Psych Cap, Negative Self-Talk and Reality
Last night’s post resulted in a bit of chastisement directed at me for calling myself an idiot and this brings up a fundamental difference between? the Trader Psyches/Psych Cap approach and that of cognitive-behavioral psychology, the best selling The Secret and most other popular theories about psychology.
Language DOES NOT make reality. Language DOES NOT change how you feel. You feel how you feel and that influences your language.
Want the absolute quickest way to work through a negative feeling? Verbalize it! Put it out there in full-view – for yourself (and even others if you care to). This works because feelings are the foundation of our existence, we can’t decide what to wear in the morning without them and there is no point in wasting energy on trying to change them using JUST language or the intellect. In other words, if it is NLP – it doesn’t work – and I do not care that Tony Robbins is a gazillionaire for espousing the idea that it does work. Don’t believe me? Check this out -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#NLP_and_science
Trader Psyches #1 mission is to help traders of all sorts make better decisions. The only way to do that is to help them understand the reciprocal role between acting, feeling and thinking …. and then to help them learn how to deal with, manage and even LEVERAGE their emotions.
At the extreme, how are you ever supposed to recognize gut-feel or what is called experiential knowledge if you cut yourself off from your feelings? In the interim to learning this, you have to feel what you feel, use emotion analytics to understand the message and not waste any energy on trying to change how you feel.? When you handle emotions this way, everything – LITERALLY everything – particularly in trading – will take care of itself.
Tags: NLP, trading psychology
re: Tony Robbins…”where are all the customers yachts?”, lol… otoh, sugar pills can “do” miraculous things. hard to parse active mechanisms, for “science”, as well as for science….
Josie, thanks for the response and sorry it took me so long to get back to you… and I apologize in advance for being closed- minded. But, I believe that Modern Psychoanalysis as practiced by Spotnitz, Bershatskys and our own Gene Kalin can work with anyone in anyway and solve any problem. I don’t personally have your experience but I do have the experience of what it has done for me and scores of people I have met who have had the luck to happen upon a Modern Analyst. The tecniques for working with transferences and especially counter-transferences are almost unspeakably powerful. Plus time after time, when I get a client to verbalize what they have trouble doing – they solve their own problem. But… having said all that, it is a privilege to have your comments on my blog. DKS
I’m not a fan of NLP, EMDR, EFT and especially not The Secret. What I am is a retired clinical psychologist who turned to trading Forex three years ago.
Denise, you and I are in agreement. It’s important to know what you are feeling. And certainly being able to verbalize can be an important step in elucidating those emotions. Emotions, thoughts, and physiology work synergistically – each influence and intensify the others – for better or worse. You can’t deal with just one and expect changes.
“Want the absolute quickest way to work through a negative feeling? Verbalize it!” Good first step. If you find yourself never again trading when you are tired, that strategy will have worked for you…and that’s great. But like so many other issues around trading, most required a more in depth approach than simple catharsis. And this is the real crux of the issue. How do you change behavior?
I came to your website in hopes of learning something new about the psychology of trading. Your tag line, “Pioneers in Psychological Capital”, certainly is intriguing. And I liked your description of Modern Psychoanalysis, and although it doesn’t sound much different than many other client-centered approaches that recognize the value of feeling, I’m willing to learn more. I’ll continue to read your articles and blogs. However, one thing I have learned in the many years that I did therapy is that there is no one theory that explains everything, nor is there one approach that reaches all clients.
There are only two things key elements in successful trading: First, a trading plan and money management principles that result in a positive win/loss ratio, second, the ability to execute that plan. The first is relatively easy. There are lots of trading systems that work. The second is the harder issue. I hope that we can continue to dialogue about this.
Tom, I’d like to address your comment about John McEnroe. There really isn’t any evidence that there is a causal relationship between John’s emotional outbursts and his success. If there were, we’d see all athletes using that technique. Instead, I suspect that his success was due to long, long hours of intense practice and his innate ability. What we do know is that McEnroe caused himself a lot of grief both on and off the court by his inability to control his temper.
Loudly verbalizing “You are such an idiot” whether directed at himself, (or once or twice to the chair umpire) seemed to work very well for John McEnroe. The following serve was usually an ace.