Chronic illness is challenging to diagnose due to overlapping symptoms with common chronic conditions like depression, diabetes, a thyroid problem, autoimmune, or celiac disease.

How people treat you based on your chronic illness can make you feel like a loser when trying to describe the physical and mental challenges of what chronic illness feels like invisible to you and others.

Before I was diagnosed with an invisible illness, I was misdiagnosed with depression.

It took nine years, liters of blood being drawn, x-rays, multiple sleep studies, and MRIs to begin to put a name to my symptoms of fatigue, pain, brain fog, and sleep disturbances.

When I received my diagnose of fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome, at first I was relieved.

Just because you can put a name to something doesn’t make the problem go away. Not by a long shot.

Like a blooming onion, it’s the beginning of pulling back the layers to find the underlining causes of how you got there and making the required lifestyle changes to live independent and productive lives.

What Is A Chronic Illness?

A chronic illness is a condition lasting longer than six months. Trauma, a car accident or surgery, an injury, environmental factors (if you’re a military veteran reading this, toxic smoke from burn pits), and significant stress can set off chronic illness responses.

Triggers can develop slowly starting with fatigue, followed by chronic fatigue, joint pain, gastrointestinal issues like irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, hair loss, peripheral neuropathy, and weight gain.

There is no cure. The life I lived before had to change to accommodate this new friend, fibro.

Living with a chronic illness can make you think differently about yourself, eat away at your self-esteem, feel like a total failure, and isolate yourself from others.

You never know when you will feel fine. Friends and family members can grow tired of you constantly canceling plans due to your “invisible illness”.

How Does One Describe Chronic Illness?

I describe my chronic illness as feeling like my nerves are constantly on fire.

The description I give, I find people can understand as we call has experienced the feeling of our feet on fire, but the pain I describe is widespread throughout the body.

Another way to describe chronic illness is with spoons. We all use spoons every day, but what is the connection between spoons and the word “spoonie”?

What Is The Spoonie Theory?

Spoonie theory is a visual way to describe chronic illness and the symptoms associated with it such as pain, fatigue, headaches, and irritable bowel syndrome to another person.

Many of these symptoms are “invisible” and can be hard for family, friends, and co-workers to understand what you’re going through because they can’t see fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, lupus, mood disorders, etc. thus the reason for the term “invisible illness”.

Many of these symptoms are “invisible.” It can be hard for family, friends, and co-workers to understand what you’re going through because they can’t see fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, lupus, mood disorders, etc. thus the reason for the term “invisible illness.”

Spoons represent the day to day challenges a chronic illness sufferer faces in trying to complete daily tasks, responsibilities, and activities.

Many of these symptoms are “invisible” and can be hard for family, friends, and co-workers to understand what you’re going through because they can’t see fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, lupus, mood disorders, etc. thus the reason for the term “invisible illness”.

Spoons represent a visual aid to convey to others the day to day challenges a chronic illness sufferer faces in trying to complete daily tasks, responsibilities, and activities.

Understanding The Spoonie Theory

Let’s say you have ten spoons. For each task or activity, a spoon is taken away. Some days you may be able to accomplish more, whereas, on a low energy day, you accomplish less.

The physical challenges accompanied by varying levels of anxiety forces you to break down your day when you are sick.

Making the choice of whether or not to accomplish your to-do list. Perhaps you don’t have enough energy to take a shower, do your hair, cook a meal, clean your house.

It doesn’t make you less of a person, or a loser, it means you just have to think about things differently and slooow down.

The spoonie theory can help you to understand your chronic illness, how to accept the reality you can’t do everything, the need to pace yourself and attack one thing one day versus multiple things at once.

Spoons Help Illustrate How Your Days Go

Learning how to delegate tasks like going to the grocery store, mowing the lawn, or plowing your driveway to someone else through an online service is the difference between having a spoon in reserve for daily self-care and doing too much.

The frustration of not being able to do simple tasks that others can so easily further helped me to explain my condition to others, my doctors.

By developing self-awareness of chronic conditions you have, what causes triggers or helps manage widespread symptoms can result in receiving a customized conventional and alternative treatment plan versus playing the treatment guessing game.