"Supposed To" and "Need To"

When I think about all the things I am supposed to do, what I am really doing is projecting an ideal image of myself, which is not all that real. I start to feel anxiety that I am not "that person" that I am supposed to be, often disregarding times when I thought I was supposed to be somehow "more" than who I am in this moment in order to survive. In fact, however, I later discovered that the ideal that I harbored is in no way a requirement: in fact, it is often just a burden which prevents me from seeing what I need to do in the moment, which is starkly different  from any kind of ideal. Living itself is something that does not require a static or statuesque ideal. It is often involving being open to compromise when situations don't entirely fall into something that is ideal.
  Even depression, at times, might be the expression of a thwarted "supposed to": an ideal that gets in the way of living or going on with the life that one has. Although depression might take the form of not wanting to engage in anything in particular (except, perhaps, to stay in bed at times), I often wonder if depression is really the endless internalization of a kind of hidden ideal that is so badly thwarted that one doesn't even want to see it. Instead of seeing the ideal, the person feels a kind of heaviness: the heavy leaden ball that is hidden inside an even more opaque bag is really a kind of ideal that has been disowned but not entirely relinquished.
   In order to relinquish the ideal that often might chain a person to depression, one might need to ask the question: what part of myself or my being feels so much like a failure that it cannot "go on"? What sense of failure am I even trying to hide from myself, and what ideal does that sense of failure depend on? If I can finally come to terms with the ideal that is the driving force behind the sense of failure, I can then realize that this ideal might need some adjusting or even deconstructing. Perhaps what I think should be true of myself (e.g. happier, smarter, "more spiritual", more adjusted, etc.) need to be challenged instead of simply internalized and regarded as static and fixed givens in life. In this way, one can shift away from a mentality of "I am supposed to be..." or "supposed to do", to "what do I need to do" in this moment to survive and thrive?