My name is Danya.
I'm 23 years old
and I'm from County Kildare
and I'm a final year law student
going on to do equality
studies in UCD.
My first experience of burnout I didn't realise
until it was far too late
into my first year of college.
It just spiraled and spiraled and
I went to my GP and she said,
she said no, like you're
severely depressed.
It shook me completely.
It really did
because I thought I was doing fairly okay.
I thought, you know, I've done my Leaving Cert, I'm
going to college, I should be happy.
Why am I so stressed out, you know?
By the time I got to college,
I was isolating myself from everybody.
I spent all my time in the library.
I barely made any new friends.
I wasn't going out and having the proper experience
that other college students would have.
I just got really frustrated
all the time, very agitated
and really impatient.
So little things that people
were saying to me, I was kind of snapping.
I was very self-conscious of myself
and very doubtful of myself and my abilities.
Even those little things were happening,
and I knew they were happening.
I didn't take a step back to go.
Why is that happening?
Towards the end of first year,
I started getting much, much better.
But I don't think I really sat
with myself and said, Okay,
let's take a step back.
Last question.
Are you truly happy?
When it was
my third year of college,
I just felt completely,
completely drained and I was barely going to college anymore.
I started going, okay, well, this has come up before.
That's fine. I'm just stressed.
But it was the start the very first day
that my exams started.
The moment I got into that library, I said,
I actually can't do this.
I kept saying, Why am I bothering?
Why am I bothering with any of this?
You're just going to fail anyway.
I hate this.
I don't want to do any of this.
And that was not my mindset at all for the last
few years, really, since the first experience.
I sort of felt like I was being gobbled up.
Sort of like I was in quicksand for a long time.
For the next few weeks, it spiraled like that.
There was something telling me, like,
you can't carry on like this.
You're going to collapse.
That was the point.
Where I said, okay,
why are these feelings coming up
and what can I do about it?
I don't want a repeat of what happened the last time.
I didn't want to go into final year
with these heavy thoughts
like a cloud over my head.
I went to the college and I said,
What are my options, you know?
And they said, Well, if you want to
continue this year and finish it,
you can choose to defer
your last year if you want.
So I emailed the registry department
and I said, Hey, I'd like to defer my final year.
And they said, No problem.
They're very helpful.
The moment I was shown,
you know, this is an option and it's okay.
Just a
complete weight was lifted off me.
And I felt like
I was able to breathe again.
Everybody had their opinions,
but I was just so,
so bad at that point that I said,
no, no, no, no, no, I need to do it.
I need to do it.
Because my body and my mind was completely shutting down
at that point.
When I told friends and family about it, they said,
Well, what are you going to do for the year?
You can't just sit back and do nothing.
And again, that's playing into you
know, you need to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
And I got upset with that because I said, you know,
the whole point of me choosing to do
this is so that I can take a step back.
It wasn't an easy choice,
but looking back on it
now, I'm extremely, extremely proud of myself
and very glad that I did it,
because if I didn't, I I don't like to think of
what could have happened, you know.
I started focusing on things that relaxed me
rather than put me under stress.
It slowly got better.
It's like all the symptoms kind of floated away
purely because I was shown that it was okay
and that there were other options for me.
I didn't have to just continue treking.
I think the biggest advice
that I would give to anybody
that's under immense stress
or if they feel like they're getting to a breaking point,
would be just to feel your feelings.
Treat them like a wave.
Like just let them come in.
Let them go and let them go and let them go out.
If you're feeling really angry,
there's a reason why you're feeling angry.
Try and let that out
in a healthy way, obviously.
So any young person out there, who's doing their Leaving Cert
or anybody who's in college, you know,
there's a reason why you feel down.
You need to talk about it.
You need to let those feelings out.
If you need to cry, just cry.
If you're happy, enjoy the happiness.
And it sounds so simple, but
it really it really does work.
I'm doing much better.
I'm loving my course.
I've made some fantastic friends.
Spending a lot more time with family, you know, getting out
more.
I'm just I'm looking forward to life again.
I'm going into a master's degree now in September,
which I wasn't even planning on doing in the first place.
But I decided,
you know, that I am capable for it.
I'm able to not only recognise
the stress, but recognise
the joy that I get when I'm
truly happy and when I'm truly relaxed.
And those are the feelings that I'm
tuning into now.
It's perfectly okay to fail.
And I think we don't talk about this enough.
It's perfectly okay to change your mind
and to take a break.
We don't have to keep following the path
just because we want to follow the money or the success
or the fame or the praise
or whatever the case may be.
Life is too short to be bogged down
and you know, get stuck in a rut.
You have to be happy.
You know, that's the most important thing