Hi all

I just need to get out some steam buy babbling away, I don't mind if no one reads it... it's probably gonna be long as usual and contain a lot of stuff that is totally not interesting.

I grew up at the countryside in the middle of Norway, at a place with less than 100 inhabitants and nothing but ferries to lead us to other people. The "village" has roots back to stoneage, and many of the families there had roots to the place centuries back.

It's funny what that do to a place, and after moving out I swore I would never move back, even though they now havebuild something like 7 bridges and we can drive by car to the closest city, one hour away. Once in a while I take a week of holiday out there, even though there's nothing left but my fathers grave to connect me to the place. But the nature there is glorious, and as my father I love the nature most of all in this world. You can find everything there. Big mountains, small mountains, open sea and fjords. You can pick at least 6 different types of edible berries, fish both fresh water fish and salt water fish. You can ski in the winter and bathe in the sea in the summer. If you need to you can go for a walk in the forest or alon the beach or at the mountain, and not see a trace of human beings anywhere. Wildlife is great, with elks, fox', hares, deers, frogs, lynx', and plenty others.

And everytime I get back home after having had a holiday there I just feel how much I hate the place.

My mothers fathers family had roots far back at the place, and my fathers mothers family had roots so far back that no one could tell when they first settled there. Their surname was the name of the place.

My mothers family had a lot of insanity in it... on her mothers side. Which of course made people look at you with different eyes. My grandfather had "importet" a nutcase from the city. Depression was the main thing, but also bipolarity, personality disorders and schizophrenia. My mother took care of her schizophrenic grandmother untill she died, and after that she took very much care of her bipolar younger sister. She herself was struggling with anxiety and depression. I grew up with mental problems as a part of my life, and for me it was natural to choose psychology as my subject at the university... even though I was myself hit by the curse, and have been suffering major depression (periods of it) since the age of 11. By the age of 17 I lost my dearly beloved father, and my depression developed further to generalized anxiety and panick attack. By the age of 20 I was totally handicapped, the only chance I felt I had was to die to get off it. I tried to get help, but it was impossible. I started reading psychcology in the midst of all this, and at some point i started training my anxiety away. It took me half a year to be able to go outside my door, and 1 year to be able to go to the shop. From then on it went faster. It took longer time doing it all myself, but on the other hand at least I learned properly what to do and not. I got into the clinical psychology study by the time I started to call myself "cured". I still sometimes feel the old anxiety creep up my back, but I have total control now.

So why can't I control my depression? I have tried myself, I have been with several therapists, and I even have medication. But on a regular basis I am thrown into this deep pit and it feels like I am suffocated in darkness. My psychiatrist says it's biological based, but still I feel it ironic that I can't control it. In my point of view everything is at least partly biological (I mean, when you get a panick attack, it IS something happening in there biological too, and not ONLY thoughts).

Ironic world... I pray for the day there is more specialized medications, so they can hit the nail on the head when they medicate you. No, I don't really pray, I just hope.

CC