"The use of the phrase mental problems implies a "mental illness" or "mental disorders" such as serious depression, biopolar, schizo, insomnia, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts/behaviors, abnormal phobias and many others that can read about at Google. Therefore, if a trader thinks he/she has "mental problems"...they need to stop trading and go get professional help (e.g psychologist or psychiatrist) because this is something they can not fix on their own or via some self-help book." You mention a few serious, and a few less serious, illnesses. I disagreed with the highlighted statement. I also said later that we probably are talking past each other. The fact of the matter is that a lot of people have to treat their illness themselves, simply because apt help is nowhere to be found. Nowadays most doctors prescribe medication first, and use that as basis for their diagnosis later. A lot of bright people have their cognitive functions severely lessened due to incompetent and/or lazy doctors' eagerness to prescribe drugs. SSRIs are not even particularly effective for some of the illnesses, and barely beat placebos in clinical trials. I've tried several times to end this discourse on a friendly note, as I have no intention of arguing. It seems it all boils down to semantics anyway, so I suggest we leave it be.
I have a simple rule for such...don't say the other person said "all" when you know for fact such was not stated...to say such has one purpose only...to argue and that puts a question mark on the "lets end this discourse on a friendly note". I'm just calling it as it obviously is especially in light of the fact that I've used specific examples of serious situations (e.g. re-read the issue about involving a serious type of panic attack my friend has). Like I stated, I'm being very specific involving specific situations I have personal experience with. Thus, I cannot comment upon situations I do not have any personal experiences with. Therefore, I can not agree nor disagree with you on the specific situations you have mentioned in your replies to me. Yet, I promise that if I meet a trader with one of the specific types of examples you've mentioned...I will reply to another thread you or someone may be discussing that relates to that type of mental illness or disorder...I will give my personal experience and my opinion involving such. It should be obvious that not all mental illness are the same and need to be discussed independently as such.
There is a national organization, of which many states participate. Here it is called the 'brain injury association of arizona'. Might be one in your state. They were much more accessible than the medical community in my experience. They had the time, etc., to work with you. They also have all day events with speakers, etc., and help families understand how to help.... what to expect. Mental health issues are considered a brain injury, including clinical depression, etc. From there to concussions, strokes, auto accidents, genetic factors, whatever. Their stats say that 50% of people will have a clinical brain injury at some point in their lives. 30% will have two different injuries in their lifetimes. While there are groupings of symptoms, each injury is unique. The good news is that they can do lots more to help now than just 5 - 10 yrs ago.
I have all that you mention PLUS OCD, ADHD. And yes, have gone to many doctors and taken many different kinds of drugs. Drugs will take away the images/voices that I have endured for 43 years, but always at a cost of side effects. You have to have self aware, you have to think in terms of what is considered "normal" and "reality" by society around one. So in essence, I often have become an "actor" in front of people so I can get by as being just like them, but in my reality, I think, see and hear in quite different terms. I had tried for 30 some years of finding answers thru prescribed drugs and chat, but have given up on it. I have been aware of my problems since age 12, so I had a leg up on knowing who I was, and much reading allowed me to understand who I was. My thoughts processes are certainly not normal in ream of normal, but I believe cause I see life in totally different way, it has allowed me to see the markets in a different lite. I first studied markets in 1978 and took to trading in 1980ish. The extreme highs in bi-polar allowed me to work 3-4 days without sleep to backtest, OCD forced me to backtest more than average person, depression forced me to study/work better money management rules, never was schizo but certainly delusional-way I "see it", am never lonely, LOL. And when in "crisis" mode, tough getting out of bed. Past 3.5 years have been medical nightmare of 6 surgeries, 3 of them for brain cancer, am now in remission, but they have taken a toll on my memory. Well, when God gives you lemons, make lemonade. I had to redefine my methods to trade ES and make them simplier, and bottom line has greatly reduced my losing percentage and increased profit per trade. And yes, I do mentor people, have my three students for next year, and I do teach them that 95% of trading deals with the mind. I go over and over and over the same concepts, and the concepts go against what they have learned in their life of 'normal' everyday ideas and their trading life. It is a constant war of fear and fear, fear of making money and fear of losing it. I didn't want to mentor any more, but failing memory forced me too, teaching others keeps me better focused. Too many people is our world need an excuse for not being able to do success. They think they hand out excuses for not being able to trade or get A's in school cause of some ailment, figure a way to get over the mountain. It is certainly not easy, daily/hourly problems, but don't think of whole picture, just the next step.
Those books look like books on how to learn and run training courses in NLP. What if you were to consider your personal mental problems and how to overcome the trap you are in presently. Trap means being in a place you can't get out of to be able to get to where you think you want to be. Personal mental problems means being in a place where you do not know how learning works nor do you know how the mind works. Any person who has stated he has these two problems must consider whether to continue to solve his problems (or to continue to try to solve his problems). I do not deal in probabilities; trading success is a binary consideration as is pregnancy. It is not difficult toexplain the psychology associated with trading for each of the cases: success and failure. Each has a measuring yardstick associated with the two trading contexts. One is anxiety, fear and anger; the other is comfort, support and confidence. the sydromes which prevail are well knwn and well tested: the Bohr Effect and the Lizard Syndrome. A successful trader uses the occurance of one set to tell him he has some work to do to solve a defined problem which he is capable of journalling and then resolving. The basic question in trading is: "Do you know that you know?" If you do not, then you must not be in the market. The task when this occurs is to leave the market AND not reenter unless you know that you know. One step in this process is a style of trading called enter/exit trading. Maybe you have found out that there are two divisions of people regarding this: Those that do it and those that do not. Small traders do it and large traders do not do it. It may appear that large traders are doing entry/exit but they actually exit to get into a better opportunity so it turns out they are always in the market and mostly they follow a regime that to them says that they always know that they know. I don't do entry/exit. I know all the trades and holds and I know when to do any trade or hold. So I reverse/hold as my trading style. Maybe risk management and money management has occurred to you as something else to read about or get books on those subjects. I am all in all the time so my risk and money management are well taken care of. I have only one job. That is, to always stay on the correct side of the market. Knowing that I know the correct side of the market is also binary. My mental state is supported, comfortable and I am confident. Since I am always in the market I do not have emotional shifts. People who do entry/exit can self judge their mental state for the binary conditions they experience for being "in" or "out" of the market. You experience anxiety, fear and anger when you are "taking the chance" of doing a trade. You do probabilities and I do binary. All the time, you keep asking yourself did I do the correct thing or is this a mistake? This is the source of your non brain related emotional condition. All of your emotions do not come from a mental reasoning process. I could guess that you belief trading has percentages assigned to emotions of trading and non emotiions of trading. I would guess, for you one is vastly larger than the other. The same is true for me but we have opposite opinons on which is which. the Bohr Effect and Lizard Syndrome which you experience is there because you do not know if you know. your genes and heritage are in control and you are just fighting for survival. In my judgement you will turn out like all humans. While in the market you are fearful, anxious and angry. Most humans simply bet on their trades using John Boyd's well known OODA. For me, I used Science to deduce a HS and MS for a market paradigm. I followed paradigm theory (Keynes) and logic theory (Carnap). For Friday, a week ago, I showed x trades for 81 5-min bars on ES and a net of y points per contract. X and y are both mid two-digit numbers. As guests of RC in Chi (at that time floors 10 through 12 of the Chi BOT building) a few years back we demo'ed 10 trades during a morning and had a one tick loss on one trade. We had to change sides of the market during a hold once, so a wash trade occurred. We also suggested a plan to carry out to return the RC accounts to neutral from a mid eight digit day's deficit; they were too skilled to take our suggestions. In my judgement, you have to deal with two insurmountable problems (because of your mind set) and the consequence will be that you will not be successful. Stop reading books and begin to find out how learning works and how the mind may be built but not erased. Your biggest problem is surrounding stuff now in your mind and which is not useful.
Eliminating the psychological issues of trading can be done by having a sound trading plan .The trading plan should include a profitable system/method back tested over many years and forward tested over many months.It should encompass risk management , risk reward , position sizing ,trading set ups and system etc.
The problem was created by discretionary trading ,where individual character traits ,emotions ,mind and personal psychology interfered in trading decisions .This interference led to excessive risk taking ,counter trend trading and often entering trades with low probability set ups and without an edge.After a careful review , blowing a few demo accounts and experiencing and comparing discretionary trading with a well defined trading plan , the psychological problems have been eliminated by avoiding discretionary trading. A trader can not see these problems , until he trades live , because he can not diagnose his own psychology.A well defined game plan will take care of these problems , and it is now taken care of. If you have a mental illness ,there is nothing wrong in trading with a well defined game plan to take care of the illness and trading.
first admit we are human beings. second we are sinners. what are sins? greed, fear,anxiety,frustration,feel inferior,feel smart..... the inner world of human being. those are not mental sickness, since we are born with those sins.so you do not need seek doctors, they are not curable. even monkeys other animals have those sins. some people think the computer does not have those sins, but the control is at the hand of people: when to let it start trading, when to let it stop... you still worry about it. the only way to do it is:face them. admit they are there. what you need do is: jail them. often those sins pop out of your inner world when some events happen, then triggers off. write them down, what event triggers those inner reactions. then put a corrective thought to stop them. an example is: when you are losing, your inner world may want the money back, very naturally, so you may continue trading ignoring the market conditions. here losing triggers "money back" thought, lead to overtrading, more loss, more trading. actually you keep saying to yourself: "money back is a trading idea?" obviously it is not. say it lound. after many times, the money back thought will be jailed. then say it loud again: "what is a good trade" you may answer: a good entry. question yourself again, what a good entry? you may answer: a good setup; question yourself again "what is a good setup?" you may answer: a typical double top/bottom. then look at the market again, aks youself "is there any double bottom or top?" if yes, you find a good setup or entry. if not you sit sideline to wait... keep this process until you answer all of the questions about a good trade. through this self_talk, you are leading yourself into a correct trading procedure. trading is a habit skill. it takes time to jail those unrelated habits and cultivate those correct ones. do not feed sins, sins will die. you will get new life. do not fool around about medication or doctors, waste of time and money.
2+2+4,..if it doesn't ,there is something wrong with your math,none of us can say everyone we know makes complete sense,so very few folks add up to 4,everyone has a mental problem,most of us don't have one severe enough to be noticed but it's there,they start in childhood, where the teachers are passing along the unproved truths they learned as children,you carry around what you have mastered because it's supposedly easier than changing, and there is a comfort in knowing that if you continue along on the same path, your in control and it it won't kill you..trading affects your personal life in the ego dept and day to day in the financial area ....so the option of keeping things status Quo goes out the window,not right away,first you struggle to learn to trade while remaining the same.eventually you blow a few small accts or worse you do fine until the acct gets big, then blow it..either way the practice of listening to,nurturing the ego,having an ego becomes apparently impossible...good news is that getting rid of it clears up a multitude of problems and it's easy..the our father says " give us our daily bread,(except god)forgive us our trespasses(every mistake we've made in the past is forgiven,forgotten) as we forgive those who have trespassed against us(every mistake they 've made is forgiven forgotten)" this forgive business has to be a daily ritual like using the bathroom,it's a daily cleansing ritual,sometimes hourly ,like after every bad trade,for those that don't believe in god, the rest of it still makes a lot of sense,it's a lot harder to accept no ego and trust everything will work out without the belief in a higher power and ultimately a better you,have'nt tried it without but confident it would have the same cleansing affect ....might take longer.... 2 cents.....