Thank you, ~m.
I see where you're coming from on this and it is somewhat encouraging to read your conviction that one can change the way one thinks with the right tools.
With the right tools...now, there's the rub, at least as far as I am concerned. I have yet to find the tools. After 3 or more years of CBT, I know for sure that it is not for me, and has barely helped me. I know (and you may be thinking) it's not a magic wand, and it's down to me to do the work, but I just can't buy into the whole paradigm, the frame within which CBT is set. I can make myself look at my thought processes as CBT asks me to, but I gain nothing from it except a deepened depression and a certainty that I am stupid because I just don't get it.
Obviously it is a therapy which has helped many people, and I'm certainly not qualified to dispute its validity, but for me....no.
So, I search for the golden fleece. The tool, the trick, that will help me change my mind........though, come to think of it, it's not my mind that needs changing, it's my life. Depression and negativity are perfectly rational responses to my life, and who and what I am.