I've been through Freudians, group therapy and CBT, the last of which actually does seem to help me get through it. I tried Moodscope and it did assist me to recognise where I was in my pattern of depression. Been given various drugs including tricyclics, SSRIs, SNRIs and tetracyclics. For many of those years I self medicated with cigarettes but have been clean of that addiction for 7 years now.
At the moment I'm not medicated and seem to be functioning well. Yes, there are bad days and weeks but, mostly, the destructive habitual thought patterns appear to have been reduced enough, by my recognition of them, to let me function.
I like your horse visualisation of the beast, mine is like Churchill's "black dog", a Barguest haunting me, tracking me. Often I see myself as trapped in pit, slime on the walls, no light, no escape but that is one of those nasty, destructive thoughts - especially when I look for ways of destroying my prison because my prison is myself. I have managed over many years to look for the door, or the ladder or the thread that will lead me out of it.
Circular thought patterns (I can't do A because of B and that means I cannot do C because I can't do A) are also destructive and self defeating, but really they are a spiral inwards - try finding a way to take a spiral out and it will not necessarily be that same spiral you followed in.
Good things about depression:
1) You are likely more intelligent than the average and more likely to be an original thinker;
2) You can spend hours on the minutiae of problems and life, I remember how much time I spent (almost said wasted, bad thought - go to the doghouse) at the computer, or painting models thus avoiding my problems;
3) When things do get good you will start to feel them more intensely than the non-depressed - honestly.
Be good, be careful, try and take some comfort from those who have stumbled through their own darkness
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