Róisín Agnew was 28 years old and working multiple junior-level jobs as a journalist in Dublin when she decided she had had enough.
She felt her work was affecting her personal life in a significant way. Róisín spoke on The Ryan Tubridy Show about how she "didn’t really want to go out anymore" and was often "irritable and annoyed". She felt she was suffering from ‘burnout syndrome’:
"[My] closest relationships were suffering… I just felt overstretched and I didn’t really have any patience. I didn’t have the space or the energy left within me to actually be patient and be able to kind of maintain some of these relationships, and so they started to really suffer… "
Describing her work life before she made the decision to leave Dublin and move to Lisbon, Róisín estimates she was "probably working between 40 and 60 hours a week for almost 3 years".
She defined ‘burnout syndrome’ as a "long-term and unresolvable job stress and all the symptoms that come with that".
Ryan suggested that most people will go through a period of stress or exhaustion in their working lives. How is her case different? Róisín insists that she isn’t a special case. She thinks that we’ve "given linguistic license to be permanently, publicly, sick in front of each other" by how we talk about the way we feel.
My office today. I realise I'm loathsome pic.twitter.com/51qpUcVPJI
— Roisin Agnew (@Roisin_Agnew) April 13, 2017
Listener response was mixed, with one texter accusing Róisín of "self-pity". Another empathised with Róisín, saying they recognise aspects of Róisín’s story in their daughter’s work life.
For the interview in full, listen back to The Ryan Tubridy Show above.
