In many role-playing games, there is a concept of a Mana bar. This bar holds “Mana" — a magical reserve of power that you can use or spend on performing actions, activities, and tasks. At full mana, the character can do pretty much anything without fear of running out. There are buffs that you can apply to boost or increase your mana, debuffs that will decrease or stunt your mana, and mana regenerates when the character is at rest (sleeping or out of combat).
Mana Bar applied to Life
If we apply this to people in the real world, we can think of it this way:
Most healthy people run on a completely full mana bar each day. When they wake up in the morning, they have a full-capacity bar. They spend mana as they go about their daily activities, and because there are no debuffs and they start at a full bar, they hardly feel the strain of low mana until near the end of the day. If they do, they can apply a buff by drinking a potion or taking a nap and continue their day refreshed.
People who struggle with their mental, physical, or emotional health start their day with an automatic debuff applied to their mana bar. When they wake up in the morning, they start with their bar somewhere less than full capacity, and the deficit is considered the cost of their illness. When they go to spend mana, they may find that additional debuffs apply to certain activities and tasks. Because of this, they often feel the strain of a low mana bar much more quickly. Applying a buff (or many) ends up only temporarily helping and rarely does it allow the person to complete their day as desired.
Task Cost
Every action, activity, and task has a base cost. In order to complete an action or task or participate in an activity, the cost is deducted from the mana bar.
For a healthy person, the listed cost is usually the cost required. For someone struggling with a mental illness or a disability, some costs are inflated or mutated by debuffs.
Debuffs
Debuffs can affect the mana bar itself: overall capacity of the mana bar, how quickly mana regenerates, or apply an ongoing drain. While other debuffs affect the cost of specific actions, tasks, and activities that cost mana.
Debuffs are unique to each individual. Every person will experience each debuff differently based on their unique personal experiences. Even healthy people will experience the cost of debuffs at times.
These debuffs can vary in strength from week to week, day to day, or even hour to hour. They can also stack up and compound on each other.
The “Impossible Task”
Sometimes, debuffs can pile on to the point that a task becomes impossible. The task itself could seem innocuous or “simple” or little effort to complete such as getting the mail from the mailbox, making a phone call, or filling out a form, but it is impossible for that person to complete it. And frequently, they know and recognize the simplicity of the task and are frustrated by their inability to accomplish it.
Debuffs offer an explanation as to why this seemingly simple task is suddenly impossible: the cost of the task is greater than the capacity of the mana bar. And no matter how much you try to reason around it and apply buffs, completing that task is impossible.
Buffs
While completing tasks, performing actions, or participating in activities all have an associated cost, sometimes they can fill the mana bar instead of spending.
Self-care is the act of applying buffs. What fills you up and brings you joy? Is there something that costs mana to do, but ultimately provides a buff to help you get through the rest of your day?
A Common Language
The thing that is really cool about this analogy is that it offers a common set of language and terms to talk about all of this without ever needing to get into the specifics of the why behind it. When something is insurmountable, you can say “I have insufficient mana.” Or if someone asks you what is wrong, you can respond “I have a lot of debuffs right now.” And you can say “I’m out of mana.” to express that you’re tapped out and need to recoup.