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Welcome to Thursday Trader's Tip — the free edition of The High-Performing Trader newsletter. Each issue presents to-the-point trading psychology advice that can be read in under 5 min.
This week's post is about the four fear responses.
When faced with a threat, individuals display one of four fear responses - fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The following examples illustrate these responses in both a dialog and trading context.

Let’s explore each one of the responses.
Fight Response
When presented with a threat, some individuals may choose to fight back. In the context of a conversation where someone challenges one's belief, this can be perceived as an attack on one's identity, triggering the survival instinct. The fight response may manifest as the individual raising their voice to assert their opinion or even resorting to physical aggression towards the other person.
In trading, the closest response to this fight mode is revenge trading: the trader seeks to take on the market by overtrading in an attempt to recoup their losses at all costs.
Flight Response
Flight involves running away from the source of danger. In the dialog context, the individual might try to avoid the conversation, change the topic, or simply leave.
In trading, this might lead traders to take profits too soon to run away from the threat - a price reversal.
Freeze Response
In survival mode, some people freeze. This response is thought to reduce the chances of detection by predators that rely on movement to catch their prey.
In trading, this can translate into hesitation to pull the trigger or to take profits.
Dissociation is a response that occurs when someone experiences trauma and it leads people to freeze. It is an involuntary detachment from reality, often described as a feeling of disconnect from one's sense of self. People may say things like 'I feel disconnected from my body' or 'I feel like my soul has left my body and I can't feel anything'. This response is most common with physical trauma, where the victim has no means of escape. In such situations, the brain finds a way to protect itself from the threat by disconnecting from the body.
When this mode is activated during trading, it becomes impossible to access your rational skills and intuition. Taking a pause and giving yourself some time can help ‘your mind connect with your body again’.
Fawn Response
The fawn response involves attempting to appease the threat instead of fighting, fleeing, or freezing. It’s a submissive behavior. Examples of this can be seen as trying to befriend the aggressor, seeking to comply with their demands, or displaying submissive body language.
In trading, the trader might pretend the market has its own mind and beg for a winner.
Which of these responses describes you?
Fear responses occur involuntarily— it’s a primary instinct. Identifying your usual fear response or the combination of responses you exhibit is the first step towards preventing it from impacting your trading performance.
Happy trading,
Sara
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Fight after a big loss. Flight after a big move in my favor. Freeze after a questionable setup. Fawn after neglecting the stop loss. Can relate with all of these. I think assertiveness helps with these four. Not just in things like social interaction, but in trading too