I completely agree with this. I'm guessing this is what the therapist was going for (maybe?), but her delivery sucked.

I have never chosen to become depressed. I don't think people do that at all. But I know from personal experience that I chose to do things that exacerbated my depressive illness, like isolate, eat poorly, become completely sedentary, etc. I chose not to do things that would have helped, like maintain contact with the healthy people and activities in my life, take care of myself physically,etc., partly because it was so hard to find the energy and motivation to do anything, partly because it was scary to try and perhaps fail.

We do make choices (often entirely unconsciously but choices nonetheless) about how we treat ourselves, and the consequences can certainly keep us stuck, but getting to the point where we can finally put one foot in front of the other can take time and very hard work and the determination to motivate ourselves when we really aren't feeling the motivation. Really tough work.

This T's delivery of that kind of information (if that was what she was going for) was horrible and unhelpful though. That is no way to approach a client or in any way helpful.