It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

How much of depression is learned behaviour and how much is it biological?

My partner grew up in a house with a violent alcoholic father. His parents were poor and uneducated. His siblings both have drug/alcohol dependency issues.

There isn't much family unity. Although his parents are still together and live a couple of hours away from us, we might see them once or twice a year and that's always at our instigation.

His closest (and pretty much only) friend is someone he's known since he was in pre-school. He spent a lot of time at this person's house because his mother used to take him there to get him out of his father's way.

My partner has climbed to incredible heights given his starting point.

He is the first person in his entire family to complete the final year of high school and go on to a tertiary education (achieving qualifications in two fields).

He works in a large organisation and is highly respected for the work he does. He's built himself a reputation for being knowledgeable in his industry.

He is also an accomplished musician and artist. He has travelled internationally. He has learned languages.

On a personal level he has tried to work through the trauma caused by events in his childhood. I think it's amazing that he is able to have a relationship with his parents at all, that he can accept his father as the person he is now, years after the drinking stopped.

He has done extraordinary things given he began with so little in his favour.

And yet when he is depressed it's as if these achievements signify nothing to him in terms of his self worth and in terms of what it's possible for a life to be.

He is trapped in the mean, miserable world inside his head. He sees life as offering nothing other than misery, ugliness, violence, intolerance, incompetence, inequity and greed.

And sometimes, when he is down, it is his parents that I see reflected in his behaviour and the things that he says.

I don't mean that he's violent towards us; but I see the ugliness of violence perpetrated upon him, the effect that it's had on his facial expressions - the scornful curl of the lip, the defensive wall of blank eyes, blank face radiating - don't touch me!

And then worst of all I see the despair, the giving up. There is no better life possible. There is nothing here for me. I am better off out of it.

Right now I think his depression is a combination of factors, of which his early childhood environment was chief.

I think he learned to react to life in destructive, negative ways. He learned to look at the world as a hostile place where you retreat to hidden places for safety. These were the paths that were forged in his mind while he was growing.

But he must have learned other things too. After all he didn't become a violent alcoholic himself, although he struggles with alcohol and self directed aggression.

He must have learned strength and perseverance. His mother survived and protected him as well as she could. There was love in his life too. And strength. His father eventually stopped drinking. What a monumental achievement.

So it's complicated. And often I think there's only so much that unravelling the past can help. He knows why he thinks the way he does. It's just that he still can't help it a lot of the time.

I think re-wiring is a lot harder than the original process and I am incredibly grateful that he is trying. I think having a child has been the biggest factor in helping him to do that. The stakes are a lot higher now.

This post has been very helpful to me. I forget all too often just why I am in awe of my partner, how much I admire him and how highly I regard him.

Flo