I just listened to a poem/song about it in my native language.. and realised something.. that shame may originally not be negative. Maybe it is our parents who make it negative, because they use it to educate us, by combining shame with withdrawing love. Withdrawing love is the negative part which we automatically associate with shame. But is it really naturally associated, or are we just socialized to associate it?
.. and isn't the biggest tragedy when we start automatically withdrawing our love to ourselves from ourselves whenever we feel shame? Because we were taught that. But it does not have to be this way.
Go back, "Is shame a negative emotion?" - there are no negative emotions to start with. Negative means something we want to escape. Escaping emotions - bad idea. So I should have rather written "why is shame something we feel the most unpleasant with?". And my claim is: because we are socialized to associate it with withdrawing of (parental) love, and transitively we automatically withdraw our love for ourselves from ourselves whenever we feel shame.
Now a mental test: can you tell yourself that you still love yourself, despite feeling shame? How does it feel? After you've pushed the other thought that we've been socialized to think: that feeling good about yourself despite being ashamed is morally wrong, does shame not feel much more bearable? Much less threatening? It is not the shame which is so terrifying, it is withdrawing love from ourselves. And this, I believe, should never, ever happen. And f**k the religious teachings that may claim so.