Most cases of depression have to do with actual events going on in that person's life and not in the person's attitude toward them. If someone is married to the wrong person, or has the wrong career, or is in the wrong town, they don't need therapy. They need to get out.

And this shouldn't be controversial.

If you're married to someone insensitive, you won't be happy. If your boss is an abusive jerk, you should quit, even in this economy.

But how do we know what defines "should"?

Before you let this quibble write off everything, let's lay a principle foundation.

My theory of happiness is that when we're doing what's appropriate, we are most happy. It's based on this principle:

Which is also based on this principle:

Even if you think what I'm saying is akin to an amoralistic, "Do what thou wilt" thelema, it still holds true. Take even the most extreme case: if someone believes that it's important to be a homicidal maniac and doesn't act on it, he won't be happy, virtue-be-damned. Conversely, that doesn't mean the homicidal maniac will be happy if he does act on it.

People are often too scared to recognize what it will take to make a meaningful change in their life. Instead they turn to the idea that "it's all in my head." They think that if they can just "focus on setting their boundaries" or "reverse their ingrained beliefs" they won't have to do the unthinkable.

This image from Luis Borges's Inferno, I, 32 is the situation that most of the depressed find themselves in:

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him.

My problem has been that I've often had little ideas and dreams that I was simply too scared or weak to embrace. I just left them shelved for the sake of an easier life. When I found myself depressed with work, I would yell at myself, "Come on, you spoiled brat, anybody would be happy to be doing what you're doing!" But then I started to look deep inside myself and began summoning up the courage to do what I truly wanted to do. After overcoming my initial hesitation anxiety, I developed the immense joy of finally feeling connected to what I've been doing. Looking back now, I can't believe that I let myself drift on the supposed "golden path" for so long. And now, the more time that I've put between me and that supposed golden path, the more I find myself with new foundations, such that the current way no longer seems especially exalted or fanciful. It simply feels more true.

If the final design for humans was to simply think our way to happiness, we would have never survived this long as a species. Nor can we imagine a higher being who would have that kind of plan for us.