Senator Lynn Ruane: Snooker and cannabis jellies – How Lynn Ruane found a way to beat burnout and pull herself back from the brink
Lynn Ruane is seated at the desk of her office in Leinster House, leaning back, and trying to put into words the way she was feeling this time last year, when she realised things were getting on top of her.
It felt like there were bluebottles flying around in my head,” she says. “I was still super-productive but I was coming home in the evening and it was like I couldn’t transition into calming my brain down to be able to relax. Over the last couple of years, the evening time became a struggle of me trying to calm down.”
It’s late December when we meet, and the senator’s office is festooned with Christmas cards sent by well-wishers. There are books everywhere.
We’re here to talk about ‘burnout’, a subject Lynn has become an expert on in the past 12 months. Early last year, she began to feel overwhelmed. I have known Ruane for some time and regard her as a friend, so we started texting back and forth on the matter. She told me she was skirting with becoming disillusioned with her work.
As a groundbreaking senator, best-selling author (her memoir, People Like Me, won the An Post Irish Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2018) and vocal campaigner on a range of issues, you might have expected Ruane to feel in control. And yet, she says, she felt she was so close to power, but still unable to achieve all she had set out to.
A few months into 2022, a weekend break revealed to her the extent of her burnout – and the fact one weekend off wasn’t going to fix matters. Later in the year she messaged me describing her decision to step back from much of her extra commitments for a time.
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Senator Lynn Ruane at Leinster House, 2016. Picture by Tom Burke
Was it burnout? It’s a phrase we overuse, she suggests now.
“I think we say, ‘oh I’m burnt out’ a lot, but it’s probably signs of exhaustion. But in 2021, and very heavily coming into this year [2022], I started to realise how I was feeling was… I nearly felt sore, like. Physically sore.”
According to the HSE, burnout refers to a sense of having no energy or commitment for your work, as though you have gone through a very challenging time which has not been overcome and leaves you winded. Much of that description applied to how Ruane was feeling.
Having always been a morning person who enjoyed getting up and writing in the quiet early hours, Lynn now found herself struggling to get out of bed. Come the end of work on Friday, she would immediately dread Monday morning, even though she still loved her job. She couldn’t read, something she normally enjoys. At the weekend, going anywhere felt like a big deal.
“Seeing plans through was really, really difficult,” she recalls. “I did just want to sit and watch the telly.”
Lynn had suffered periods of depression in the past, but this felt different.
“In the past, when I’ve experienced bouts of depression, or I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself around my history, I would really know that there was a kind of a lack of being grounded. Or feeling unsafe.
“And I was like, I don’t feel unsafe. I didn’t feel, ‘oh God, am I going to feel like this forever. Will I ever feel happy?’ I wasn’t having those thoughts. So it definitely didn’t feel like it was a mood thing. But the behaviour seemed to match that.”
She wanted to be alone a lot, found herself crying regularly, although not because she felt sad, but from exhaustion.
Looking back, she is not sure how much of what she was feeling was obvious to Paul, her boyfriend, and her mother Bernie, with whom she lives in Tallaght, with her daughters Jaelynn, who is in transition year, and her elder daughter, the actress Jordanne Jones. That, she says, is because she remains very productive and high functioning even when she is struggling.
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Lynn Ruane’s mother and her daughter, the actor Jordanne
“They’d hear me saying I’m really tired. I felt like I was constantly fatigued. Even emails coming into my phone, I would have anxiety about them. Because I just would think, ‘oh someone’s asking me to do something’,’’ she says.
“There was this fear creeping in, of someone asking me to do something and I was already doing so much, all the time. How am I going to manage this?”
At work in the Seanad, she felt as though she had been stripped of natural emotional defences, or buoyancy.
“When I speak about difficult things in the chamber or fight for this, or talk about that, I usually do it with a level of defence in me. Where I felt like I was so burnt out that to just do things that matter to me became harder. I just wanted to cry, or I wanted to tell everyone to…” she pauses.
“Like there were times in the chamber where I just was like, just tell them all to just shut the f**k up.”
Looking back, she can see now the burnout had been building for several years.
“I think it all just came to a head in the last 10 months or so. Where I was like, ‘I can’t live my whole life like this.’”
Now 38, Lynn Ruane was elected as an independent Senator for Trinity College in 2016. Before she became a politician, she was a community worker, initially in Tallaght, then Bluebell, where she has since returned as the chair of the Canal Communities Drug and Alcohol Task Force.
Addiction, crime, poverty, trauma… I still was stepping back into that energy every single day
Her election to the Seanad gave her a national platform. And as someone who had talked openly about surviving drug addiction, poverty and sexual assault, she found herself in constant demand to talk about these issues in public.
“I was doing what I naturally do, which is to be quite open and honest about who I am, what my life is, what my history is, the things I care about. And I didn’t really take into account that so many people would want me to talk about things. So I just got on with it, you know?”
Ruane said ‘yes’ to countless requests to give talks, at schools and conferences. At the height of her burnout, she was attending two or three extra events a week.
“Addiction, crime, poverty, trauma. Even though I had done all this work to try and come to terms with my own stuff in life, I still was stepping back into that energy every single day,” she says.
But these are also the areas in which she has campaigned and in which all her legislation is based.
“So of course people were asking me to talk about it, because even my work is that,” she adds, mentioning drug decriminalisation and her work with those with convictions.
She began to wonder if she had crossed a line. She knew that talking about what she had gone through, and campaigning around these issues, had helped her cope with them, but what if revisiting the trauma so frequently was actually harmful?
“I think to a certain point, being involved in the work has facilitated healing. But you get to a point where… when does it stop facilitating healing?
“I spent every day crying at the thought that if I stop speaking in schools and at conferences about trauma, or stop speaking about sexual assault, or about addiction, what does that mean? What’s the point of me doing anything that I’m doing, if I stop doing that? How do I still speak about those things, without putting all my emotional energy into them?”
She would do a talk, and while the personal impact was no longer mental, there was still a physical effect.
“I think I had the bluebottles in me head afterwards. It’s like I can feel the aliveness inside my body. I think what happens to me is I’m having a physical reaction.
“My thinking has moved on. I’m not over-thinking situations that have happened to me in the past. I don’t think about being sexually assaulted, I don’t think about using the drugs that I did. The thinking bit doesn’t seem to affect me.
“I seem to have a physical aliveness in my body afterwards. I think there’s memory in the body. And the memory in the body is being activated. So I’m activated. I’m not devastated, or triggered, in a psychological sense, but in a bodily sense I am.”
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Lynn Ruane winning Non-Fiction Book of the Year for her memoir ‘People Like Me’ (Gill Books) at the An Post Irish Book Awards, 2018. Picture by Patrick Bolger
She was also beginning to wonder if her work was all in vain. Talking about the issues close to her heart had been important to her, but she began to wonder if it was actually rendering any systemic change.
“I suppose I became exhausted at the idea that potentially I can keep talking about these things, but am I going to be able to actually achieve anything?” she says. “You’re so close to power, and to the decision makers, but you still feel like you’re not having an impact.
“And then you look at people in your community, struggling with addiction, with everyday life, trying to get their kids through education, and everybody who is really trying their hardest, and their best, and they’re not as close to the decision makers as I am.
“So the thought of how far people were away from the decision makers, and how close I was, but I still felt like I couldn’t really change their situation, or change laws to be able to help people…”
Ruane realised she needed to step back. Last spring she sat in her office with her team and told them she needed to cancel all of her outside speaking engagements for six months. Her staff would manage her emails, and she asked that they not send her on any more speaking requests, including cancelling some already agreed to. It was hard, she says ruefully, especially turning down schools.
“Because I think naturally, by instinct, I’m actually a community worker. On the ground. So I find it hard not to be pulled to that. It’s so important because it keeps you so connected to why you’re here, and what you’re doing it for.”
Did it take her a while to feel comfortable with the change of pace?
“No,” she grins, and bursts out laughing. “It took me months to get to the point to make that decision. The uncomfortableness was in that. But when I made it, I felt a sense of relief. I didn’t feel physically better, like I was at home, reading books on burnout, sitting in me bed and just thinking, how am I going to manage this?”
She read psychotherapist Siobhán Murray’s book, The Burnout Solution, which helped her understand the condition.
“I was just super ‘on’ all the time. On, but exhausted. It’s a bit confusing, because you’re at home, and you’re going, ‘I’m wrecked, I’m wrecked’, but you can’t rest and sleep, you know?”
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Lynn Ruane with her boyfriend Paul at the Burning Man festival
Next, she took three weeks off. She and her partner Paul went to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, and to Portland. When Paul would do his daily meditation, Lynn would sit in a hammock, reading Seán O’Casey’s autobiography.
“I bought cannabis jellies, because in Portland it’s all legalised. I would eat one jelly, now it’s not very much, not like when I was younger, my tolerance would be different,” she says.
“I’d eat one jelly, and I would lay in this hammock, and I was so happy, just laying there. Two or three hours, reading Seán O’Casey. There was raves going on, ships going past, all these art cars, but I was just reading Seán O’Casey in me hammock.”
There was also a week in Turkey with daughter Jaelynn. “That was really nice. We got to just spend time together, very quietly really.”
And she spent some time making an RTÉ TV show with Miriam Margolyes, a series about Lady Gregory, which was “a lovely experience” and “out in spring”.
She knew politics wasn’t really the problem. That it is in her nature, whatever the job, to work to a certain level. Ever pragmatic, and “very solution orientated” she began to ask herself what she should do. Now, after a six-month break, she has set in place certain measures to ensure she continues to make her way out of a burnt-out state.
“I think I’m very much in a long-term plan here. I don’t think I’m fully out of burnout. I think the problem is all the other times I took small breaks, I was in such a deficit that it only took two or three days to be back to the point I was at.”
Now, she averages two to three extra engagements a month, rather than a week. She has taken up snooker, she says, and roars laughing. She has gone back to football, something she played in her early teens, and early 20s. “I’m trying to, but it’s hard, injury-wise, which makes me sad.” She has broken toes in both feet.
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Match fit – Senator Lynn Ruane pictured at the National Indoor Arena. Picture by Gerry Mooney
“I’d be quite a tough footballer. I’m a defender, so the tackles are strong. But I thought maybe I’m so not in my own body, I’m so exhausted, that whatever way I’m moving, I’m not fully protected or engaged.”
The second injury was devastating.
“I sat in Tallaght hospital and I cried like a baby. From the pit of my stomach. My ma was on the phone going, ‘it’s OK’. I was like, ‘no, football is all I have, it’s all I have to try and clear my head and run around in the air. And now this is going to be gone.’”
It wasn’t just that football got her out in the fresh air, it was that no one there asked her about politics.
“It was just like shouting at me for missing the forward running past me. And I loved it. That felt like a holiday.”
Social media can be difficult at times, but it’s not a massive cause of stress.
“I think overall I manage it quite well. Sometimes it can get in on you for a moment, but, I’m a fighter like, you know what I mean? I naturally stand up for myself. I naturally will end up being spurred on by it, I won’t be bullied.”
Of late, she’s trying to learn how to potter around the house in the evening. Paul is centred and calm, a huge help. They are celebrating their third anniversary together by making each other gifts. Lynn is knitting him a hat. Slowly, she explains, describing her constant requests for help with dropped stitches from her mother.
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Lynn Ruane keynote-speaking at The Teaching Council’s festival of teaching, FÉILTE, in 2018. Picture Conor McCabe Photography
“I went collecting conkers in the Phoenix Park,” she laughs. She and Paul tried tango. She collected leaves all autumn to make a calendar. “It’s like going back to third class arts and crafts,” she says with a smile. “I’m trying to do those things. And sometimes it’s the last thing I want to do.”
She’s given up coffee, she admits, with a little roll of the eyes. She feels better, and she can handle things if she stays on top of managing her workload and what she takes on – and ensures there is still “fun, and joy, and peace, and rest”.
“And that my day in the evening is not a process of me just trying to stop my brain buzzing, and then sleep. I’m trying to let the evening stretch on a bit.
“I keep going out and looking at the stars. It’d be only two or three minutes, it’s not that I’m standing there terrible long, but I’m trying to notice there’s the sky, there’s the moon, there’s the stars,” Ruane says, concluding our chat.
“I could very easily fall back into being burnt out within weeks. I feel like I’m on the edge of it all the time. I keep having to make steps in my life that move me further and further away. It’s a daily thing, 100pc.”
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Lynn Ruane at Burning Man
Am I in burnout? Psychotherapist Siobhán Murray’s tell-tale signs
Five years ago, most people wouldn’t have had the word ‘burnout’ in their vocabulary. The last few years have changed that, and more and more people are recognising the signs of being burnt out.
According to the World Health Organisation, burnout is “an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. A simpler definition is that burnout is emotional, physical and mental exhaustion brought on by emotionally exhausting situations.
It is not classified as a medical condition but as a syndrome. Why is this important? Well, the reality is that those experiencing burnout, or are on the cusp of it, can manage it by lifestyle changes.
There are many warning signs that you might be experiencing burnout, just as there are different stages of burnout – from early onset to chronic. Symptoms and warning signs can be broken down into three different areas of your life: physical, behavioural and emotional.
Physical symptoms can present as being constantly tired even after sleep or time off work; having difficulty falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to get back to sleep even though you are tired; constant headaches and muscle aches and pains for no apparent reason; and issues with gut and physical health.
Behavioural symptoms can creep up slowly. These can be withdrawing from social situations, a lack of patience with people, increased irritability, missing deadlines or work commitments, not having the energy to exercise and an increased dependency on alcohol, drugs and food.
Emotional symptoms can be easier to identify. The most obvious ones include feeling completely disconnected with your work; a feeling of not being satisfied with your life when previously you did; lacking motivation to do tasks both personally and professionally; doubting yourself and your ability to manage your life; tearfulness over things you previously would have dealt with; having an unfounded fear of failure and even an overwhelming sense of loneliness as if you are the only person feeling like this.
There are ways to manage yourself and recover from burnout. The first step is acknowledging how you feel, though this can be scary. The fear of judgment from work and family can result in adding anxiety and depression into how you feel.
Start by talking to a work colleague, manager, family member, therapist or a GP and tell them how you feel and how long you have felt this way.
It may be that time off work is needed, and if possible I would always recommend availing of it. Using this time to reassess what is not working for you, and why, will give you the opportunity to start to look at what you can do to put in place a realistic and sustainable “care of self” plan.
All too often those that experience burnout have stopped doing things that bring them joy, and there is a misconception that “self-care” is something that is done at the weekends or once or twice a week. “Care of self” is all the small things you can do each and every day that helps you to manage your stress responses in a way that helps prevent overwhelm and burnout.
Prioritising sleep and getting good sleep without the aid of alcohol or medication; opting out of intense exercise and making time for short walks throughout the day; ensuring you are eating for nourishment and not quick-fix sugar hits, as simple as this sounds but; even ensuring you are getting enough water to keep you hydrated is hugely important.
For a lot of people embarking on guided mindfulness meditations can be too much to do, but there are so many other ways to start mindfulness that aren’t full body scans. Reconnecting, or connecting, with activities you used to enjoy or you think you might like, things like drawing, jigsaws, reading, cooking, baking, DIY, knitting or sewing, can all be forms of mindfulness. Think of it as anything that requires your full focus and that you enjoy.
It’s also extremely important to maintain social connections with friends and family. If the thought of calling someone or even meeting them in person is just too much, then text or leave a voice note.
Let them know how you’ve been feeling, it’s surprising how your honesty will allow others to open up and admit they are feeling the same way.
A “care of self” plan is not a short-term plan and it is individual to each person’s needs. It is of course doable by yourself but is much easier to work on with help and support from others.
Siobhán Murray is the author of ‘The Burnout Solution: 12 Weeks to a Calmer You’, published by Gill Books
https://www.independent.ie/life/snooker-soccer-and-cannabis-jellies-how-lynn-ruane-found-a-way-to-beat-burnout-and-pulled-herself-back-from-the-brink-42283447.html Senator Lynn Ruane: Snooker and cannabis jellies – How Lynn Ruane found a way to beat burnout and pull herself back from the brink