Five signs you are on trading tilt before your account shows it
Tilt is an arousal state, not a character flaw. It has physical tells that arrive minutes before the trade that does the damage.
The five tells
Your chart timeframe drops without a decision. You stop reading the level and start reading the tape. Your breathing moves into the top of your chest. You catch yourself calculating what it would take to get back to flat. And your mouse hand is already on the platform before you have a setup. Any two of those together and you are in it, whatever the account says.
The ninety-second reset
Trigger: two tells at once, or any stop-out that makes you want in again immediately. Steps: stand up, walk out of sight of the screen, breathe four counts in and six out for ninety seconds by a timer, then say out loud what your next valid setup is. No entry until the timer has rung and you have named the setup. Success test: you can state the setup calmly and you are not still doing recovery arithmetic.
If the reset does not hold
If you re-enter inside the timer, the session is over — flatten and close the platform. Not as punishment, but because a broken reset means arousal is running the session and the next hour will cost more than the hour you lose. Come back the next day at half size and run the reset once before the open as a rehearsal, so your body knows the sequence before it needs it.
Takeaway — Catch tilt at two physical tells and ninety seconds fixes it; catch it at the third losing trade and the day fixes nothing.
Full protocolTrading tilt: how to recognise it and resetTilt Ladder Check — trigger, steps, timing, success test and what to do when it fails.Work it through with the Coach
Describe your last bad trade and it names the state, picks the protocol and gives you the exercise to run before your next session. Free to use.