shame

I admire your foray into this realm of emotion, because I deal with it and I don't have a clue as to how to express it (yet). Shame is as hard to exorcise from the body as stink on shite, and it is a profoundly controlling force.

When I read this another approach occurs to me as well -- you describe the harshness and tenacity of shame vividly, AND, I find it always disguises itself so cleverly that it takes me awhile to see that's the button that's been pushed. Maybe a write incorporating this idea, too?

Or maybe not, because when shame takes control it is, quite simply as you have written, cruel.