Sorry @Giminion was that directed at me?
No, just took the quote from what you posted
Just to throw my tuppence in. I use the Spoons analogy all the time with clients - ALL are teenagers. Despite what you may think, most find it really relatable.
Some prefer to use a mobile phone battery analogy - where it’s recharged overnight - but sometimes you have a rough night, and the cables a bit wobbly and you wake up only at 85% instead of 100%. They find it easy to recognise that certain activities (apps) drain the battery quicker. One memorable moment recently, a client described how having the torch on so she can shine brightly in public drains her battery far quicker than sitting at home, alone playing candy crush.
Another client prefers to use spoons, but have really embraced it and use it to describe to their parents their own levels - letting them know if an activity is too much for them. One even recognises that they can borrow spoons from the next day - but in doing so, knows it’s going to leave them short - representing the potential crash which can happen if somebody is overstimulated or overwhelmed and they know it’s going to take a day or two to recover and return to normality.
You might use the terms “run out of beans” or “not enough fuel in the tank”. They are both equally transferable analogies. But spoons - whilst more abstract - somehow has been more accessible to many!
It’s about giving a person a way of relating to something, without them having to necessarily talk about themselves. It’s a way of encoding (and decoding) language and making talking about difficult things more accessible.
Literally my whole family use it. Mrs BF knows if I say “I’ve not got enough spoons for that” then we’re going to have to make some adjustments. And she, likewise, is the first to let me know how many spoons she’s got available.
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I use a version of this at work with parents and kids to explain challenging behaviours. I use a tea cup not a bucket, but the principle is the same.
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All this talk about spoons opened up a deep memory, from around 2 decades ago.
Maybe don’t watch this in front of people.
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I’ve deleted the responses. PM me if it affects you and you want to discuss. Until then, keep it on topic and remember sometimes you don’t actually need to post. If you don’t find something relevant to you as an individual we don’t all need to know.
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Speaking of 2 decades ago one piece of media that became a good analogy of mental health to me at the time was (hear me out on this) Red Vs Blue particularly Reconstruction.
Quick summary For those who haven’t seen it, you have a black ops style organisation that is permitted to experiment using “Smart AIs”. However smart AIs are based on the thought processes & memories of a real individual. For ethical reasons the organisation is only permitted a single AI to run their test.
So to get more Smart AIs the organisation tortures the AI so it mind fragments into separate components (logic, ambition, creativity etc) as it attempts to protect itself giving the organisation more AIs to experiment with.
It just struck me at the time as an interesting way to think of the mind & ourselves & how people under stress/pressure can fragment as a coping mechanism to survival. Depending on how much you fragment then determines how hard it is to manage your personality aspects to get yourself back together.