Over the past two weeks, I’ve described some of the ways The Smothering Grind of Life kills our joy and sabotages our lives.

​We looked at burnout, that state of mental, physical, and spiritual exhaustion. Then we looked at flameout, which happens when dissatisfaction with our lives drives us to sabotage ourselves.

This week, it’s time to look at the most insidious of all The Grind’s intentions for you: tapping out.

Unlike burnout (which drains) or flameout (which corrupts), tapping out is the dark threshold where suffering becomes intolerable. It happens the moment a person, crushed by the weight of their pain, decides they can no longer bear to hope. As my mentor Jeff Schulte says, there is no such thing as hopelessness. You cannot be human and not hope. But you can become weary of the burden of hope, unwilling to bear it any longer.

Tapping out takes a myriad of forms.

In milder situations, it shows up as apathy. After years of driven work, you cannot muster the ability to care any more. “Nothing ever changes anyway,” you say. Your words are bitter, but your demeanor is indifferent.

Sometimes it shows up as quitting – quitting a job, quitting a community, quitting a marriage. It’s a move made away from health. You’re not running from abuse: you’re just walking away from the work of staying in relationship.

Sometimes the quitting is quiet. You can quit on your marriage without ever asking for a divorce. You can quit on your job without ever leaving the office. You’re there in body only, going through the motions and playing charades.

And sometimes tapping out is much more catastrophic. This is the breaking point where a person doesn’t just give up on work, relationships, or responsibility: they give up themselves. “I don’t want to die,” they say, “but if I didn’t wake up tomorrow, that would be okay.” Willing to hope no longer, those who tap out find themselves willing to embrace death and the relief they believe he will bring them.

If you or someone you know is in this position, don’t wait: call the 988 Lifeline to connect with a skilled, caring counselor and get support. They offer confidential support 24/7 for everyone in the United States and its territories.

The emotional signs The Grind is luring you towards tap out may include:

• Profound Sense of Being Alone: Even in a crowded room, you feel unseen, unheard, and unworthy of rescue.
• Weariness of Soul: Not just tired, but emptied, as if all energy to fight has been drained away.
• Distorted Sense of Reality: Believing you are a burden to others and that the world would be better off without you.
• Severed Connection to Meaning: The things that once gave purpose now feel hollow and irrelevant.
• Resignation to Death: Not necessarily wanting to die but believing it to be the only option left.

When these Grind tap out symptoms emerge, they eventually manifest physically with the body shutting down—extreme fatigue, loss of appetite, and so on, as if the body itself is giving up. This can spiral into a change of appearance as the person begins to neglect personal hygiene or demonstrates some sort of weight change.

Self-inflicted harm may accompany this dark road as well: cutting, reckless behavior, or engaging in physical pain in an attempt to feel alive. Still, a detachment from the body may remain, which can materialize as feeling numb, disconnected, or like an out-of-body observer of their own life rather than the one who is actually living it.

Behaviorally, struggles to escape consciousness with mind-altering methods and medications become common. They cause the person to devolve further into defeatist habits.

This is a hard and sobering reality to talk about. I, like many of you, have lost people to this evil work of The Grind. It’s one of the reasons I’m so fervent about the work we do at Plumline: I want people to recognize The Grind for the liar that he is, long before they get close to the point of tapping out.

If you’re already there, don’t give up. Call the 988 Lifeline and start getting the help you need.

If you’re not there, but you’re worried you may be heading that direction, I have good news: that end is not inevitable. It is possible to find hope and learn how to carry it, even when it’s heavy. If you want that, reach out to me, and let’s talk.

Because you are loved.

I am for you.

And you’ve got this.