Psychology of Overcoming Trading Losses, Stop Self Destructive Thinking

After the biggest stock market loss in my life recently, I am having a very difficult time and stopped investing. After this huge loss a day later I found out my only client was being bought out and my work was over. For the first time in a very long time, I could not sleep that night, being 57 years old and no real job prospects. Now after 3 months, I continue to have self destructive thoughts, how stupid I was, if only I could have held on or never made that trade I would be fine. I cannot seem to get past this huge loss and these horrible thoughts, without a job or income I have to make money some how and have negative paradoxical thinking; I must get back in the market to make money, but I will lose again. With my net worth at a 20 year low and no work, I feel even more pressure and must do something soon, or my savings will start exponentially decreasing.

Here is a blog I read that makes sense: Traderfeed blog 

another helpful article: Coming back from large losses is challenging, and most traders will face this challenge at one time or other in their career. Improving their technical edge is only half the battle. A successful comeback requires addressing the mental side as well. The following techniques may help the trader overcome fear:

• Trade small. The immediate task is to recondition your mind to trading rather than to make money. If you go in with size, you work against yourself.
• Monitor your thoughts. Sandy not only feared the pain of loss, but also had other unconstructive beliefs. He noted, "If I have another loss I'll be a failure. I just can't fail!" He magnified the importance of every trade and caused himself enormous pressure just by his thoughts.
• Learn to handle difficult thoughts and feelings. Sandy had a successful comeback after learning to put each trade into proper perspective and learning how to handle fearful thoughts and emotions. He adopted the attitude that each trade is only one of many trades and it doesn't really matter how it turns out; over the long term, he knew his edge would prevail. He also learned to trade with his doubts and fears treating his thoughts like people passing by on the sidewalk. He noticed them, but didn't stop to talk to each one. He just let them naturally pass by and went about his business.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Trading-Psychology---How-to-Overcome-Fear-Following-Heavy-Losses-Using-Trading-Psychology&id=3738794

a good article on Changing Destructive Thinking Patterns; 2 examples of limiting patterns of thinking:

‘Life sucks’ Thinking pattern –Everything in life is bad, everybody is not to be trusted and nothing good will ever happen to them e.g. “I won’t get that job, the interviewer didn’t like me, I didn’t particularly like them anyway.”

‘Unsubstantiated conclusive’ Thinking pattern– You tend to make a lot of conclusions without any evidence to back up your conclusions. This can be a really destructive pattern as it can limit you in seeing reality for what it is e.g. “He walks a bit funny, he must be gay.” (I actually heard someone saying this about a colleague last week).