Hypnotrading: A practical guide to using hypnosis and NLP to improve your trading performance

HypnoTrading

A practical guide to using hypnosis and NLP to improve your trading performance

Catherine Stott BSc, DHP, Clinical Hypnotherapist

HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD

18 College Street

Petersfield

Hampshire

GU31 4AD

GREAT BRITAIN

Tel: +44 (0)1730 233870

Email: enquiries@harriman-house.com

Website: www.harriman-house.com

First published in Great Britain in 2016

Copyright © Catherine Stott

The right of Catherine Stott to be identified as the author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

Print ISBN: 978-0-85719-503-6

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85719-504-3

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without the prior written consent of the Publisher.

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that information in this book is accurate, no liability can be accepted for any loss incurred in any way whatsoever by any person relying solely on the information contained herein.

No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Author, or by the employers of the Author.

Contents

About the author

Preface

Introduction

Part One. An Introduction to Therapeutic Techniques

Chapter One. Hypnosis, Psychotherapy and the Trader

Part Two. Trading Challenges And How To Deal With Them

Chapter Two. Common Client Issues

Chapter Three. Understanding Your Trading Challenges

Chapter Four. Coping With Losing Trades

Chapter Five. Stress and Anxiety

Chapter Six. Negative Self-Talk

Chapter Seven. The Role of Fear

Part Three. Personal Development

Chapter Eight. Visualisation – Aiming for Success

Chapter Nine. Affirmations

Chapter Ten. Modelling Success

Chapter Eleven. Boosting Confidence and Motivation

Chapter Twelve. Mental Preparation and Discipline

Chapter Thirteen. Your Future

Chapter Fourteen. Finding a Suitable Hypnotherapist

HypnoTrading courses

About the author

Catherine Stott studied at the University of Reading, where she obtained a degree in Psychology. She then went to work as a human factors psychologist at a science and technology company. Her focus was predominantly on training and designing training systems for human use. Following this she trained as a Clinical Hypnotherapist at the Royal Berkshire College of Clinical Hypnosis (RBCCH), obtaining a Diploma in Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy.

Catherine is fully trained in hypnotherapy, suggestion therapy, hypnoanalysis, psychotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). She is a Licentiate of the Association of Professional Hypnosis and Psychotherapy (APHP), a member of the National Council of Hypnotherapy (NCH) and one of the first hypnotherapists in the UK to become registered with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CHNC). In addition to this she is also a member of the British Psychological Society.

Catherine first began working with traders in 2010 and has developed an in-depth knowledge of trading psychology as well as how hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT can help traders with the challenges they face.

Preface

What this book covers

Trading is a minefield of psychological and emotional challenges that are often underestimated. It is usually only once you have started trading that you realise how mentally and emotionally involved you become and notice the complex relationship that develops between the trader and the trade.

This book provides you with a set of tools to help you deal with some of the common psychological issues in trading. You will be introduced to hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and Havening as three key therapies that can help you change your mindset and how you cope with the challenges of trading and the trading environment.

Specifically, this book covers four main overarching challenges that traders face:

Coping with losing trades

Stress and anxiety

Negative self-talk

The role of fear.

It also looks at areas for self-development:

Using visualisation for success

How to write affirmations

Modelling success

Boosting motivation and confidence

Mental preparation and discipline

Building your future

Who this book is for

This book is for all traders who want to change how they trade and improve their success. Whether you are a novice trader who wants to trade well from the start or an experienced trader who wants to tweak your self-belief or motivation, this book is for you. It will be useful for traders who want to:

Improve their trading consistency

Stick to their trading plan

Overcome fear

Learn how to deal with losing money

Take the leap from part-time trader to full-time trader

Trade with a calm and positive mindset

Have better mental preparation for trading

Reduce how much they lose when trading

Have better decision-making skills

How this book is structured

This book is broken down into three sections.

The first section will introduce you to three types of therapy: hypnotherapy, NLP and Havening. You will learn the basic concepts and theories behind each and the basic steps needed for self-hypnosis.

The second section outlines common trading issues and then moves on to cover in depth four key areas of challenge for traders. These are: coping with losing trades, stress and anxiety, negative self-talk and fear.

The final section contains more general self-help discussion. Specifically, it covers using visualisation, how to write affirmations, building confidence and motivation, modelling success, mental preparation and discipline.

The book concludes with advice on how to choose a hypnotherapist should you want more help.

Within each chapter, you will find a number of activities and techniques that encompass hypnotherapy, NLP or Havening. These are designed to help you address the challenges that have been identified. You will be guided through each technique step by step so that you can practise it and use it correctly.

The techniques are designed to provide you with a toolkit of psychotherapeutic approaches that you can use as often as required to help you create the changes you want. You will find that some suit you more than others and you will learn how to adapt the techniques outlined to address a variety of areas, both within and outside of trading.

How to use this book

To make the best use of the book, firstly read through each chapter and each activity before you start. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time. There is no need to rush and, although it will be tempting to move straight to the chapters that you think apply to you the most, work through each one in turn. You can repeat each activity and technique as often as you want or need to.

Once you have completed all the activities you can then dip into the book in the future, using the relevant techniques when needed. Once you are familiar with the book and the activities, you’ll be able to bookmark those that you want to return to so you can practise and use them as often as you need to.

Within each chapter, you will see the following:

Text in italics indicates an activity where you should make notes. Perhaps use a notepad specifically for the work you complete in this book; it will help you to keep all of your notes in one place.

TIPS! Specific tips are displayed in bold.

Techniques

Practical techniques are displayed in boxes. They are written in a straightforward, step-by-step manner.

Introduction

You’ve picked up this book and you are flicking through it. Clearly, you think you need some help breaking down some of the psychological challenges of trading.

Do you lack discipline? Are you annoyed at yourself for letting fear get in the way? Perhaps you have a great trading strategy but for whatever reason you don’t follow it. Perhaps you can’t stop yourself from exiting trades too early and you experience both elation that you have made a profit, and frustration you didn’t stay in as long as you intended and missed out.

If you have these problems when trading then HypnoTrading can help you.

HypnoTrading is not your typical trading psychology textbook. It goes a step further than describing problems – it guides you step-by-step through a number of self-help solutions. You will discover the power of hypnosis and how to use self-hypnosis with neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and Havening, a modern psycho-sensory technique, to master your trading issues, help you make better trading decisions, perform in a calm and consistent manner, and go on to improve your trading life.

I have been working with traders since 2010, when I was first approached by a trader who wanted to use hypnotherapy to help control his reactions to losing trades and improve his levels of discipline.

Working with this client, I became intrigued by trading issues and the similarities to gambling, and I soon knew that I wanted to work with traders as a specialism. From this point on, I began to develop my knowledge of trading psychology.

I quickly realised there was a common set of themes that seemed to appear in my clinic as I saw more and more traders: discipline (or lack thereof), fear, stress and how you react to losing trades, to name but a few. I realised the huge number of home-based traders out there in the world and the demand for my services began to grow.

Having seen the brilliant effects that hypnotherapy has had on my trader clients, the next logical step was for me to write this book, to bring hypnotherapy and NLP techniques to a wider audience of traders. I want to pass on some of my knowledge and make hypnotherapy accessible to more traders.

This is a practical book. It is all very well knowing, for example, that you experience anxiety whilst trading, but this book shows you how to identify those anxieties and their impact and how to overcome them. This is hugely important for every trader because the psychological elements of trading are well known and well documented, but there is very little material that deals with how to develop yourself psychologically to deal with trading and achieve better results.

The aim of this book is to help you develop your success as a trader, become more consistent in your approach to trading and address larger psychological elements within trading.

You can find out more about me and my practice in Wokingham, Berkshire, on my website: HypnoTrading.co.uk

Part One. An Introduction to Therapeutic Techniques

Trading is full of complex emotional states. There is uncertainty, lack of control, volatility and fast-paced change to contend with. It is no wonder many people find this difficult emotionally.

HypnoTrading offers a number of approaches that you can use to help overcome the psychological barriers holding you back or influencing how you trade. In Part One, you will find an introduction to the various techniques that you will become acquainted with as you progress through the book.

This introduction does not provide you with an in-depth understanding of each therapy – you don’t really need that in order to use the techniques successfully. The intention is to provide you with an insight into the therapies so you understand the