There was the following sentence in the article written by Maureen Dowd titled, “Where the boys aren’t,” sketching the life of Dolores Hart in New York Times February 19 issue:

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> “I had no idea that it was going to mean singing seven times a day, working in the garden, 10 people in one bathroom, the sternness.” She compared it to *being skinned alive.”* 
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I thought “*being skinned alive*” means “live like a stuffed bird (or a living corpse)” from the context of the above sentence, and checked Cambridge, Oxford, Merriam-Webster online dictionaries for confirmation. None of them registers the word, “(be) skinned alive.”

Although the Free Dictionary and Online slang Dictionary provide with similar definitions of “skinned alive” as “to be very angry with someone; to scold someone severely. - FD” and “to reprimand severely – OSD,” I don’t think both applies to the above Dowd’s quote.

What does “being skinned alive” here mean? Is “skinned alive” a well-established phrase, though I can’t find the phrase in reputed dictionaries?