Dependent origination

I've been trying to get my head around the twelve links of dependent origination for a while now.  After reading a number of explanations looking at it from a psychological, moment to moment angle, this is my best take so far on it:

Not understanding how our own mind works (ignorance), we go through life under the influence of our stories, prejudices and habits of mind (karmic formations), which condition the headspace (consciousness) from which we regard the world around us (name and form). This colours our perceptions of the world (six sense bases) so that when something comes to our attention (contact) we have a certain emotional response (feeling) that leads us to want or not want particular things and experiences (craving). When we get stuck on wanting things to be a certain way (clinging), we create stories in which our happiness is dependent on those things (becoming) and which become incorporated into our own sense of identity (birth). Then, when the things on which we've pinned our self-concept change, disappoint or slip through our fingers (aging, sickness and death) we suffer not only from that loss but also a sort of existential angst in having our sense of self undermined. Not understanding why we feel like this (ignorance), we keep going with the new layer of stories and habits we've thus developed (karmic formations) and the cycle continues..

(One idea i had was to take "this gives rise to that" not so much as "this causes that to be" but more "this conditions how that will be".  Seems okay as a working model so far.)