Sure, I'll add some context too!

Some of my counseling clients have been very self-aware of their feelings and what works for them. They understand what they are supposed to do to feel better. But they find life is meaningless and don't see any purpose to their behaviors.

When they are in counseling, they focus on "why did this happen," and need answers. Unfortunately, in many situations in life, like a death of a friend, abuse, a series of unfortunate events, etc., we have little control. When people realize this, they bargain and negotiate - "I could've done this to prevent it" - they go into a negative thought pattern of guilt or intrusive thoughts about "what if" scenarios.

At this point, everything comes to their philosophical point of view - did they have control over the events? Did life give them this trauma for things they have done? Did they deserve it?

They try to make sense of the events and keep asking themselves questions about why the trauma happened. Some people adopt a deterministic point of view - what happened couldn't have been prevented. Some adopt a free-will point of view - they made mistakes, and now they have to learn not to make them again.

Those points of view determine how guilty they feel, how desperate they are to change their lives, and how they can move on.

• Those troubled by thoughts of re-writing their past benefit from accepting a deterministic point of view because then they accept they have little control.
• Those who are troubled because they don't do anything and just let things happen benefit from taking a free-will point of view, so they try to learn from their mistakes and focus on taking action to improve their life.

In both cases, the change in perspective gives them meaning; it gives them a reason to change what they are doing. They understand there are more forces at play than they can manage. They learn that, sometimes, they can make decisions all they want, but they won't matter, but they can't know this beforehand.
Changing their deterministic pov to a free-will pov (and vice versa) gives them answers depending on how willing they are to accept fate or exert control:

1. "I can seek meaning in my future actions and how I spend my time instead of past explanations since I had no role in what happened" or
2. "I can understand my mistakes and what I could've done better, so now I will focus on learning that instead."

Now, they find meaning in living in the moment, going on a learning journey, or spending quality time and embracing the good things when they happen. And when they have bad times, they focus on how strong they have become to not collapse during a crisis.

Depression often involves your brain/mind telling itself false stories about bad things happening to you. Often focusing on it being because you're a shitty person and it's your fault and you don't deserve good things, etc. That point of view is inherently toxic to a healthy mind, and it can be more powerful if someone truly believes that everything happening to them is out of their control. Because then, how could they ever change it?

Once people get a wider, wiser perspective on those events they can see that the stories playing in their head are generally false, which clears up a lot of their depressive thoughts.