Shame & the "loss of words":

 via Rob Henderson:

"Increasing levels of experienced regulated shame serve as an important sociodevelopmental function as the agent for the dilution of primary narcissism and narcissistic rage. As shame becomes less rejected from consciousness, it allows for transformation or primary into secondary narcissism, and explosive narcissistic rage into modulated, verbalized anger. At the same time the effects of unconscious shame on the blockage of affect are alleviated, leading to an expansion of the affect array. In general, fully experiencing affective responses is a prerequesite for 'correcting distortions of the object world' ... In partcular, increasing shame tolerance facilitates the acquknowledgement and acceptance of earlier pain-associated attachment and dependeny needs. The clinical import of this affect is that it is essential to the mechanism of repression, that it is a major force of inhibition of affect, cognition, and behavior. Shame, an affect that uniquely causes a 'loss of words' underlies alexithymia, 'no words for feelings'. When shame is unregulated and therefore chronic it interferes with the expression of almost all emotions, and this results in an alexithymic syndrome. Wilson characterizes the alexithymic inability to articulate feeling states: ' We suggest that some people will have a poorly developed lexicon for the description of some manifestation of self-regulatory failures  because they are not consciously accessible and are therefore out of awareness.'. "