Is there any way the OP's demands on 'self' are too extreme for what actually is believable to them? trying to hold a POV that you know you can't place that much faith in eventually results in an internal clash/crash.
Bingo. You've hit the nail on the head, I believe. I was PMing earlier today and I came to some conclusion along those lines. Over the past 5 or so years I've been through a lot dealing with my (now previous) faith, and I have always felt like it didn't quite fit. I remember going to church, and now that I look on it in retrospect, it seems like I just had an exoskeleton on and I was just playing the chameleon, trying to fit in with these beliefs that had to be correct. And with the denomination I was associated with, it was an "or else" kind of thing. (And, frankly, it wore the shit out of me.)
Ultimately, there's some core part of my personality I believe, that doesn't really permit me to become lodged into one belief system. It's just utterly
anathema to me. Therefore, trying to force myself to do that basically plugged my pipe, so to speak. I've been crashing ever since I started, and I realize that now, and I have been realizing it over the past few weeks and months. It's amazing how I got into something and never saw how contrary it was to the "real me" inside. And it's caused me a lot of pain (physically, mentally, emotionally) to try to conform. I'm also a heavy dreamer, and such a "defined" and rigorous faith doesn't really do me well. At the most, I think I should be spiritual in some way, if anything. Discordianism fits me, hehe. (I don't want to believe anything, I want to believe everything on some level, etc. If you're not familiar with the philosophy, here it is:
Discordianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Most recently, what I've been working through are the ideas that I /must/ believe this, or that I /must/ believe that. I've had a lot of requirement-oriented ideas that have found their way into my system, and it's been like shackles on me. I've worked through a lot of logic and it has taken a lot of time and effort, but I have yet to work through the emotional imprints that have persisted. (And I'm not sure exactly how.)