FIRE meets AIR: BURNOUT

What I do to get moving again in the wake of Apathy.

If you’ve already read my burnout post on Bella & the Beast, you can skip down to FIRE. Just look for the pretty picture. Otherwise, if you need the recap:

For the past two-and-a-half months, I’ve had…ahem…just a few things come down the pipe. To tweak some lyrics for my own perverse purposes:

I HAVE BECOME
(UN)COMFORTABLY NUMB

I don’t do well when I’m numb. I am the Fire Sign who chose the pun-name “Hart” for forever and ever because I am: All Heart. The all-singing, all-tap-dancing, all-crap-flinging monkey-girl who bleeds music, farts glitter, and sweats passion.

So for me to be MEH about my life? To have zero interest in my innumerable passions?

It is excruciating.

But sometimes ya just gotta MEH until the MEH is done.

For me, it’s almost always born of despair when I’m completely gassed from battling the ways I’m trapped. When I feel like, no matter what I do, I can’t get out of an adverse situation. That’s when the “why bother?” hits. “Why should I keep expending—no, wasting—all this time and energy? For what?”

Unfortunately, MEH has a mind of its own, and it is an awful, self-perpetuating little demon. Once ensnared in its sluggish inertia, it’s hard to break free.

**Obviously if I’m in the REALLY, REALLY bad place, I call my therapist and schedule an emergency appointment.

If you are in the REALLY, REALLY bad place and don’t have somebody like I have my therapist, or if they’re unavailable when you’re to the crisis point, these people can help you find someone now. Please, please. Always reach out:

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

Of if you don’t like that one, here’s 13 more.

Otherwise, if it’s my garden variety desolation, hopelessness, and a numbed-out apathy that I desperately want to get out of, here are some of the things I do to get things moving again.

Mapping the MEH

Knowing what triggers my burnout can be a preventative measure unto itself. This requires getting really honest in my assessments of myself and my circumstances, and mapping out the patterns of how I got to a particular unpleasant moment.

Alas. Sometimes even knowing what my triggers are doesn’t mean I can avoid them.

As an autistic with ADHD, trying to pursue my gazillion passions while still giving my all to the relationships that are important to me and taking care of myself on 6 brain traumas and C-PTSD…

Burnout is a really consistent part of my life.

In the Fire Element, we work with the Realm of Passion & Emotion. In the Air Element, the two emotions we work with most intensely are Apathy & Inspiration. Burnout is what makes it difficult to manage the transition out of the former and back into my customary state of the latter.

When it happens, sometimes it’s enough to simply admit, “I’m blahhh and bummed and MEH. This is how I got here, these are the reasons why, and holy crap! It is totally understandable given these circumstances.” Sometimes being understanding with myself and letting myself be apathetic, hopeless, burnt out and shut down with zero guilt is all I need to get things moving again.

Other times, letting myself sink into that place creates the muck of getting stuck.

Well, fart-piss-fuck.

If you want to understand HOW I got to this state of burnout and apathy, I’ve mapped it out on Bella & the Beast.

Burnout: (un)Comfortably Numb

If you just want to move on WHAT I do to get myself out of it, some of the examples in the tools I use might not make as much sense. Hopefully it’ll be understandable…enough.

Because I’m in the middle of getting my ass kicked, so all these posts might be janky and scattered. Eh. That’s what the Writing Gods made the EDIT button for.

Later.

Fire meets Air

FIRE

Remember what I said in the post on ANGER about how I try to prevent going Chernobyl at all costs? As such, there are many un-fun tools I have to utilize:

• Being a flake.

• Canceling at the last minute.

• Disappearing for weeks, months, even years.

• Ruthlessly scything stressful relationships and situations from my life when the pressure starts to build.

Post-burnout Apathy is the other reason why.

The meltdown itself causes enough damage, especially if I can’t prevent it until I’m Hashtag HomeAlone. But once all the ash finishes falling out of my scorched sky, if my handy-dandy hot air balloon has not gotten torched along with it, guaranteed it has run out fuel.

(Me?! Not not bloated with hot air, whaaat?)

(Yes. It does happen. Even I do not have an inexhaustible supply, in spite of rumors to the contrary.)

This means said red balloon is no longer capable of floating me off into the Blue Skies and Puffy Clouds of Creativity, Passion & Inspiration. Heck, it can’t even help me muster up the motivation to do some simple flippin’ problem-solving, because that explosion and the preceding battles as well as my most recent ass-kickings have consumed every molecule of air and fuel in the vicinity.

The bellows of my forge have broken and my coal basket is empty.

I am burnt the fuck out.

I have fallen and I can’t get up, but now…

I really, really just Don’tWanna™.

EARTH

When I’m buried under the pile of ash and pyroclastic puke, when it all starts to settle and harden into a cooled lava-field of Apathy, all of Elemental Earth’s gorgeous inspirational forces of being out in nature—ooooh… going for walks—aaaah… nourishing my body—purrrrrr… these tools become inaccessible. They take energy and motivation that’s been stripped from me, so…

• I pair everything even further down to those Base Functionality practices we covered in GRIEF: Hydration. Pee. Nutrition. Brush face. Crap. Sleep. Pee. Brush face. (Invisalign, don’tcha know, so my entire friggin’ life right now is brush face, every time I turn around.) Rest. Eat. Brush face. Shower. Pee. Crap.

• Oh. No energy to shower?

• Well, crap.

• Fuck it. Shower: wash butt. Wash bits. Wash pits.

• When my scalp gets itchy enough, I’ll shower. And it will be goooood. Otherwise? MEH.

• Clean house: fuck it. My kitchen is torn apart anyway from my broken dishwasher.

• No energy to put the Invisalign back in because that means brushing face for the gazillionth time today? Well, there’s a cure for that. Look at the calendar and make a choice. You can either brush face and get those friggin’ trays back in so that you stay on track, or you can wear the last five trays for longer than you’d really like, which means you’ll get to keep on brushing face twenty-thousand times a—

• FINE. Scrub-scrub-scrub-grrrrr-scrub. Rinse toothbrush. Snap trays back onto teeth. Gnom-gnom-gnom-gnom—chomp down on the chewie to smash all air bubbles out and tighten trays against the teeth so they can continue to do their job and then I’ll be DONE with it. DOOOOONE, I tell you! Dobby will be friggin’ free.

• Blah.

Forcing myself to do necessary Earth/Body Tasks are all about choices and consequences.

Pretty much everything in the state of MEH is.

Good thing decision-making is soooo easy in this state.

All I can do is shuffle along and say a whole lotta WOOSAHHHHHHHHH…which brings us to:

AIR

I do a lot of breathing exercises in recovery mode.

• Pausing to do purposeful cool-down exhalations whenever I feel the pressure inside my skull or my heart building again.

  • Close eye.

  • Round lips.

  • Push air out more slowly.

  • I have done this for so many decades that now, just the sound and sensation of my breath hissing out from between my lips triggers a “chill out” mechanism in my whole system.

• Four-Square breathing.

• Making my exhalation longer than my inhalation to trick my body out of Fight Mode and into Rest & Repair Mode.

• (Since I am currently in a state of MEH with completely exhausted fuel tanks, I’m gonna let you do your own research for this stuff. Besides, breathing exercises are really personal, and they’re honestly not recommended for everybody. So yeah. Do your research before you delve into this modality.)

• Timing my breath to music that feels goooood.

• Letting somebody else lead me in a breathing meditation.

  • YouTube

  • Spotify

  • Courses or classes

  • Podcasts

  • My current favorite after receiving one of the most amazing birthday presents I have ever been given in my life: Liminal.¹ Since my last 2 brain injuries (another concussion from falling down my stairs, and two weeks later, nearly suffocating in an inexplicable toxic fumes flood of my house while I was asleep), I haven’t been able to meditate. This program is helping to fix that. It’s got guided breath meditations, and I do a ton of my own to this one in particular. 2D cannot even begin to do this experience justice:

• Trying to stay focused on my natural breathing rhythm in the bliss of silence to keep myself anchored in my body and this moment, instead of gnashing my teeth about the past or worrying about the future.

• Journaling² whatever thoughts come into my head and getting them out so I don’t have to keep chewing on them. Or trying to remember everything on my list. Or trying to remember everything I need to say to unpleasant people. Or…

• Breathing through slow stretches that feel good.

• Breathing through physical therapy that sucks but is crucial to my health.

• Coloring books. Mandalas. Draw-sketch-paint whatever comes to mind, even if it’s stick-figures. Seriously. A gazillion kids throughout time can’t be wrong.

• But priority Number 1 in the Air Element at this time: Rest. Relax. Ahhhh…

• Rinse. Repeat.

Oh, no, thank YOU, Kitaro Waga. One of my favorite breathing coaches.

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Let’s leave it at that for today. This is a huge topic. It will take more than one post, because we still have Metal, Water, and Alchemy to cover. Here is Part 2:

© 2025 Hartebeast

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What is all this Elements stuff anyway?

1. Liminal VR - psychologists, neuroscientists, and visual modalities like video games, movies, TV all come together to develop this program.

2. How I got started journaling. It also gives me an external hard drive that helps to make up for my inability to form and especially access memories in the wake of TBIs.