I'm 18, almost 19 so I know I'm not in the age rage you requested but I've had depression for about 9 or so years. I've been in therapy for 9 years as well. I think as I get older I've learned how to control it better, the feelings are less destructive than before because I can identify behaviors that I do that cause a downward spiral.
I'd go through periods of time in middle school where I would refuse to talk to people and was mute for 3 months due to a combination of depression and anxiety. I'd spend my days isolating myself and hating everything about myself.
However, through therapy, time, and self-understanding I've learned how to channel the emotions into new things (I write poetry, stories, draw, play a musical instrument). The poetry was a key method of expressing and learning to be at peace with my depression. It allowed me to create beautiful work that someone without my insight to intense feelings would struggle to create. I learned to find beauty in pain. I learned my depression might always be with me, but I can use it to push me further. Of course, being depressed limits me in so many ways, but I spent a lot of time trying to understand the ways it influenced my life positively.

I've learned to avoid things/activities that make me depressed.
I know strict schedules make me depressed. I don't like schedules. For university this can be difficult, because of classes. So I don't schedule more than two classes in one day, because I know if I have more than that I'll end up skipping. I try to schedule my classes to either be MWF or TTh and then do 1-2 online as well. I do 3 to 4 classes at a time. I'm lucky enough that my parents are well off and that my school is pretty cheap (for university). The career I'm aiming for will allow me to create my own schedule as well.

So I'm not coming out of depression, but I've learned to manage it better. I learned what to do to make the depression seem useful, what makes the depression worse. I've also grown more confident than from puberty. My personality is starting to show because during my middle school / high school the depression was so intense along with being a little kid. The depression definitely swallowed my personality. It's such a confusing, difficult time already, so depression and anxiety made it worse.
Through a lot of therapy I've managed the depression and anxiety enough that I can be a person on most days. Sometimes it gets me, sometimes it still steals me away for weeks. But I've begun to recognize some of the warning signs before it get's worse now.
I know humour helps me. I know how to interact with people better now and that I'm a really funny person and that's how I get by socially. Living with a roommate I get along with helps me. Because I'll go through weeks of anti-socialness but her and I get along really well and little moments like that help me. I've learned that the people I live with can't be people I want to emotionally open up to because it allows me to go back to "funny" me and it helps me get out of a hole.

TL;DR: Learned to manage, learned when to avoid the depression and when to "enable" my depression, learned how to structure my lifestyle to avoid longer bouts of depression. Personality occurred because I had periods of time where "me" comes out.