Update for the curious: did talk to a friend (the same one mentioned above, who, I think, is a better "shrink" than some real shrinks) and am now resolved to kick this thing, because sooner or later, excessive approval-seeking will get me in trouble.
I'm starting with what I think of as homebrew CBT: I will not gratuitously apologize or verbally belittle myself. I will try to replace "I suck, everyone hates me" thoughts with saner alternatives. I will keep doing this even when it seems stupid and self-deluding. Hopefully the concrete behavioral stuff will affect the higher-level stuff.
After all. A mathematician I really admire gave me career advice -- and it was "Believe in yourself." Yeah, in those words, and he's a logical guy, not very soft and fuzzy.
Here's my rationalist CBT: the things that depression tells you are way too extreme to be accurate - self-deluding is believing them, not examining them rationally.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
July Part 1