Quote from Optionpro007:
I don't want to sidetrack this exchange more than I already have. I apologize to all of you.
I will just post this last idea hoping, probably that someone can give me an idea of which way to explore.
I was given medicine for anxiety. Even though the medicine worked to calm me down, the issue I had didn't disappear. It just got repressed and bottled up for lack of a better term.
What I am saying is that whatever substance is missing in the chemistry of my brain, creates an uncomfortable environment.
When a person operates from an uncomfortable environment, be it physical or mental, most likely the person's choices are going to be limited and almost always not the best choices. It is impossible to achieve continued growth under these conditions.
If the type of medicine used for anxiety and mood disorders didn't work, does anybody have any idea of which medicine would work only to make the mind achieve simple comfort? PMs are accepted.
Good luck to you all.
I find your honesty refreshing. What you are calling "whatever substance missing in the chemistry of my brain" is often called a chemical imbalance in the brain and many drugs, particular SSRI's for anxiety and sadness, are rampantly prescribed to "correct" this imbalance. The medical people don't tell you how hard it is going to be to get off these medications though. Nor do they solve the problem -- as you are discovering.
To vastly over simplify things, an emotion is composed of a number of different elements. Two of those elements are arousal and feeling (the subjective experience of the emotion -- what you are trying to change). Medications, whether legal or illegal, act on these two parts of the emotion. The medication is not capable of having an impact on the meaning aspect of the emotion. The drug medicates the feeling and therefore interrupts the arousal (that's all the muscle tenseness, heart palpatations, and shallow breathing). This is what you refer to as calming down.
Emotional labor is still required to get at the meaning aspect of the emotion. This is why it is not dissappearing. Brain chemistry is governed by emotional state. Change your emotional state and you will change brain chemistry. If you want to produce long term change in the mood you see life through, you find the meaning (or what I call core wound) that circumstance or events have grafted into the emotional mass.
Most of us cover this up -- avoid it -- in various ways. Facing a sense of not mattering, powerlessness, inadequacy, or worthiness (our existential angst) is at the core of the brain chemistry cocktail that produces worry or fear. Many people, men in particular, avoid this meaning problem by becoming oblivious to their nature as human beings. They cut off feeling. You see alot of this in this thread. Many even create a virtual world persona that is remarkedly different than their real world circumstance.
Unless you have a serious genetic predisposition toward anxiety, it is your beliefs that create the sustained worry. This is called negative attribution toward the future (part of which is biological and exaserbated by the uncertainty found in trading). If you want to shift the brain chemistry this is where to look.
When I first started working with peak performance and traders, I thought I was leaving mental health behind. I was so wrong. I was very naive. The difference is that in trading, our psychological demons cannot be avoided as they can in many other domains of our lives. In trading they staulk you. It is hard to stay in denial with your trading account. So, from where I stand, trading is a great teacher of awareness. Trading, to become successful, will force you to root out the beliefs that give rise to anxiety, confront it, and master it. Then your brain chemistry will produce a very different feeling state (brain chemistry). And you will be the creator of it. Not something "out there".
I hope this helps you. Now onward to exercise..... to change my brain chemistry and so I can eat what I want to!
Rande Howell
