[omniglottal]

Being beloved and successful does not negate negative feedback. In fact, rhetoric such as this is invalidating the experience of those who must thereby insist that, contrary to the signs you're seeing, they're actually feeling down, else they must further internalize the negative feedback which nevertheless exists in plethora. The notion that anyone could claim precisely what reasonably should bring another stranger happiness or resolve their depression is pure hubris. The defining qualities of this situation are all internal, and the externalities used in your measurement are correllative and either irrellevant or after-the-fact. A "smell test" one might consider is of empathy: if your mind ran quickly through various things which caught its attention, yet couldn't follow through with focus until resolution, negative feedback surely just recurs and piles up - it is neither sufficiently affected nor undone by positive feedback. OP's hypothesis smells true to me, but I choose to sniff the roots rather than the flower when we're looking for a cause more than an effect.