Ooops. Sorry, Lady, I may have hit a trigger for you in a response I wrote to you in another thread -- finding perspective helps me, but it sounds as though you've heard it too much.
I try to avoid asking myself if I'm just feeling sorry for myself because I believe that I am. But this is one of those thinking/believing dichotomies -- I think that's what depression is: feeling sorry for yourself over a long period of time and not being able to pull yourself out of it. But I believe that feeling sorry for myself is a self-indulgent weakness and that I should be able to just stop doing it. I have no idea whether or not avoiding this question is a good thing to do, but it makes me feel worse when I ask it of myself so I try not to.
You have a lot of positive things on your plate, but that doesn't mean that you are invulnerable to depression. "How can I be depressed when my life is so good?" has been asked by a lot of people here, and I don't think that there's a good answer to that question either.
Working through this program is the first time that I've actually felt that I'm getting better. It's taking some time, but I'm starting to get an understanding of where my negative thoughts and emotions are coming from... a lot of time, actually, because understanding is only the first step :confuse: