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  A comment on Conversation: What's one thing you wish you had learned in school?

  Nov 5 2011: I MISS BEING ABLE TO LEARN ABOUT MY FREEDOM.
  I would have wanted to attend a school more like this instead of spending so much of twelve years of my childhood and youth locked up in fear or boredom:
  
  I imagine a school that is attatched to a garden with high walls that creates an outdoor schoolroom.Trees, plants and small huts create interest and solace. Also a glass ‘conservatory’ where some lectures are held. Various animals like cats and dogs roam free. Good swings and the likes.
  
  Indoors the rooms have large fireplaces placed so that everyone can see and help keep the fires burning on cold days. Anybody can fetch firewood from a shed in the garden.
  Simple, great food and drink is prepared in a kitchen inside the school. The pupils fetch what they want from the kitchen in a basket and choose for themselves where they eat their ‘picnic’.
  Lecture, carpentry, mechanics, textile, art and gymnastics rooms have silent glass sliding doors.
  
  Pupils are encouraged to attend the different lectures in the different rooms when and for as long as they are interested. They are free to arrive and leave whenever they gain or loose interest in different activities. And free to roam the garden or study by themselves or sleep in their own tiny personal ‘shelter’ with shelves, a desk and a cot.
  
  In one room there is always an ‘adviser’ that can help pupils with any questions or problems they have. The adviser, for example, arranges personal appointments with the different lecturers so that the pupils might get further explanations to help their various lines of interest.
  
  I think this kind of school would allow more for each different inividual to follow their own pace, heart and mind.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 31 2011: Around a week ago I was depressed for a day after weeks of hypomania.(My longest depression lasted about four months.) I found these three takes on a depressive outlook, poignant in their symbolism of loss, cruelty and loneliness.
  
  "The Calculus of Friendship - Steven Strogatz http://youtu.be/9piYoYqIf3I I loved watching this again today.
  The Last Picture Show: Sweeping http://youtu.be/GgZx_vQcgHo And this brings out tears as always.
  First Orbit - the movie http://youtu.be/RKs6ikmrLgg And this long breathtaking movie also. The incomprehensibility and beauty tearing apart something."
  Quoting myself at the time.
  
  My youngest brother, Daniel, committed suicide a few years ago. He was 35 years old and had probably been depressed for a long time. He made his first suicide attempt as a teenager.
  After the incomprehensible extremeness of his action I did my best to ignore it. I hoped that he thought of it as a mistake and that it would never happen again. He seemed to be feeling better.
  I could not help him.
  Daniel was unusually kind and helpful.
  I saw interviews with families and friends of persons who had committed suicide. They all characterised their lost ones as unusually kind and helpful.

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 31 2011: I wonder if there exists any gathered data about what formerly suicidals consider to be the most important factors that made them want to live. I have only heard one clear account. It was from a boy who unsuccessfully went through several therapies. What made the last theraphy work was that the therapist showed him genuine interest.
  Do you need to feel that at least some person genuinly cares about who you are? To feel that you are neither completely alone nor forced to comply wholly to others in order to find company. Maybe you can then find the courage to travel some distances alone. And feel confident that you will find others to accompany you on part of your ways, even if seemingly unchartered.
  We suffer when alone and we suffer when in too restraining company.
  How to navigate your own personal route while keeping in contact with those you love is often tricky.
  You can believe that storms and narrow gaps are given as opportunities to become a better navigator. Nobody knows where they are going and that is beautiful. Take the time to read the compass when you suspect that you are lost. Find your bearing. Chris, it is there to find.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 31 2011: Thank you Mark Meijer for taking notice that I was very unclear about what I meant by heart and brain interactions. Here is the research I am leaning heavily on scientifically in that aspect: http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/head-heart-interactions.html.
  I am at a loss to where I found the interesting information with speculations as to why humans through evolution have been equipped with the ability for being depressed. I believe it to be very probable that depression has benign functions.
  Such as helping humans in dire emotional circumstances by inducing them to rest in solitude and for example either emptying their minds of thought and feeling or rethinking difficulties again and again. These states of mind maybe makes it easier for the unconscious to regroup and find a way to positively consolidate these new learnings into the system. If the depression can take its course you ultimately might emerge stronger.
  I agree that we need the ups and downs to evolve beautifully. Each personal setback is a sign for us to try to overcome it in a way as to learn and grow. We can beautifully never predict what comes to us. And we can never know how we will evolve. We are all children of sorts. Learning gets easier when we acknowledge that comforting fact.
  The ability to acknowledge our heart as our compass gives a point of direction that can be trusted whatever strange turns of directions life takes you in order to grow. Small obstacles might be overcome by ignoring them but some have to be mastered in order to be able to move forward.

• A comment on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 30 2011: I made this video on bipolarity where I give my view both on depression and mania, which by some, including me, is considered to be just another take on depression – both ways being a search for some better point of reference.
  http://youtu.be/5Aj9r5Y3woY
  ...
  
What if when even a mania or psychosis doesn't seem to take you forward, maybe even makes you more confused, shifts into depression and total sense of meaninglessness, only in order for you to be able to start anew.
  
Maybe your next manic effort will take you a bit further than the last. Like trying to continue laying a very difficult puzzle (the foundation for your sense of judgment(?)) that needs all your skills in order to get clearer.
  
If even your psychotic abilities cannot help you grasp how to proceed - every new far-out way of looking at this puzzle fails - maybe the best way to continue is to leave it, get a rest, empty yourself of all granted, preconceived sense of outlook. Like in a depression.
  
Then try again, starting with the very simplest pieces of the puzzle, like food and sleep. Even having the feeling that this is enough and forget about the other pieces.Is this maybe the best ground for trying again? Nothing to lose and slowly regaining your interest. Working the puzzle from other angles, maybe remembering some of the things that felt right and important the last time, trying to fit them in but maybe in a new way, in a new place. Getting excited, overexcited, manic, psychotic. Not wanting to give up the most interesting and important task you have ever had. Until you're too exhausted and have to leave it again. Hopefully not giving it all up forever, but to regain the strength to try again.
  With the knowledge that you can go back to the basic comforts whenever you fail.
The awesome happiness of finding an important piece and a foolproof place for it - knowing that this will almost automatically lead to many other minor revelations.
The awesome happiness.

• A reply on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 30 2011: To search for a point of reference might be the only way for people with unusually developed sense of balance. They are exceptionally well equipped to sense the imbalances in life and therefore prone to develop depressions as a means to help resolve the contradictory feelings of for example a family divorce or other devastating human discrepancies.
  Depressions are like fever is to an infection and should be left to take its course in rest and solitude with help and support from persons close. If the depression has not diminished after some weeks some expert guidance is probably needed. Guided by someone who does not see the depression itself as the original sickness but as part of the cure.
  A feeling of relative balance can be found when we calibrate our major thoughts and feelings to our heart. The heart has been shown to posess neurons like in our brain and there are two-way communications between heart and brain.
  I believe in watching out for thoughts and feelings that are extrapolations from the compass of our heart. They are our points of reference, forever changing as we go.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: What can we do about the constant rise of depression and suicide in young adults?

  Oct 29 2011: Thank you Chris for initiating this.
  Today I learned that those experiencing sea sickness often feel slightly depressed before becoming actually sick and might even feel suicidal. (I heard it on a Danish science program on Norvegian television.) Sea sickness is the result of conflicting sensory information (from balance organs opposed to eyes) that creates a chaos. This internal chaos is speculated to be interpreted by our bodies as having been poisoned and results in vomiting.
  I immediately thought of land based depressive and suicidal states. I think that the internal conflict due to unusual awareness of the discrepancies between our heart and our world results in a similar chaos. Our bodies rightfully think that secluded rest is needed for the brain to resolve matters. Often this works sufficiently to go on living, but sometimes the ability to understand extreme contradictions of viewpoints leaves no point of reference.
  The sea sick feels better when steering the ship. How do we accomplish the feeling of steering our own ships in sometimes dangerous waters? I believe our heart is our compass.