Number 3, "Give yourself a negative identity," just sounds like "I don't like when people have mental health problems. Get over it already."
There's also a big difference between mental health denial / "get over it already" and making steps to finally stop it from totally dominating your life in the future.
Depression is like a separate animal inside you with its own drives for survival and reproduction. You don't turn your back on it, but you don't let it devour you and steal your name and face either.
If it can manage to, it would love to take control of you and make you believe that there is literally nothing that can help and you're utterly powerless to change anything, and that anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just one of those people who doesn't understand and thinks you can just cheer yourself up out of depression by smiling and going outside or whatever. That's a false dichotomy.
There's a huge difference between saying "I have severe depression, and it takes great effort for me to get through a day without buckling" and saying "I have severe depression, so my daily mental breakdowns aren't my fault".
She also doesn't say that any of the habits can be casually broken, if only they are recognized.
It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.
Did I invoke one of the stupid rules from the article just right now? :)
I wholly agree with this. There's something deeply insightful, subtle and difficult about recognizing one's own control in a situation. I've thought about this a lot in the last year. The way I phrase it right now is: people don't have a choice until they realize they have one.