To think that this isn’t lazy ? We all have different limits

[Alldifferent]

I was talking to my mum today and she asked what my plans were this week and I said what we did yesterday and what we are doing today and tomorrow and how thu fri sat sun will be doing nothing as I need downtime after 3 busy days . She is fully aware I have limitations due to having ASD and she piped up with ‘you’re not helping yourself with that lazy attitude ! Your get up and go has got up and gone !’

I tried to explain even though I don’t really think I should have to and she said ‘well me and your father often say we are still funding your life as we still work ! ‘ I’ve tried in the past to explain about ‘spoons’ but she always gets irritated and says ‘less talking about CUTLERY might help! You always did prefer inanimate objects to people! ‘ 🤦‍♀️

Im not lazy ??!! If my own parents are this openly judgemental to my face I hate to think what’s said behind my back.

For one thing, you were quite patronising in your reply, and kind of disability too, and you know, just because her parents clearly think she should work, doesn't mean it's actually true, right?

I'm ND and I understand OP. My in-laws are very like your parents.

Absolutely this. Sadly it suits people to believe this as they need an easy target for their vitriol.

Haven't RTFT but I also have an ASD diagnosis (among other things), and struggle a lot with things like energy, motivation, organisation, doing more than one thing in a day, being around people a lot, and needing a long recovery time. So I get that part of it.

But TBH I wish people would retire this "spoons" thing, or at least stop thinking it's a useful tool to help them more easily explain the concept of having a very limited amount of energy to use. I cringe a bit hearing people talking about "spoons" to members of the general public outside of online disability communities. I'm not a big fan of the metaphor even within those communities, personally — but I acknowledge that there are people who feel it means something to them, and that using the argot associated with a particular group gives people a sense of belonging.

To me, wheeling out the "spoons" metaphor to people who aren't already within that subculture comes across as some combination of childish, patronising, facile, unhelpful, unimaginative, bizarre, simplistic and cliquey. It also doesn't add any explanatory or persuasive value over just saying you have a limited amount of energy and when it's gone, it's gone. It adds an unnecessary layer of abstraction and confusion. When people use the term/concept outside those cliques that have adopted it, it comes across to me like they don't realise that communicating with other adults in the real world isn't the same as talking to their online community, and that the language they might use online as a quick shorthand that demonstrates their insider status might be weird, opaque and annoying outside of that.

Never heard of the spoons thing either.

I would also point out that dentists are very bright, have unusual and invasive noises (some made inside your head) and involve people getting very very close to your head. These are overwhelming even to those of is who are neither ASD or fatigued.

Why? Because from what I’ve seen you appear to relish in the negative. It’s a little predictable though, and unnecessary. In the words of many before me, do better.

This. They can give me migraines and make me feel a bit "funny." I get migraines anyway, but they definitely a big trigger. Isn't there something known as supermarket sickness that's related to the lighting too?

Appreciate this post 💐

Yep. I cope well at the dentist and nobody would ever know how stressful I find it. What most people don't know is that I make sure my day will allow for an hour long nap afterward.

Yep - it's the strip lighting they use - it can cause migraines and weird vision for some people.

Well lots of autistic people do, in fact, struggle with the right register for the right audience.
I do kind of agree with you that spoon theory isn’t the useful description aid it maybe was 20 years ago when it was first adopted from the article written by Christine Miserandino. But for a lot of us we stick to what we know and try really hard to make NT and non-chronically ill people understand what it’s like. And judging by some of the replies on this thread we really do still need to be trying to make people at least try and understand.

Because she’s autistic. That means just ‘being’ a human requires a lot more effort than it shows for most people. Going to the shop is a huge effort for me. Dealing with a phone all I need to make. Making an appointment. Sometimes an entire day can be taken up with getting it together to ring someone. It’s exhausting.

Ooh yes. I am currently trying to ring someone back who I had a missed call from 3 weeks ago. That's it, that is what I am doing with my day, trying to get myself to make one call.

Being ND is exhausting

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/autistic-burnout
its not new or unusual. It’s just we now know that many women who’ve been diagnosed as
depressed or bipolar or bpd are actually autistic and the inability to function is autistic burnout, not depression.

Thank you for posting this.

I feel you. And then you add in the self-loathing and beating yourself up because why can’t you just be normal? Why is it so hard to do every day tasks. I have a form I need to complete, it’s important, it’s time sensitive, have I done it? No. Because just thinking about doing it overwhelms me. Then when I finally manage to do it, it’s never as bad as I think and I’ve worn myself out for no reason. Add in an entire household of ND peopld. And this is constant. People have no idea.

It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a disability.

my parents don’t understand everything that I do! They don’t have to.

it sounds like you’re doing alright op, I’d give up trying to justify yourself to them. Maybe they assume you need them to solve your problems when you really don’t.

I can relate to so much in this thread. The other day I gave myself a haircut because it was getting too shaggy looking, and I can’t cope with the salon. Well I thought a bob would be cute, but I f’ed it up so badly it kept getting shorter and shorter as I tried to fix it. I had such a breakdown during that, so upset that I can’t go to the salon like a normal person and now I had a laughable haircut to boot. Eventually I got it to a place where it looks pretty cute but the process getting there was so emotionally draining. And it’s also very short now 😆

My happiest memories of my childhood are days at home, in the garden playing and reading.

I’m not really sure what you mean? I have experienced traumatic death of a family member, I’ve experienced medical trauma to myself. I lived for 10 years with no heating or hot water. I manage those things in various ways. There’s been meltdowns. The lack of heating, I just got used to and once it’s routine, it’s routine. A routine in my own home isn’t the same as dealing with a trip to the supermarket where there are soubds and smells and lights and people and interaction. It’s not so much the physical issue of walking round the shop, it’s the sensory and mental overload.
someone like my son would probably just die if there was a war. He isn’t equipped to deal with that kind of thing alone.

I hear you, OP. Your parents (and some on this thread) don't sound very understanding at all.

Thank you for this response 💐

Absolutely, I get that difficulties related to the very issues they're trying to communicate may cause people to struggle with intuiting whether Spoon Theory is really the right fit for a particular situation. As I said, I have an ASD diagnosis too. That kind of thing doesn't always come easily to me. I'm just trying to give my own ASD-flavoured perspective on how I feel the whole thing can come across, when people start talking about "spoons" in a mainstream context and expecting others to take it seriously.

To me, the original article was an interesting snapshot into life as a disabled person — using whatever you happen to have available to try to communicate something about how you navigate life, to someone with a totally different experience who needs things presented in a way that gets through to them.

I can see why the author and some of her friends would've adopted it as their own in-joke shorthand, and I can see how it might have spread within a community.

But I personally wish it had been a short-lived insider reference, or treated as a mildly interesting blog post somebody linked to once in a while, rather than what we have now, people calling themselves spoonies and talking about the "spoonie community" and buying spoon-related merch and talking about not having any spoons left, to people who have no idea what they mean. And without having people being encouraged to think it's in any way a helpful analogy to use with their sceptical parents, when it will probably just make them even less likely to believe that there's a genuine disability-related difficulty that deserves compassion and accommodation, and more likely to think you're taking the piss.