Another vote for the Bradshaw book above. I was one of those people who was simultaneously crippled by shame and yet not very aware of it... it was like the air I breathed, unless it was especially noxious I just couldn't sense it. But once I understood shame as a kind of cringing shutdown... wow, I had plenty of it, I just didn't know what to call it.
Some things I learned in particular from Bradshaw are that shame is a social emotion, it has to do with our perceptions of the perceptions of other people (whether our perceptions are right or wrong) and it has a freeze effect on action and cognition, making it hard to think and feel at the time except maybe for the desire to sink through the floor and unexist.
After I learned to identify shame, I was able to look at the most common triggers in my life, and they were areas where I hadn't ever really figured out my own values. Once I had my own values in place, the shame triggers lost a lot of power.
What didn't work for me at all is the oft-repeated advice that what other people think of me is none of my business, or that I shouldn't care what other people think. That advice worked for me about like stabbing my shame with a fork... I felt shame about feeling shame!
We are inherently social creatures. When you meet someone who truly doesn't care about the opinions and feelings of others, it's best to run.
Probably most people posting here have dealt with someone who is like this at least some of the time, thanks to one chemical or another.
The personal strength to take an unpopular stance is not about not caring what others think, that is about caring very much and wanting to make things better for everyone.
P.S. Whenever I ~first~ break a dysfunctional family rule, even when I'm certain of my values, I have a big old wash of shame. The second and third time I break the rule, some shame but less. And so on. I thought it was important to mention this because at first it can feel SO BAD to do something healthy, if we aren't prepared for this shame backlash maybe we will think we've made a huge mistake!