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In addition, Janice was now doubting her skills because she felt she had some knowledge of the stocks she was trading. She had done her homework. But the trades, as they are apt to do, went against her anyway and she was now feeling gun-shy. This resulted in feeling paralyzed to make any further trades. |
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This trader's block was actually an alert from Janice's voice of fear, telling her she was in danger of losing precious capital that could not be risked. Fear's way of stopping her for a while was to paralyze her from being able to pull the trigger to execute any further trades. |
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The steps taken to regain a feeling of control were to respect the trader's block rather than struggle against it. I suggested Janice go for a period of days without trading, just watching the market or staying away from it altogether. She chose a little of each. She would check in to see how the market was going but also would take long breaks away from it. |
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Secondly, I taught Janice a deep breathing method to help her deal with the fear response that was coming up and causing her block. I had her visualize the trading situation and being ready to execute the trade. I asked her to let the anxiety come up that had stopped her from pulling the trigger. At the same time, while feeling the anxiety, I instructed her in a deep breathing technique to help her feel in control and to gain control of her physical response as well as her thoughts. I helped her neutralize her fear thoughts by offering some things to remember to counter them with. |
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Next, I discussed with her the idea that for a while she would need to proceed very cautiously to regain her confidence in her trading ability. |
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I suggested she trade in small-share amounts only, slowly building back up her confidence by a number of good trades. She accepted this suggestion and was willing to comply with it. |
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Within two weeks, Janice was feeling more confident and her anxiety was under control. The breathing technique helped her face her fear. She used it whenever she began to get anxious, allowing her to go ahead and resume trading after one week. After one month of smaller trades, she had recovered the amount she had lost. |
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Janice made a pact with me not to try to hide her losses from me and to come back in periodically for consultation so that we could review how she was doing. In the meantime, I asked her to let me know if she had any further problems by way of e-mail. She did, in fact, e-mail me a couple of times just to let me know she was continuing to |
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