The Mental Edge: Trading Psychology Podcast

Sarah Banwart
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The Mental Edge is a trading psychology podcast for traders who want to understand the neuroscience behind their emotional reactions at the charts. Hosted by Sarah, a retired therapist turned trader, each episode breaks down the neuroscience of trading psychology and gives you practical tools to regulate your nervous system, build confidence, and trade from identity instead of impulse. No hustle culture. No shame. Just real science and real solutions.

  1. 1D AGO

    Why Traders Keep Taking Impulsive Trades (It Has Nothing to Do with Discipline)

    You keep taking impulsive trades, even when you know they are not in your plan. In this episode, I’m breaking down the real reason that happens, and it’s not because you lack discipline. Most impulsive trading is an attempt to escape an internal state, a feeling in your body that gets loud enough that your survival brain takes over. We’ll unpack the five most common emotional drivers behind impulsive trades, why phone-driven overstimulation makes patience feel unbearable, what happens in your brain when you try to “white knuckle” discipline, and then I’ll give you four exercises to interrupt the cycle in real time. In this episode: Why impulsivity is often relief-seeking, not profit-seekingThe difference between discipline tools and regulation toolsThe five emotions that most often sit underneath impulsive tradingWhy overstimulation makes patience feel like dangerHow stress shuts down your prefrontal cortex in the exact moment you need itFour exercises to widen the gap between the urge and the click When what comes up is bigger than trading and what to do next Note: These exercises are self-awareness tools, not therapy, and they are not a substitute for working with a licensed professional Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://mentaledgetrading.co Research: Haynes, T. (2018). "Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time." Harvard Medical School Science in the News. Arnsten, A. F. (2009). "Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function." Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410-422. Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). "A neural substrate of prediction and reward." Science, 275(5307), 1593-1599. Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). "Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli." Psychological Science, 18(5), 421-428. Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: Toward a neurobiology of interpersonal experience. Guilford Press. Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression: Causes and treatment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Arnsten, A. F. T., & Li, B. M. (2005). "Neurobiology of executive functions: Catecholamine influences on prefrontal cortical function." Biological Psychiatry, 57(11), 1377-1384. Qin, S., et al. (2009). "Acute psychological stress reduces working memory-related activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex." Biological Psychiatry, 66(1), 25-32. Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    52 min

  2. FEB 10

    Why Traders Struggle to Stay Funded After Their First Payout (And What to Do About It)

    You finally got your first payout, you proved you can do this, and then a couple days later you blew the account. And now, no matter what you try, you can't get back to where you were. In this episode, I’m breaking down what actually shifts in your brain and nervous system after a payout, and why trading often gets harder after success, not easier. This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s not that you “forgot how to trade.” Your brain recalibrated. Your identity shifted. Your nervous system started treating every trade like a threat to your worth. I’ll walk you through the three patterns that trap traders in the post-payout spiral (revenge trading against your own history, the paradox of trying harder, and the eval fee treadmill), and then I’ll give you a clear four-week recovery roadmap to rebuild self-trust and make consistency sustainable. In this episode: Why “losing what you had” hits different than chasing something newWhat changes in dopamine, stress response, and identity after a payoutThe post-payout spiral patterns traders repeat without realizing itShame vs guilt, and how to get out of the shame loopA 4-week roadmap to reset your nervous system and rebuild process-based consistencyA readiness checklist so you stop buying evals from panic Download the workbook here: https://mentaledgetrading.kit.com/651c0fd2e4 Key Studies: Kahneman & Tversky (1979) - Loss Aversion (Prospect Theory)Arnsten (2009) - Stress & Prefrontal Cortex FunctionSchultz (2015) - Dopamine & Reward SystemsBalban et al. (2023) - Physiological Sigh Research (Stanford)Lally et al. (2010) - Habit Formation (66-day average) Frameworks Referenced: Siegel (1999) - Window of TolerancePorges (2011) - Polyvagal TheoryKübler-Ross (1969) - Five Stages of GriefTangney & Dearing (2002) - Shame vs. GuiltLinehan (2015) - DBT SkillsShapiro (2001) - EMDR & Bilateral Stimulation Recommended Books: "The Body Keeps the Score" - Bessel van der Kolk"Thinking, Fast and Slow" - Daniel Kahneman"The Power of Habit" - Charles Duhigg Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    1h 14m

  3. FEB 3

    Why Traders Self-Sabotage Right Before Success (The Finish Line Freeze)

    Your brain will follow your plan flawlessly… right up until you are about to hit your goal. In this episode, I’m breaking down a pattern I named Finish Line Freeze, and why it has nothing to do with discipline. This is nervous system survival. It is shame. It is identity. It is your brain trying to pull you back to what is familiar the moment success becomes real. More importantly, I’m giving you practical tools to rewire it. Not mindset hacks. If you are tired of collapsing right before the payout, this is the episode that explains what is happening and what to do next. Topics covered: What Finish Line Freeze is and why it shows up right before payouts and goalsThe three layers driving the freeze: your body can’t hold peace, your mind rejects the win, and your story is built on collapseHomeostatic resistance and why your nervous system chooses familiarity over progressImposter syndrome, cognitive dissonance, and the urge to sabotage to protect identityCapacity trauma and the “upper limit” that shows up in your numbersWhy shame is the real driver behind holding losers, moving stops, and spiraling after lossesThe SAFE method to interrupt the pattern in real time (Spot, Anchor, Feel, Execute)Exposure-style tolerance building through micro-risking and progressive overloadCrisis tools: STOP method, urge surfing, and quick regulation techniquesPre-commitment systems that protect you when you cannot trust yourself under pressure Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://mentaledgetrading.co RESEARCH: van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking. Brown, B. (2006). Shame resilience theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society, 87(1), 43-52. Hendricks, G. (2009). The Big Leap: Conquer your hidden fear and take life to the next level. New York: HarperOne. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Foa, E. B., & McLean, C. P. (2016). The efficacy of exposure therapy for anxiety-related disorders and its underlying mechanisms: The case of OCD and PTSD. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, 1-28. Bowen, S., Chawla, N., & Marlatt, G. A. (2010). Mindfulness-based relapse prevention for addictive behaviors: A clinician's guide. New York: Guilford Press. Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. New York: Viking. Siegel, D. J., & Hartzell, M. (2003). Parenting from the inside out: How a deeper self-understanding can help you raise children who thrive. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Miller, A. (1981). The Drama of the Gifted Child: The search for the true self. New York: Basic Books. Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    50 min

  4. JAN 29

    Why Smart Traders Keep Making the Same Mistakes (And What to Do About It)

    Your brain is lying to you when you trade in ways that quietly sabotage your edge every single day. You don’t see the chart as it is. You see it through beliefs, emotions, recent experiences, and what your nervous system is doing in that moment. In this episode, I’m breaking down the five most expensive cognitive biases in trading: confirmation bias, recency bias, overconfidence bias, hindsight bias, and availability bias. More importantly, I’m showing you why you can’t “think” your way out of these patterns, and how to build external systems that catch them before they cost you real money. This is how the human brain actually works under uncertainty. And once you see which bias is running your decisions, you can finally start trading what’s real instead of what your mind is projecting. Topics covered: Why your brain filters the chart to match your thesisThe confirmation bias trap and why traders add to losersHow recency bias makes you abandon profitable strategies in drawdownThe Dunning-Kruger effect and the danger of early confidenceWhy hindsight bias rewrites your memory after every moveHow availability bias makes rare events feel commonWhy all cognitive biases get worse when your nervous system is dysregulatedPre-trade, in-trade, and post-trade regulation toolsHow to build checklists, alerts, and tracking systems that override bias Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://mentaledgetrading.coResearch: Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220. Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12(3), 129-140. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81-97. Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134. Fischhoff, B. (1975). Hindsight is not equal to foresight: The effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1(3), 288-299. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207-232. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    45 min

  5. JAN 21

    How to Overcome the Fear of Losing Money in Trading

    How to Overcome the Fear of Losing Money in Trading You see a perfect setup, your rules say take it, but you can't pull the trigger. Or maybe you're in a trade and it goes fifty bucks against you, and suddenly your chest gets tight, your palms start sweating, and you're thinking about closing it even though it hasn't hit your stop yet. Afterward, you think, "Why am I so scared? Why can't I just execute my plan?" But nothing is wrong with you. Your brain is treating financial loss like a survival threat. And that's biology, not weakness. In this episode, I break down the complete neuroscience of why losing money feels so painful. You'll learn what's happening in your amygdala, insula, and stress response system when you lose money, where this fear actually comes from, and the exact tools to retrain your nervous system so fear doesn't control your trading anymore. What's Inside: Why losing $100 hurts 2.5x more than gaining $100 feels good (loss aversion research)The biology of financial fear: amygdala activation, insula pain processing, and cortisol floodingHow childhood money scripts wire your nervous system (and why financial trauma can pass through generations)Money personality types: Why savers and spenders struggle differently in tradingThe trigger-thought-action loop that creates revenge trading, early exits, and freezingWise Mind: How to integrate emotional and rational thinking for calm execution3 practical tools: Planned Loss Exposure Drill, STOP Skill, and Identity AnchoringThe Future Self Letters exercise: Which version of you are you investing in today? This isn't theory. These are nervous system-based interventions that actually work. KEY RESEARCH CITED: Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. De Martino, B., Camerer, C. F., & Adolphs, R. (2010). Amygdala damage eliminates monetary loss aversion. PNAS, 107(8), 3788-3792. Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294-300. Blair, C., Berry, D., Mills-Koonce, R., & Granger, D. (2013). Cumulative effects of early poverty on cortisol in young children. Developmental Psychobiology, 55(6), 619-634. Knutson, B., et al. (2007). Neural predictors of purchases. Neuron, 53(1), 147-156. DISCLAIMER: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    35 min

  6. JAN 13

    Why Most Traders Struggle to Stop Trading After a Loss (The Neuroscience Explained)

    Why You Can't Control Yourself After a Loss (It's Not Discipline) You take a loss, panic rises, and you know you should stop... but you can't. You take another trade, and another... until the account is blown or you're locked out. Afterward, you think: "What's wrong with me? Why can't I just be more disciplined?" But nothing is wrong with you. Your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do. In this episode, I break down the complete neuroscience of revenge trading. You'll learn what's happening in your amygdala (threat detector) and striatum (habit center) when you take a loss, why discipline doesn't work, and what to do instead. I'm giving you the 5-step Threat Mode Protocol (adapted from aviation safety) to interrupt the automatic revenge trading pattern and retrain your brain. What's Inside: - The neuroscience of threat mode (amygdala activation, prefrontal cortex shutdown) - How your striatum learned revenge trading through repetition and intermittent reinforcement - Why trying harder makes it worse - The 5-step protocol to interrupt the pattern - Realistic timeline (months 1-12) for retraining your brain Download the free checklist here. This is a printable protocol with all 5 steps, threat mode indicators, regulation techniques, and timeline guide. Print it and keep it next to your monitor. DISCLAIMER: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    46 min

  7. JAN 6

    The 4 Types of Self Sabotage That Destroy Traders (And Exactly How to Stop)

    You know what you're supposed to do, you understand your strategy, but when you're sitting at your desk, you can't execute. Maybe you freeze at perfect setups. Maybe you can't stop overtrading. Maybe you take one loss and spiral into revenge trading. Or maybe you just disappear and you can't bring yourself to open your platform for days or weeks. In this episode, I'm breaking down the four types of trading self-sabotage: The Hesitator, The Pusher, The Self-Punisher, and The Disappearer. More importantly, I'm giving you three exercises for each type to regulate your nervous system before these patterns destroy your account. This is how your biology was designed to work. And once you understand which pattern is yours, you can actually fix it. Topics covered: How to identify your primary self-sabotage patternThe nervous system state driving each type (freeze, fight, shame spiral, flight)12 regulation exercises (3 per type) you can use immediatelyWhat happens when patterns collide and how to interrupt themWhat triggers shifts between types (sleep, stress, winning streaks, losing streaks) Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://mentaledgetrading.co Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance. All trading involves risk, and you should never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. The content shared reflects my personal experiences and opinions as a retired therapist turned trader and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition. Always consult with qualified financial and mental health professionals before making trading or personal health decisions.

    1 hr

  8. 12/30/2025

    Why Getting Your First Payout Is So Hard (And How to Actually Keep It)

    Why do capable traders blow their accounts right before their first payout or within days after getting it? In part three of this funded trading series, I break down what happens to your brain when you get close to a payout and why your nervous system shifts into protection mode right when you need to stay sharp. This episode walks through reward proximity and how dopamine builds as you approach a goal, the threat window that makes normal pullbacks feel like danger, and why three specific things happen after a payout that set you up to blow the account. You'll learn: Why a $50 pullback at 95% feels completely different than the same pullback at 20%How your brain shifts from approach mode to protection mode and what that does to your tradingThe three things that happen after a payout: dopamine crashes, your brain relaxes its monitoring, and identity shifts that pull you back to old behaviorsWhy the limbo zone between payouts is the most dangerous time for your trading and sets up your next cycleWhat to do if you blow an account at 95% and how to recover without carrying shame into your next attemptFive regulation exercises that keep your prefrontal cortex online when the pressure hits: threat signature mapping, payout distance anchor, stillness tolerance test, dopamine trough rehearsal, and identity stability check This is a longer episode because I'm walking through both the neuroscience of what's happening and the exact protocols to work with your nervous system instead of against it when real money is on the line. Part one covered why getting funded is so difficult. Part two covered why traders blow funded accounts. This episode shows you how to actually get your first payout and keep your account afterwards. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://mentaledgetrading.co Disclaimer: I am a retired therapist and no longer practicing. I am not a licensed professional providing clinical or financial advice. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or financial guidance.

    1h 12m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

The Mental Edge is a trading psychology podcast for traders who want to understand the neuroscience behind their emotional reactions at the charts. Hosted by Sarah, a retired therapist turned trader, each episode breaks down the neuroscience of trading psychology and gives you practical tools to regulate your nervous system, build confidence, and trade from identity instead of impulse. No hustle culture. No shame. Just real science and real solutions.

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