"Where you remember past transgressions and get caught up in all the things you've been told by others. These are the days when I start questioning..."
you stated.
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i want to 'double dip" on this topic, chaotic. to reference some of the things you have posted about yourself. not to be clinical but this is my take on some of your thoughts about your conflict. i know you stated you wanted to stay away from the theraputic aspect but...i believe that we do have "old tapes" that we rerun in our mind about ourselves. these are tapes that have been instilled in us as we developed our sense of self. often these old tapes are false beliefs we have about ourselves. an example: once i almost got hit by a car. i was wearing my girl scout uniform. my mother instead of running up and hugging me in my terror instead was angry about what happened..suggesting i wasn't paying attention and that i was a bad person. i was young and her "message" to me said i was a bad person for ammost getting hit by that car cause she didn't hug me with relief but was mad at me. when i got home i felt i had shamed the girl scouts for not obeying safety rules and i was bad to the bone. i stood in front of the mirror and said what a bad person i was for shaming the girl scouts. this was a false belief brought on by my mother's reaction to the event. it created a "tape" that said i was bad (evil).
when i got into therapy i discovered that i had many false tapes-beliefs-about myself that had convinced me i was not a good person. to me these false beliefs were true. my t helped me to untangle all this and see that many things i thought about myself were not true. so this may be partly what is going on with you, chaotic. you've got some old tapes you need to throw out and get some new ones that are based on truth. a therapist can help you do this. it worked for me.
this may have gotten a little off topic but i hope you can see my point about how our beliefs about self can convince us we are bad-evil-when in fact we are not.