One of the many Achilles' heels I see traders suffer from is their debilitating Fear of Losing Money! According to research, 23% of adults and 36% of millennials experience financial stress at levels that qualify for a PTSD diagnosis.

What is that all about? First of all, we need to acknowledge that the fear of losing money is a PRIMAL FEAR, because in today's society, money is literally correlated with our survival. There is even a psychological term for the fear of spending money: chrometophobia, an overwhelming and irrational fear of money especially when it comes to letting it go.

But the Fear of Losing Money is also the result of painful life experiences, such as poverty or unexpected severe financial losses, causing post-traumatic stress and Money Anxiety. 

The tight correlation between money and survival, along with painful life experiences related to money, can make losing money in the markets traumatic for traders. If unattended, these factors act as money blocks, keeping traders from following good money and risk management rules, and keeping them stuck in boom-and-bust cycles, further aggravating the problem. 

These traumatic experiences can lead to a trader developing a deep unconscious belief that they are not to be trusted with money and that money is not safe with them because they fear doing something stupid and losing it.

They are afraid they don't have the skill to make it back. 

These are all Money Blocks! 

Click here to check out the upcoming Winning Trader's Money Mindset Course Starting 3rd August 2024

“It is not until you learn to understand your own personal life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked."  

—Mandi Pour Rafsendjani 

Uncovering Your Unconscious Money Blocks and Overcoming Your Fear of Losing Money

 A Money Block is essentially Financial Trauma that keeps triggering anxiety or even anger around money.

It refers to the emotional and cognitive symptoms that develop during significant financial distress. If a trader has ever experienced poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, unemployment etc., they might experience heightened anxiety regarding money, thus impacting the mindset required to let profits run and cut losses short.

Ironically, many traders start trading because they believe that trading will help them resolve their financial problems. They initially feel that they have more control over their financial life because trading doesn't involve other people. But the unconscious blocks will always show up—wherever we go, they follow. 

Week 2: The Wheel of Trading Fear: Uncovering Your Money Blocks and How To Overcome The Fear Of Losing

Sat 10th Aug & Mon 12th Aug 2024

The second week we will focus on identifying and uncovering your unconscious money blocks. These are deeply ingrained thinking patterns that keep you stuck in your current cycles. We need to identify these so you can see where and why your brain deviates from the trading plans you create when you are your rational self. 

What are the Symptoms That You Might Have Money Blocks?

The symptoms of money blocks are persistent negative thoughts about trading. These thoughts make concentration difficult and can even lead to insomnia, disrupting personal and work life, causing significant distress.  

Common symptoms of Money Blocks and how they manifest in trading include:

• Trade Hypervigilance: Constantly feeling on edge when in a profitable position, worrying that the trade will turn around and all the profits will be lost again. If the anxiety gets too much to handle, traders exit their winning positions too early and so mess with the risk-reward ratio of the strategy.
• Avoiding Acting Responsible: In everyday life, money avoidance behaviors involve ignoring financial responsibilities, such as avoiding opening and paying bills, and neglecting financial planning and budgeting. In trading, these behaviors are evident when traders avoid dealing with their losing trades.
• Worry Disturbing Sleep: open positions cause the trader to worry and wake up every few hours to check their positions instead of finding solace in having their stop losses in place and ensuring a good night's sleep to be well rested and in top physical, mental and emotional shape during the day.
• Self-destructive Impulsive Trading: Overtrading, over-leveraging, going on tilt out of frustration, doubling up on position size to make back losses. 
• Performance anxiety: Excessive worry, nervousness, and fear as soon as the trader opens a position.
• Emotional Stress Compensation: The trader starts overeating to deal with the emotional stress of a drawdown rather than dealing with the source of the emotional stress itself by cutting the loss swiftly and decisively!
• Somatic Blocks: Trading trauma can trigger physical symptoms of anxiety, such as muscle tension, tightness in the jaw, backpain and even stomach pain!
• Emotional Looping: Excessive second-guessing about your trading decisions. Instead of trusting your setups you feel doubt or confidence with every changing price bar!
• Obsessive-compulsive behaviors: The trader obsesses about their trades and compulsively checks their phone to ease this anxiety when they are away from their trading workstation.
• Analysis paralysis: Feeling frozen when making even simple trading decisions, unable to change frame of reference (too zoomed in or out), or always seeking another level of confirmation until the trade has taken off without them.
• Strategy jumping: Frequently seeking new ways to trade in the hopes of ending boom-bust cycles and solving any or all of the symptoms listed above

Start observing your thoughts and feelings throughout the day and pinpoint which one of these blocks might be showing up in your life so you can start resolving them and not only making more profits, but also keeping them!

But no matter where you start your trading journey, one day you’ll look back and say to yourself… “I’m glad I took the route most people wouldn’t dare to take.” 

Mandi Rafsendjani