New Year’s Resolutions For Spoonies
With 2023 beginning and everyone asking about new year’s resolutions, it can be easy to feel left out when you’re barely functioning as it is. Some people resolve to exercise or travel more. Others want to further their careers or try new activities. If you’re a spoonie with chronically low spoons, goals like these sound exhausting, overwhelming, and unrealistic. But having limited energy doesn’t mean you can’t have resolutions, you just need different goals that align with your abilities and lifestyle.
1. Prioritize yourself
One goal you can have for the new year, and really any time, can be to prioritize yourself. Put your physical and mental needs at the top of all of your to-do lists. This sounds easier than it is. We all have responsibilities and people who rely on us.
We have responsibilities at school, at work, at home, and in our community. There are family members, friends, coworkers, teachers, and mentors whose expectations we want to meet. It can be hard to meet those expectations and take care of those responsibilities when our bodies limit us.
Working on prioritizing yourself as a resolution means learning your body’s limitations, adjusting your responsibilities to account for your abilities, and changing the expectations others have of you to be more realistic. When you have multiple tasks to do, do the ones for your health first. This can be especially hard if you’re a caretaker of someone else, but to care for someone else, you must first care for yourself.
2. Listen to your body
Human bodies are very needy. We have to drink enough water, eat enough food, go to the bathroom multiple times a day, move around enough, and get enough rest. And those are just basic survival functions. Our bodies try to tell us when we need those things, but it can be hard to always listen to them.
Other things preoccupy our minds and we want to ignore and postpone our needs. Eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom feel like they take so much time every day. But if we don’t listen to our bodies they tend to get unhappy and make things worse for us.
This can be the year where instead of fighting your body, you listen to it and give it what it needs. Learn your hunger and thirst cues, learn how to use your spoons, learn your limits, and learn how to treat your body. Your body does its best to take care of you, but it needs your help to do it.
3. Learn how to use your spoons
Our bodies have limits. Probably more than most people do. Some things can take a lot of energy for someone, but be really easy for someone else. Some days we can have barely any spoons, and others can feel like we have all of them. It takes time to learn how your body feels doing different activities and how to use these spoons.
For this resolution learn how much energy, or how many spoons, it takes to do specific tasks, attend events, and spend time with people. Also, learn how long it takes to recover after doing those things. Try different things to see if there are things that help you recover spoons, and find ways to modify tasks so they need fewer spoons. Doing so will let you be able to work with your body, help you plan your days better, and show you what can trigger your condition
4. Be patient with yourself
Being a spoonie is frustrating. Having limits is annoying, and not knowing how your body will act can be scary. Bodies go through ups and downs, and if your body is in a dip, it can give you a lot of negative emotions. This year your resolution can be to be more patient with yourself.
Your body is doing the best it can to keep you alive. It tries to take care of you, but may not always be the best at it. Even if it doesn’t do the best job, it’s your body and the only one you have. Being frustrated with what you can’t control or change won’t help. Instead, take a deep breath and focus on what your body can do.
Make a resolution to be patient with yourself when your body limits you from doing things. It is keeping you alive. Your immune system is fighting viruses and bacteria to protect you and healing your wounds to take care of you. It is using the fuel you’ve given it to power your organs. Your heart is constantly beating and your lungs are constantly breathing. It might be hard to do more than that sometimes, and that’s okay. Be kind to yourself.
5. Be honest about your feelings
Chronic illness isn’t a joyful thing. It brings a lot of negative emotions. We’re often told to be positive and that everything happens for a reason, but that’s not helpful. If we don’t feel those negative emotions we’ll never get past them. Illness is grief. It’s losing a part of yourself.
Let yourself grieve your health. Be as sad as you want that you’re not living the life you expected. Be sad that your body is failing you. Be upset at the world, because it’s not fair. And be upset that the world is not built to accommodate us. Feel every negative emotion you have, and let those around you do the same.
6. Enjoy small moments
Even though chronic illness can bring a lot of sadness, that doesn’t mean you should dwell on that. Life still has happy moments, maybe not all the time and not always big ones, but you can make it your resolution to enjoy all of them, even the small ones, or even for a moment.
You can also make more happy moments for this resolution. Do things you enjoy, go places you like, spend time with people you love, etc… Even small things count, like eating a snack you like, playing a game, or watching a show. Being sick doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy things. Make your own happiness.
7. Take your medications
People with chronic illnesses tend to have a lot of medications. Some to keep our condition under control, some vitamins, some just in case. It gets exhausting taking them all the time. For me, vitamins are my weakness. I take enough pills, it’s annoying to take more than I truly have to. But they’re good for me and I should take them more often.
I’ve tried making it more fun by giving myself rewards, like candy, and having them separated in a weekly pill container, but it always only lasts for a couple of weeks. My spoonie resolution this year is to do my best to take all my medications, including vitamins, every day.
Resolutions can be goals or intentions. Your resolution can be to change your outlook, be consistent with a habit, or just survive. As long as you do your best you’re going great.