Exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self. Toxic shame is experienced as inner torment, a sickness of the soul. If I'm an object that can't be trusted, then I'm not in me.
Toxic shame is paradoxical and self-generating.
There is shame about shame. People will readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame. Toxic shame is ghe feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense. Any human emotion can become internalized. When internalized, an emotions stops functioning in the manner of an emotion and becomes a characterological style.