You want to help.
You want to fix it.
The planet.
Your partner.
The procedures at work that makes you want to scream.
You see the wound, and everything in you flares.
“Why is this still happening?”
“Why isn’t anyone doing something?”
“Why don’t they get it?”
And maybe you think:
If I just fight harder, louder, longer —
the world will change.
But here’s the part that urgency won’t say:
If your own needs are unmet, you’re not helping — you’re projecting.
If you’re still starving, you’ll only feed others from hunger.
If your body is on fire, it doesn’t build — it burns.
This isn’t shame.
This isn’t about being “too sensitive” or needing to “calm down.”
This is about timing.
This is about what kind of presence your pain puts you in.
Because anger is a flare.
But it’s not a compass.
It shows you where something’s broken.
But it doesn’t know what to build in its place.
That part comes after.
After the heat.
After the defense.
After you’ve tended the ache beneath the outrage.
You’re not useless when you’re angry.
You’re just not done metabolizing.
You’re in the diagnostic phase.
The rupture phase.
The wake-up phase.
But building requires coherence.
Helping requires steadiness.
Designing requires digestion.
Otherwise, you’re not responding — you’re reenacting.
This is true for climate grief.
You can’t restore the earth with a heart full of revenge.
You’ll just replant the same domination in greener language.
If you’re still trying to punish the past,
you’ll build a future that carries its wounds forward.
It’s true for relational repair.
You can’t offer grace while secretly punishing.
You can’t say “I forgive you”
when your nervous system is still bracing for the next hit.
That’s not healing — that’s performance.
You have to meet your own need for safety
before you can create it for someone else.
And it’s true when you’re furious at your job, your colleagues, the system.
You can’t redesign what you haven’t made room to understand.
You can’t see clearly while your body is screaming for rest,
or recognition, or real belonging.
When your own needs go unmet, everything looks broken.
But that’s not strategy — that’s survival.
And survival makes for terrible architecture.
You’re not analyzing the system.
You’re projecting your depletion onto it.
And when you build from that place,
you recreate the same hunger you were trying to escape.
So rest.
Not as escape —
but as preparation.
Let your outrage compost.
Let your grief ripen.
Let your clarity emerge from a place that isn’t bracing,
but ready.
Fill your cup.
Not as self-care branding.
Not as spiritual bypass.
But because empty hands make shaky bridges.
Help from fullness.
Build from steadiness.
Speak from ground.
Otherwise, even your healing becomes harm.
And how will you know when you’re ready?
You’ll stop needing to prove your pain.
You’ll feel curiosity again — even for the ones who got it wrong.
You’ll ask what’s true, not just what hurts.
You’ll speak more slowly, but more clearly.
You’ll stop building from “should”
and start building from what actually serves.
You’ll feel a softness where there used to be static.
A steadiness under the skin.
And when you move —
you’ll move like water, not fire.
That’s when you help.
That’s when you begin.
Helpburn (n.)
The damage caused by trying to help from depletion.
“She meant well, but it was classic helpburn.”
Fixspeak (n.)
Language that pretends to heal but secretly controls.
“He offered solutions, but it was all fixspeak.”
Solvehunger (n.)
The compulsive need to solve as a stand-in for self-worth.
“Her solvehunger disguised itself as activism.”
If this hit home — write me. I’m listening.