Our Needs Matter

Part I: I do not have any spoons!

Trigger warning: This post includes content related to mental illness. If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call 911 or reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: (1-800) 273-8255.

I need help.

We all do.

My mental health challenges cause me to have more needs than many people. People have called me needy, selfish, and self-centered. In reality, I am very empathetic and learning that some people receive me as a needy burden has caused me to develop extreme shame and guilt around my needs. Thus, I stopped expressing them. Hiding my needs only functioned to exacerbate my mental health struggles. I needed help, but the only way I knew how to cope on my own was through self-harm behaviors, including cutting and starving myself. This landed me in therapy where I learned the skill of assertiveness.

In the time after I finally learned to start asserting my needs, people have often not respected, validated, or honored my needs. Again, this rejection of my needs flooded me with the shame of being “too needy” and selfish. However, I am now equipped with the knowledge from past experiences that ignoring my needs makes things worse.

I may have more needs than people who do not struggle with chronic mental or medical health illnesses, and that is okay. (I am also able to offer more compassion and empathy than many people.)

Knowing that people may perceive us as needy or selfish and that they may not honor or validate our needs, it is so hard to express our needs, but it is necessary.

May was Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States. The website, “The Mighty” has monthly challenges, and their challenge for May was to embrace, understand, and express our needs. They created a template to help us express those needs.

By participating in May’s MyMightyMonth challenge, I have determined that most of all, I need compassion.

Whether I am feeling completely depleted and fatigued, going through a medication change, feeling overwhelmed, battling self-harm urges, surviving my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) being triggered, struggling with my eating disorder, feeling anxious or panicked, or struggling with depression, I need compassion. I need reassurance that I am enough, that I am not too much, and that you love me. I need you to not judge me because judgment exacerbates the shame I am fighting. I need help completing my basic, personal responsibilities. I need you to understand that as an introvert and highly sensitive person, I need time and space to recharge and practice self-care. I need help, and I need you to be okay with that.

Different manifestations of compassionate support are more helpful depending on which of the issues above is most prevalent for me at the moment. For example, I do not need the same support when something triggers the eating disorder that I need when something triggers the PTSD. I will go into the needs for each of these scenarios in this blog post series, starting with when I feel depleted.

When I do not have any spoons and “just cannot” I need…

The Spoon Theory, developed by Christine Miserandino, uses spoons as a metaphorical unit of energy. Each task that somebody performs during a day costs them a spoon. If you are “healthy,” you may have a near limitless supply of spoons. If, however, you have a chronic medical or mental illness like Miserandino and me, you start with far fewer spoons, and you use many of your spoons just to manage the illness. Some illnesses, like Lupus, which Miserandino lives with, and depression and anorexia nervosa, which I live with, even have fatigue as a common symptom.

Consider the spoons used as I battle my anxiety, depression, and eating disorder each day and as the anxiety and depression battle each other. My depression tells me that I am worthless and that there is no hope of me becoming a valuable member of society so I might as well lay in bed and commiserate (so, getting out of bed costs me a spoon), while my anxiety is insisting that I constantly be productive and perfect everything! My anxiety tells me that if I am not productive and perfect, everyone that I love will abandon me (so forcing myself to rest takes a spoon). My eating disorder also wastes spoons on food preoccupation: What should I eat? When should I eat? What food should I bring? Should I eat? Do I deserve to eat?

Thus, I need you to understand that some days I do not have the energy to take a shower or spend five more minutes playing fetch with my dog. I do not have the energy to exercise with you or go out for a beer. I do not have the energy to drive to your house even though I desperately want to spend time with you. I need to spend my spoons wisely, but I do not have enough spoons to do all the things you (and I) may want me to be able to do. I need you to understand that I am not being lazy or inconsiderate or selfish; I am doing the best that I can with the spoons that I have.

I want you to know that if I choose to spend time with you, that means you are so important to me that I decided to use a spoon on our interaction. If I am unable to spend time with you, it is not because I do not want to. If I am unable to take care of all of my responsibilities, it is not because I am being irresponsible. I am doing the best that I can.

You can best support me by being understanding of my energy shortage. Make the drive to visit me if I do not have the energy to make it to you. Help me take care of my responsibilities, even though they are not your own responsibilities. Be compassionate when I cannot do all the things that you (and I) wish I could.

If you struggle with a chronic mental or medical illness that gives you a shortage of “spoons,” what do you need?

Always remember that your needs matter. What do you need at this moment? Head over toThe Mighty website, and try using their downloadable promptsto get started expressing your unmet needs.