With so many struggling to maintain emotional well-being during this crypto winter, self-improvement and mental health experts can help navigate the ups, downs and soul-shattering experiences that a long-term bear market can bring.
Mental health professional Elizabeth Sterbenz and wellness thought leader Srikumar Rao discuss with Magazine how to cope with the depreciation of crypto portfolios, move forward and illuminate intuitive happiness. Sterbenz is a licensed psychotherapist in California specializing in individual, couples and financial therapy. Rao is an international speaker and executive business coach with a PhD from Columbia University. He teaches a course at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University that merges Eastern philosophies with modern business practices.
Learn how to ride a tsunami
Rao believes that crypto traders, developers and community members have been hit by a tsunami. They are struggling through a long-term crypto winter that shows no immediate signs of warming. They also celebrated a two-year NFT boom that was quickly followed by a devastating bust.
The community was recently gobsmacked when major figures in the cryptocurrency industry, like Sam Bankman-Fried and Do Kwon, were accused of fraudulent activities, discrediting the industry and harming investors.
And the hits keep coming. Just weeks ago, the United States Department of Justice and other international authorities took down a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange and arrested its founder in Miami.
Rao believes that the bear market can be used as an opportunity to learn how to surf the top of the tsunami while calmly observing what’s happening below. He says one can achieve this by accepting that winning is not a requirement for happiness. Happiness doesn’t come from making the right trade or a lot of money. According to Rao, that’s a false belief:
“The thought that you have to have something happen in order to be happy, it’s just false. But you believe in it so strongly because you never really thought about it independently. You’ve just been carried on by the mass hysteria.”
Sterbenz takes it a step further, suggesting it’s unnecessary to go it alone, especially in these tough times. “I think you have to be able to kind of trust, you know, having a good financial adviser. That’s an important part of your team.”
She believes getting sound, objective financial advice will provide peace of mind. Relying on someone else to help assess trades and to help make decisions about overall financial situations provides a feeling of being covered. “You can then set your financial worries aside and focus on your well-being,” Sterbenz says.
Rao claims it’s also important to recognize that cryptocurrency has no intrinsic value. The value is only what people believe it is. Large numbers of people agree that a particular token has a particular value at a particular time, but the moment people don’t feel that way anymore, the coin ceases to have the same value.
Rao says, “If you accept that up front, before you make the investment, and you say that what could have happened did happen, and it happened when I made the wrong trade, that’s okay. I’ll recover. I’ll move on, and I never really needed this to work out to be happy in the first place.”
How to deal with the crypto corruption shakeout
Many of the crypto community’s worst fears were realized when FTX imploded and its founder was arrested, as well as when Terra crashed and subsequent charges were filed against its former CEO. Uncertainty about the inevitability of stricter federal regulatory efforts further validated those concerns.
Crime is now, undeniably, a part of the crypto ecosystem, just as it is part of the traditional investment arena. That’s a tough pill to swallow, and even meaningful regulatory crackdowns are cause for concern.
Nonetheless, Sterbenz suggests that this is nothing to be ashamed of and doesn’t mean participating in crypto is disreputable or embarrassing. Comparing the situation to those critical of traditional investors after history’s largest Ponzi scheme was exposed, Sterbenz says, “That’s also like saying, like Bernie Madoff, ‘I told you all these stocks were a scam. You should be putting your money in the mattress.’”
According to Sterbenz, it’s important to separate from the bad behavior of unscrupulous characters and simply accept that…
cointelegraph.com