Thanks for your long and thoughtful post Open Eyes. The thing about the personal reward system is sticking in my mind.

I think of depression as very very similar to anger, like you said, anger turned inwards. Turning it outwards is some advice I picked up from feminism. Although I understand that it's important to change some of the injustices in the world, using anger doesn't usually work very well for me. Current t showed me to show some vulnerability instead of anger. That worked a little bit in a relationship. Mainly I keep wondering how/why to be happy when people treat each other so badly. When that's happening to someone else, I know it could easily be happening to me.