Episode #32: (Mini-podcast) The Spoon or Token Theory

MPS: Spoon/Token Theory

Synergy Autism Podcast · Episode #32: Spoon/Token Theory for Autism

Hello and welcome to the Synergy Autism Podcast where I bring listeners the inside view of our autism community and how passionately we all work for the same mission - to better understand autism together.

This is one of my Miniature Podcasts where I take just one topic that I commonly discuss with clients and share it with you in a short and hopefully clear manner for you to contemplate and consider how it relates to your personal situation.

So today, I am going to share with you the topic of never seeming to have enough energy which often looks like sleeping all day, for many of my clients (or it can look like simply holing up in one’s room playing video games, reading, listening to music).

This issue comes up frequently with my clients who are trying desperately to be independent but struggling to have enough energy to simply get through days. Medical appointments and/or job searches may exhaust them.

Imagine always feeling drained and unmotivated. Maybe you are the one experiencing this. It would be so frustrating and you would consistently blame yourself for simply not working hard enough or not sleeping well enough or not being motivated enough. But what if it were a biological event that you didn’t have enough energy? What if being in a heightened state of sensory overload for a good majority of your day, exhausts you? What if you never even felt what it would be like to be relaxed except when you were sleeping? Well, I’m here to share what some other people both outside our autism community and within it have shared that help them.

So a little history first, a woman by the name of Christine Miserandino in 2003 shared with the world what she called the Spoon Theory. The Spoon Theory explains how she manages her energy levels due to her Lupis symptoms. While her original story was for her friends to understand her Lupis experience, the concept took off with many groups experiencing other diagnoses as well, including autism.

The spoon theory, in short, is the experience of starting your day with a certain amount of energy (or number of spoons), and that amount of energy is less than others in your family and community. Each activity throughout your day takes energy or a number of spoons. When you are out of spoons, you are out of energy. You have nothing left. Therefore, you may have to consider and use your spoons more judiciously than perhaps others surrounding you. Now autistic individuals have also extrapolated the spoons to be tokens like at an arcade where you start your play with a certain number of tokens. In that arcade, some games cost 3 tokens and others cost just 1, you have to plan your plays or may run out of tokens quickly and not be able to play the ones you really want to play later.

So if this speaks to you, I bet you are wondering what to do with this information. Well, the first step is to understand your own or the autistic person’s experience and take the blame out of it. Then the next step is to figure out what some people call an Energy Accounting system. This can be as informal or as formal, as you wish - meaning you can write it down and be as specific as it is meaningful for you. The energy accounting is basically realizing that some activities in your life fuel you and your energy stores while others deplete those energy stores. For example, if taking a walk restores your energy, you might assign it a number value of say “5.” And sitting down to read your favorite book for 20 minutes refuels you by a value of say “3.” So if you did both of those things, you’d be at a positive balance of 8 (5 for the walk and 3 for the reading). This might prepare you for making that appointment you’ve been wanting or needing to make OR being on a video call with a friend. The making the appointment might have a negative value of say “4” and the video call may have a negative or depleting value of say “5”. So if you had started with a value of 8, you are actually in good shape after just one of these activities (making the appointment, say) but you'd be 1 point over if you tried to do both without restoring your energy between the two activities.

Understanding your own energy expenditures and ways to replenish will be helpful as you tackle various tasks of increasing independence. This Spoon or Token theory experience seems to come into view most clearly during the typical time of a person “launching” or attempting to be increasingly independent. So starting early if you have a young person with autism, would be ideal - start discussing energy levels and what re-energizes you or depletes you. But if you are or have an adult with autism, taking some time to experiment with energy levels and really validating your personal experience will go a long way for your self-advocacy around work, friendships, and other scenarios. Planning for your own well being is essential for you to be at your best.

Thank you for listening. I hope this was helpful. Please look at the show notes at synergyautismcenter.com for the original blog on the Spoon Theory, Token Theory with autism, and a couple of videos on energy accounting.

This is Barb Avila and this is the Synergy Autism Podcast. Take care.

For more information, please go to my website: www.synergyautismcenter.com

Stay tuned for next week's mini-podcast.

And mark your calendars for my upcoming book - out June 15th, 2021

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Spoon Theory

Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino

Spoon Theory: https://www.lupus.org.uk/patient-stories/patients-stories/111-the-spoons-theory

Token Theory adopted by Autism Community

Karla Fisher interviewed on Autism Empowerment Radio

Token Theory/Autism: https://www.facebook.com/thautcast/posts/token-or-spoons-theory-is-something-i-rarely-write-about-and-its-important-to-un/583030248393066/

Token Theory Visuals