How do you explain chronic illness to your loved ones?

With my mental illnesses, I tend to liken them to physical symptoms/illnesses. Ie: “If someone has a broken leg, you let them heal. It’s the same thing with a ‘broken’ brain.”

I absolutely LOVE the charger not being plugged in analogy. I’m 10000% using that. I sometimes say it’s like feeling like you have the flu, you have no energy, you’re achy and/or insert applicable symptoms here except it’s forever.

I describe it (It being DR/DPD) as "How it feels to be up all night and only have drank coffee."

the spoons metaphor is really good, everyone wakes up with a different number of spoon they can use in a day. people with chronic illnesses have less spoons so they have to allocate them differently. spoons=energy