I'm very curious as to what that would have been. Could still be.

Nothing very glamorous. Just a solid life, financial security, stable family and a few little luxuries occasionally.

but to try to identify one's tendencies, one's defaults, and skew perspective away from that.

I wonder if I was able to believe the lies I could tell myself, if I could make a lie where I am better off for it.

Was it a condition my mother herself suffered from? I actually do think it was the last.

"Sins of the father" or mother in your case perhaps. We seem to never fall far enough away from the tree when it comes to the negatives.