We are not an emotionless people, so we cannot rid ourselves of stress. Trying to resist, deny, or dissociate yourself from your emotions only increases the likelihood that they will grow in intensity. After a stressful trade, you need to permit yourself to experience the full range of natural emotions.
It is important to remember that there is a huge upside to looking dispassionately at those emotions and the physiological responses associated with them. You do not need to consciously or unconsciously keep them bottled up.
Unfortunately, some traders are embarrassed about their emotional responses and have found that others don’t want to talk about them, either. It may be that you never learned to communicate your feelings, or you were encouraged to suppress them. You may actually believe there is something wrong with you when feelings bubble to the surface. This is particularly true with regard to all the bodily sensations associated with fear and stress.
Therefore, when dealing with stress, it is critical to learn how to open up, let your defenses down, and allow yourself to get in touch with the very feelings that you have the urge to suppress. The therapeutic task is to reactivate stressful feelings, experience them, and express them in order to defuse their power. The key is to fully articulate the negative feelings that continue to afflict you. In this way, you let go of the destructive aspects of these feelings and permit yourself to fully experience the stress as a neutral sensation. You learn from your mistakes and then leave the past behind.
All of this hinges on one critical exercise. You must learn to distinguish between your feelings and who you are. Your feelings or the thoughts associated with them are part of you, but they don’t define your entire personality. Your feelings and thoughts arise naturally out of stress. You can stand back and experience them without reacting to them.
That’s the first step in turning stress to your advantage.
I realize this sounds counterintuitive, but I have seen people make this separation many times, and individuals, however they feel about the idea of holding their feelings at arm’s length and examining them, almost inevitably feel better once they try it.
For instance, I talked with one trader, Brad, about how his emotional reactivity to volatile market situations was negatively influencing his trades. Brad needed to apply in trading what he did so well on the tennis court. He needed to learn how not to allow emotional reactions to interfere with the game. In tennis, he uses relaxation exercises between points in order to clear his mind and concentrate on the point. We discussed how he could start doing something similar with his trading, and he decided to begin listening to meditation tapes with the hope that he could employ meditation techniques while he was trading.
You, too, can become familiar with your emotions rather than trying to maintain a stiff upper lip. Notice your reaction to your feelings, but don’t do anything about it. Notice, too, your interpretation of the situation—and let it go. Don’t make any impulsive decisions as a result of your reaction. Just allow your feelings to flow through you as a natural response to the events at hand and watch them dissipate like puffs of smoke or the clouds of vapor that materialize when you exhale in cold weather.
By becoming aware of the nature, emotions, and dangers of stress, you have taken the first steps toward overcoming its stranglehold on your trading career. The next step is learning not just how to manage stress, but how to use it to your advantage.
Most traders perform their duties by rote, according to what I call life principles.These are habitual ways of looking at the world, beliefs around which we organize our lives. These beliefs were ingrained in us when we were very young. As children, to protect ourselves against fear and the disapproval of our parents, we learned what behavior was acceptable and what was not. Thus, we developed a fixed set of response patterns that we carry with us into adulthood. These patterns invariably grow rigid and become defense mechanisms.
These automatic thoughts keep us from seeing the world, or reality, as it is. In fact, we are controlled by our automatic thinking. We see what is happening to us through a distorted lens. Our lives change, and our choices multiply once we are adults, but our life principles remain entrenched.
Happily, we can use the potent tool of self-reflection to stand apart from our life principles, to identify them, and to consciously change those that warp our interactions. By focusing a different lens on our past, we can reframe our perspectives.
This same theory holds with regard to the emotions you feel after experiencing a stressful trade. You see and experience events through the emotional reactivity of stress, frustration, anxiety, and tension. Because of this, you react with irritation and interpret everything as an imposition or as a source of your vulnerability and victimization.
But you can bypass these negative feelings by deliberately separating your emotions from your actions and reflecting on smarter ways to handle those emotions. The road to healing begins with observation.
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When Markets Turn Volatile, It's Time to Rethink Strategies
By JONATHAN BURTON
December 26, 2007; Page D1
"Investors may be weary of the market's recent ups and downs. But with big market swings likely to continue, they would ..."
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Using this "gold nugget" can help you in times of stress and anxiety- and you can take it with you wherever you go. listen as Dr. Kiev talks you through this simple exercise. Click here
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Dr. Kiev is quoted in a Times article, Click here to read
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Forbes.com is featuring a book excerpt- "Fear of the Market"
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