarily always
a good solution to our problems.
Sometimes they can throw pain killers at it.
That's not going to solve the problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like feeding the monster temporarily
than it like a weird, it's like we had again.
Yeah, it gives you a week of, you know,
like kind of, but then you're foggy, you know,
you're not yourself, you know.
So-
And you can also get irritable like as soon as you're off
the pain meds or as soon as-
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And you get dependent on them.
So I think it, yeah, I really haven't had much.
I did get an injection, a cortisol injection in my hip
that worked for about two weeks and then the pain is back.
It's supposed to work for average to three to six months.
So I'm like, well, I'm fully doing our work.
So I burned through that.
So we shall see.
But yeah, it is a frustrating condition.
And I think first world, so-called first world countries
are just now starting to treat chronic pain
as its own condition, not just the underlying cause,
but managing it on its own.
And we're just now making strides and making
accommodations for it in the workplace.
And I think we're making big leaps.
But yeah, I'm curious to know about your guys' experience
as listeners.
Do any of you suffer with chronic pain
or chronic health conditions?
Obviously, only share as much as your comfortable sharing.
But yeah, I'm just curious to know what are things
like in your country?
How does it operate in your country and your culture?
Yeah, I'm very interested to know.
So leave us a comment down below at a.dzenglizpodcast.com.
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Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
