Ooh, that's a good insight - that you want to do something, but can't do anything, and so you do the one thing you can always do (beat up on yourself mentally) and hope that it somehow helps.

And yeah. I don't want to say that you can't get something of value out of either literal or metaphorical Calvinism. I may have a personal distaste for it, but far be it from me to tell someone else that they shouldn't find meaning where they find it.