Regret is about blaming yourself for a bad decision
It's like having a list of bad decisions in your subconscious
it's not thought about, it's just that if a decision is blamed on the self
then anger can result,
why does a person feel shame?
Do we police ourselves with shame? I think that a person learns that shame controls effects, so they learn to feel shame to control their surroundings
And so they worry when there is shame, and they don't worry when there is no shame
And what is shameful or not is based on many things,
For me shame is based on blame, for others it might be different,
So your mind learns to let in pain based on shame and keep out pain based on no shame,
If there is something that you did that can cause you shame, or rather that is shameful according to your standards, then you will automatically (without deciding about it) absorb the pain of the results, as though there is a memory bank of decisions which decides whether to let in pain or not that has little or nothing to do with your conscious mind.
Homosexuality is when there is too much pain that can be absorbed with women.
Pedophilia is when there is too much pain that can be absorbed with women or men that are of a certain age.
Paranoia is when there is too much pain that can happen as a result of something. Rosiness is the opposite.
When there is pain that can be absorbed, the more it can be absorbed, the more the brain will believe it will happen, to make you do something to avoid it for safety of the mind.
That is what homosexuality is, the brain makes you go to men to avoid going to women and absorbing pain.
I think it's all about whether you would feel shame. If you would feel shame, the pain of a situation is absorbed. So homosexuality is from too much shame with a woman. And pedophilia is from too much shame with a woman your age. And sociopathy is from not feeling shame. But the mechanism is subconscious. It can be affected at the source, not in transit. When there is shame in one area, it causes a lack of shame in another.
If I were to receive just punishment for a decision which I feel shame for, then I would no longer feel shame for it, and I would no longer let in the pain from it. If I would let in too much pain, from feeling too much shame, that's what depression is. Perhaps bipolar is a switch between too much and too little shame in cycles.
Letting in pleasure is about predictability, either based on time or on effort,
That is why children act up when they have only been given random attention, they want to let in the pleasure of predictable attention, even if it is bad attention, at least it is predictable.
So the glass half full or half empty is based on predictability of pleasure and on shame.
How much shame you feel can be affected based on how comfortable you are, after food you are less likely to be angry,
Anger is based on people coming close to your shame,
A possible result of this is that gay men are more homosexual when they are uncomfortable. Although it might be that gay men feel more shame when they are comfortable, I'm not sure.
The thought experiment is Man's Search for Meaning is based on changing how much shame you would feel,