According to Blum (2008), as well as Lazarus (1991), shame is experienced as a composite of intense pain, discomfort, a feeling of being no good, of being inadequate, and unworthy. In shame we think of ourselves as a bad person. We are ashamed of ourselves, and we want to hide. We want to minimise any further painful exposure of the self, especially to anyone who is personally important to us. Lewis (1993) observed that in shame there is "a shrinking of the body, as though to disappear from the eye of the self or the other" (p. 569). Shame is a product of a complex set of cognitive activities, chief of which is a negative evaluation of self.
When working in therapy with candidates at various stages of formation the following issues of guilt and shame emerged regularly: fear of facing people; thinking that other persons would be watching them; thinking that other persons may be talking about them; afraid of talking to authority figures; not being able to talk freely in a group; trembling with stage fear; feeling of too much inferiority complex.