Point taken, but it actually bothers me that theists don't seem to be bothered by anything.

Well put. I think that was one of the things that convinced me that I probably wasn't right about god or religion, though it took a long time to get to that level of awareness.

but could you connect that practice to how you "gained an understanding for why you were uncomfortable with losing your religion"?

Sure, looking back it seems sufficiently vague to need clarification, even to myself.

For me, I came from a background where it was pretty much assumed that people are rational agents, and that everything we do is for a justifiable reason. It just seemed to follow that if something feels a certain way, then it was almost certain to be that way. A whole slew of biases could or did manifest here that I couldn't even begin to fathom until I took a class on psychology, which revealed to me the "Just World hypothesis" which turns into blaming the victim.

Now that I am aware of some of the many ways in which human minds fail, I have knowledge of some of the horrible consequences that these happy illusions can lead to. Having a visceral understanding of these horrors gave me a strong urge not to do them. But having had the very same urges just before, I knew how they felt from the other side, and how comfortable they were.

At least, that's what I think I was referring to. Thanks for asking for clarification.