This is controversial, but I do not believe shame is inherently bad. Polite pleasantries towards others alone do not make us kind, and I do not believe in rejecting the notion of conscience on the basis of unpleasantry towards ourselves.
When it's disproportionate however, shame can do the opposite of what it's supposed to.
If we just beat ourselves up every time we see our faults, are we really setting ourselves up to be able to learn and grow from it?
Instead of helping us feel an appropriate desire to do better next time, what can happen is we feel so much shame over our faults that it becomes too painful to touch. That pain, the way we punish ourselves for failing to take off the old personality as soon as we want to, could lead to us convincing ourselves that it is sufficient to to "just fake it til you make it."
This could help for superficial habits. But when certain parts of our personality run deep or involve a lot of emotions, truth is required to overturn the strongly entrenched things... Even if it means facing painful truths about ourselves, our past, our motivations.
Honest self-reflection can come with pain. It can take time we feel like we don't have because life is busy and it's hard to keep up as it is.
But if we neglect to carve out the time needed to honestly, intentionally, and sincerely address things that make us act in ways we don't want to act, one day we may wake up and find that we are a person we don't want to be.
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