The very first time I saw my T, I saw him as a pdoc, referred by my then-T to discuss my medication. Towards the end of the session he asked me whether I helt hampered or hindered in my life because of shame. Nobody had ever asked me anything like that ever before, and I had never discussed shame with anybody. It was one of the things he said which made me feel that he would be a better person to work with than the T I was seeing at the time. And ever since I started seeing him for therapy, we have worked, periodically, with shame. I do get overwhelmed with shame - and fear of shame - sometimes and it's as if it floods my brain to the exclusion of everything else.

I wonder if you are familiar with affect theory? My T asked me to look it up and read about it, and I did, and I find that it explains things very well, for me. Threre's a primer of affect psychology here (pdf file), which I found interesting and informative, though I object to the tone of the presentation (it feels like the author is talking down to the reader.) Like all other theories, it presents one way of looking at reality, and it's definitely not an all-encompassing truth. But I found it enlightening. It combines biology and psychology in a very appealing way.