OK, I am somewhat more collected now. It's been a tough day, involving two partial meltdowns in front of colleagues. However, fortunately they were the right colleagues to melt down in front of, if that had to happen. I still feel embarrassed about it.

Thank you again for your responses - as for "what do other people say", there are only two people I've mentioned that I feel this way to. One of them, a close friend of mine, claims it's nonsense, every time. The other one is my current T; I said once in passing (one or two sessions ago) that I think all my issues are my own fault, and he responded "Well, that's what we are here to discover, isn't it." I liked that response, it felt as if he was taking me seriously, and it's a little like what MKAC's T says, too. (He's also been briefed by aforementioned friend who wrote him a letter saying, among other things, that I blame myself for all my issues and lie to everybody around me when I'm not happy. Well, of course I do, and of course I do.)

Fixated, you asked if this realisation makes things harder. It makes things very hard to be sure - I have never blamed anybody else, I think, so it's not as if this is a new realisation that brings me down. Though maybe I'm realising more and more that people around me care for me, which makes me more depressed that I'm not a better person.

Perna - why am I stuck with the broken pieces? Because I'm incapable of fixing them. But this is why I'm in therapy. I can't fix them on my own.

KazzaX, Spirit, Stopdog - thank you, I needed to hear those things. And maybe the allocation of blame isn't the most important thing here. I can see that, intellectually (and BashfulBear, I do agree that it's always easier to see this for other people!) but at the same time I know that I'm basically a pretty awful human being. Of course that doesn't mean that I have to sabotage my own happiness forever.

Lillylillie, thank you for your kind words about my posts here. I appreciate that enormously.

I'm just confused, I guess. T tomorrow morning - I'll put all this to him, see what he says about it.