Why Do People Engage in Self Destructive Behaviors?

[jaysmith124 10]

This sight can help you identify, and acknowledge, a mood (State of Mind, Mindset, Model) that's not favorable to the trading environment.

 

Speak for only twenty seconds to get an evaluation.

 

Home page - Beyond Verbal

 

 

Take the test on a day that you've decided to paper trade, and then again on a day after you've decided to trade with real money.

 

 

Is your state of mind conducive to the results you're getting? Yes.

 

To change you need the willpower to reverse the inclination to follow your state. An emotional (negative) state of mind where thoughts, feelings, and action work to support that state.

 

Or, at least know what state you are in. If, or when, in the state that produces results you dislike know you have to reverse what you feel comfortable as the right action to take.

 

Core values and beliefs?

 

After a trader has been burned a few times by emotional hijackings like these, a new condition arises where the amygdala (fear based reactive thinking) does not trust the thinking brain to manage the situation, and boom -- the learned self destructive circuits trigger and take over again...again... and again.

Rande Howell

 

 

As Rande stated we get stuck in a cycle (destructive circuits) where we see what we want to see. We believe what we want to believe even when we say the opposite.

 

"Trade what you see not what you feel." This alone has no meaning.

 

Understand that what we see is what we believe. What we believe is what we see.

What we feel is what we believe, and what we believe is how we feel. (For most it's destructive in uncertain environments)

 

Our state can change in a heart beat when a stressor triggers a past state of mind. Using money is this trigger, and your past state is associated to using money.

 

What changes are needed? I believe that my values guide my state of mind. If you value security over risk, the circuits will support security. This balance between taking risk vs. leaving your comfort zone is what traders must find. Then push the boundaries bit by bit.

 

The odds that the price action I choose to trade is greater than 75 percent in favor of success. I am using the 75 percent number after reading a scientific study (I didn't save it) that found was needed for one to feel a sense of confidence in future outcomes, and leavings past experiences behind. It sounds like they found a number that works for most to be in the NOW, or present.

 

Paper trading is a start at this point, but then I think it would be best to actually post entries and exits in a chat room winning 75 percent of the time before moving onto using money. This may be bad advice because their is always negativity, and stuff you don't need to absorb in a chat room. Many think stuff does not affect them, but it does. For some, one message triggers a negative, or fight/flight, aggressive, or avoidance, state of mind. What state of mind must you stay cool in a calm assertive state.

 

Being my own psychologist was the only way to effectively unlearn my previous programming. People hate change, and the older you get (especially over 40) the harder it is to change. (Can't teach an old dog new tricks) I wish luck to those pursuing this challenge.

 

Jeffrey

Edited June 3, 2013 by jaysmith124

[Rande Howell 10]

This sight can help you identify, and acknowledge, a mood (State of Mind, Mindset, Model) that's not favorable to the trading environment.

 

Speak for only twenty seconds to get an evaluation.

 

Home page - Beyond Verbal

 

 

Take the test on a day that you've decided to paper trade, and then again on a day after you've decided to trade with real money.

 

 

Is your state of mind conducive to the results you're getting? Yes.

 

To change you need the willpower to reverse the inclination to follow your state. An emotional (negative) state of mind where thoughts, feelings, and action work to support that state.

 

Or, at least know what state you are in. If, or when, in the state that produces results you dislike know you have to reverse what you feel comfortable as the right action to take.

 

Core values and beliefs?

 

 

 

 

As Rande stated we get stuck in a cycle (destructive circuits) where we see what we want to see. We believe what we want to believe even when we say the opposite.

 

"Trade what you see not what you feel." This alone has no meaning.

 

Understand that what we see is what we believe. What we believe is what we see.

What we feel is what we believe, and what we believe is how we feel. (For most it's destructive in uncertain environments)

 

Our state can change in a heart beat when a stressor triggers a past state of mind. Using money is this trigger, and your past state is associated to using money.

 

What changes are needed? I believe that my values guide my state of mind. If you value security over risk, the circuits will support security. This balance between taking risk vs. leaving your comfort zone is what traders must find. Then push the boundaries bit by bit.

 

The odds that the price action I choose to trade is greater than 75 percent in favor of success. I am using the 75 percent number after reading a scientific study (I didn't save it) that found was needed for one to feel a sense of confidence in future outcomes, and leavings past experiences behind. It sounds like they found a number that works for most to be in the NOW, or present.

 

Paper trading is a start at this point, but then I think it would be best to actually post entries and exits in a chat room winning 75 percent of the time before moving onto using money. This may be bad advice because their is always negativity, and stuff you don't need to absorb in a chat room. Many think stuff does not affect them, but it does. For some, one message triggers a negative, or fight/flight, aggressive, or avoidance, state of mind. What state of mind must you stay cool in a calm assertive state.

 

Being my own psychologist was the only way to effectively unlearn my previous programming. People hate change, and the older you get (especially over 40) the harder it is to change. (Can't teach an old dog new tricks) I wish luck to those pursuing this challenge.

 

Jeffrey

 

Jeffrey

 

As John Keating noted: Open Mind: Open Heart. Once you get beyond all the urban legend of what it takes to develop the mind for trading, you come to understand that changing mind is really more about changing heart.

 

Rande

[jaysmith124 10]

Jeffrey

 

As John Keating noted: Open Mind: Open Heart. Once you get beyond all the urban legend of what it takes to develop the mind for trading, you come to understand that changing mind is really more about changing heart.

 

Rande

 

Thanks.

 

This is the area where I mentioned how one must use willpower. This begs the question, "Where do I get the willpower?" "The discipline?"

What motivates us past the fear when you can't find anything more scary?

What pushes you out of a comfort zone when nobody is there prodding you with electric shocks? What makes us stop feeling like a victim, and blaming the circumstances?

 

I believe there is a balance where a certain level of fear/pain is pushing you toward your purpose, while a certain amount of pleasure/reward is pulling you toward your purpose.

 

I agree that from a spiritual sense the heart moves us to move past barriers and do what needs to be done, and more. Recall when we've heard about amazing accomplishments in sports? It is well known to coaches and athletes that a competition between two athletes equally fit, and skilled, the one with the biggest heart will win. It is the heart that carries an athlete through the agony of defeat to drive on. It is the heart that carries one to a another dimension to make it happen.

 

The same psychological factors limiting one from pulling the trigger can also be attributed a successful trader from seeing, and realizing possibilities, and potential, and then increasing their trade size.

 

Jeffrey

[davidjohnhall 10]

I think the following quote by Ed Seykota is extremely insightful:

 

Some traders like to lose. So they win by losing.

 

Anthony Robbins said that we are hard wired as humans to seek pleasure and avoid pain. So if you are doing something that is destructive, at some point it must have either brought you pleasure or relieved pain.

 

If someone overeats, it might because the consequences of overeating (the pain) are diminished by the emotional escape they get from doing it (the pleasure).

 

I used to smoke. I started doing it because my friends did it. The consequences of smoking were diminished by my need to fit in. Then it became a habit. Once something becomes a habit, and the pathways are forged, it becomes very difficult to change. (See The Power of Habit).

 

If I'm a trader and I'm constantly doing things that go against my plan or my better instincts, I have to go deep inside to find out what I am getting by being self-destructive. Am I secretly scared of being successful? Do I feel guilty about easy money? There is some positive thing I am getting and it is up to me to find it.

 

Trading in the Zone is a great book to read if you want to go deeper into the nature of self-destructive trading behaviors. But be warned, once you go down that road it may take you into some self-realizations you might not want to face.

 

But it's definitely worth it.

 

Good luck everyone!

[Guest OILFXPRO]

Self destructive behavior in a particular domain, say trading, can be an initially positive behavior learned in another domain and time. This is called secondary gain. Avoidance of uncertainty (avoidance of threat) is a mandate for our brain's survival biases. Even attacking the "cause" of the uncertainty and threat is a deeply burned into DNA because of its success over countless generations. When the attach or avoid motivations of an emotion do create success (removal of threat) the behavior is considered a success to the prime directive of survival.

 

After many reps of avoiding or attacking perceived threats in one domain (saying believing a saber tooth tiger is behind the bush) and wiring that learning into a highly charged circuit in the brain, the trader takes that learning into trading where uncertainty has to be managed by higher order thinking. Without training, the brain is going to reactively perceive the uncertainty of outcomes found in trading as a threat to be avoided or attacked. Not being able to pull the trigger when all conditions are meet is a form of learned avoidance. Revenge trading, in particular, is a form of attack motivation the brain has learned where the brain is attempting to attack the perceived threat. And when in full impulse, it is highly self destructive.

 

After a trader has been burned a few times by emotional hijackings like these, a new condition arises where the amygdala (fear based reactive thinking) does not trust the thinking brain to manage the situation, and boom -- the learned self destructive circuits trigger and take over again...again... and again.

 

Some traders learn to desensitive themselves over time, other continue to engage in self destructive behaviors, other get out of trading, and other choose to retrain the brain for better performance. But the brain you bring to trading (and the mind that emerges from it) is rarely the brain/mind that can manage the uncertainty and probability for success trading.

 

Rande Howell

 

We as humans and animals as well are wired to either fight (and win) or flee.The FIGHT responses don't work in trading , as Mark Douglas pointed out in the disciplined Trader.These are stress responses of fight or flight.

 

What Is Stress?

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ePYet3Fbts]Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - YouTube[/ame]

[Guest OILFXPRO]

We as humans and animals as well are wired to either fight (and win) or flee.The FIGHT responses don't work in trading , as Mark Douglas pointed out in the disciplined Trader.These are stress responses of fight or flight.

 

What Is Stress?

 

 

Traders engage in self destructive behavior , because we are wired to fight or flight responses.We take on a trade with mindset of FIGHT and profit , it is difficult to change that mindset to flight and accept loss.As a result of our mindset and non trading wired brain, we tend to fight the market with revenge trades , increased position sizes , no system/ method trades and all psychological baggage.Trading successfully requires a mindset of flowing with the price trends and swings , but the market deludes us and encourages us with our biases and fulfillment of cognitive expectations in adverse conditions.Our need to be right and our stress responses of FIGHT make us engage in self destructive behaviors.

 

 

This thread should be in the psychology forum.

 

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-psychology/16729-trading-mindsets-80-success.html

[Guest OILFXPRO]

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-psychology/16729-trading-mindsets-80-success-11.html#post184673

[Rande Howell 10]

Traders engage in self destructive behavior , because we are wired to fight or flight responses.We take on a trade with mindset of FIGHT and profit , it is difficult to change that mindset to flight and accept loss.As a result of our mindset and non trading wired brain, we tend to fight the market with revenge trades , increased position sizes , no system/ method trades and all psychological baggage.Trading successfully requires a mindset of flowing with the price trends and swings , but the market deludes us and encourages us with our biases and fulfillment of cognitive expectations in adverse conditions.Our need to be right and our stress responses of FIGHT make us engage in self destructive behaviors.

 

 

This thread should be in the psychology forum.

 

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-psychology/16729-trading-mindsets-80-success.html

 

Fight or flight are two of the 3 emotional motivations that are wired to trigger when an emotion erupts. The other is Approach. It is the Approach Motivation that is the desired one for effective traders mind. We still have to learn and retrain engrained biases that trigger to habituated emotional responses. Some people are born with a proclivity for traders mind. I worked with a few, but I find they are rare, other wise traders would learn the Left Brain rules of trading and step into success.

 

Rande Howell

[steve46 12]

One of the problems human beings face is overcoming the natural impulse to move away from discomfort (pain) be it physical or emotional.....our physical systems are setup to respond automatically (as when a person touches a hot stove)....by withdrawing from that stimulus...

 

In the trading environment, it is especially true of new or struggling traders....that they will take a loss, and then spend a significant amount of time thinking about that loss, and while they are doing so, miss the next perfectly valid opportunity to obtain favorable entry.

 

One of the things that I try to teach students is how to manage, structure, and direct their attention 1.) prior to, 2.) during and 3.) right after.....each & every trade.....inevitably students balk at this type of training, insisting that it isn't needed....and what I do to show them just how important it is....is simply to model that kind of structured successful behavior

 

The reason I mention it at all is that I NEVER read posts where people talk about this, and yet it is a behavior that is natural to us but is self destructive in the trading environment....hopefully this is something that Rande provides his clients...if so all the more reason to take a closer look.

 

Best Regards

Steve

Edited August 11, 2013 by steve46

[Rande Howell 10]

One of the problems human beings face is overcoming the natural impulse to move away from discomfort (pain) be it physical or emotional.....our physical systems are setup to respond automatically (as when a person touches a hot stove)....by withdrawing from that stimulus...

 

In the trading environment, it is especially true of new or struggling traders....that they will take a loss, and then spend a significant amount of time thinking about that loss, and while they are doing so, miss the next perfectly valid opportunity to obtain favorable entry.

 

One of the things that I try to teach students is how to manage, structure, and direct their attention 1.) prior to, 2.) during and 3.) right after.....each & every trade.....inevitably students balk at this type of training, insisting that it isn't needed....and what I do to show them just how important it is....is simply to model that kind of structured successful behavior

 

The reason I mention it at all is that I NEVER read posts where people talk about this, and yet it is a behavior that is natural to us but is self destructive in the trading environment....hopefully this is something that Rande provides his clients...if so all the more reason to take a closer look.

 

Best Regards

Steve

 

It's true an untrained brain/mind is going to avoid situations that have caused pain in the past, particularly significant pain. That biological bias has to be deconstructed and rebuilt into higher functioning to move from struggling to profit. I also brain traders to be aware of their attention at moments in the trading process. I actually define 8 different moments that the mindset has to be reset during the trading cycle. Once they see that emotional hijacking are associated with these moments, traders become more willing to micro manage the mindset they bring into any given moment in trading.

 

But not only is it a natural reaction to avoid pain, it is also the meaning of that act that gets encoded into the pattern avoidance that is the most important to address for long term improvement. A trader's sense of adequacy, mattering, worth, and power get integrated into the emotional pattern generation also. This is their inner game or the inner struggle that has to be mastered whether its trading, golf, chess, or tennis to move from adequate performance to peak performance.

 

Rande Howell