Mastering the Moneyed Mind: Body and Mind - the Effects of Money Problems (Issn, 3) 9781951527969, 9781951527976, 1951527968

Table of contents :
Cover
Mastering the Moneyed Mind, Volume III Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1 Money Problems—The Effects on the Mind
Chapter 2 Money Problems—The Effects on the Body
Chapter 3 The Money Muscle—Effects on the Heart
Chapter 4 Your Autopsy: What Would We Find?
References
A Peek at Volume IV
About the Author
Index
Ad Page
Back Cover

Citation preview

MASTERING THE MONEYED MIND VOLUME III

Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems ChristopherBayer Bayer Dr. Dr. Christopher

Mastering the Moneyed Mind, Volume III

Mastering the Moneyed Mind, Volume III Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems Dr. Christopher Bayer

Mastering the Moneyed Mind, Volume III: Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published in 2021 by Business Expert Press, LLC 222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017 www.businessexpertpress.com ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-796-9 (paperback) ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-797-6 (e-book) Business Expert Press Economics and Public Policy Collection Collection ISSN: 2163-761x (print) Collection ISSN: 2163-7628 (electronic) Cover and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India First edition: 2021 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Abstract This volume, “Body and Mind: The Effects of Money Problems,” advances readers into an examination of the effect of money problems on the body and mind. This volume presents research that supports solutions offered throughout the series to fix maladjustments of the mind, and develop a sound grasp of the mind-body connection to ensure there is an unbreakable bond at all levels. Readers are guided into a psychological examination of the overexcited mind of a gambler or bettor or broker/ trader, as a way of demonstrating how difficult it is to stop the runaway feedback mechanism that the brain’s reward system often is. The reader is presented with the effects of the hyperactive mind and of Type A personalities who believe the hype about themselves—on the brain, on stress hormone levels, on the immune system, on the heart— with sleep deprivation and insomnia rounded up as the usual symptoms in the vicious cycle of never having enough. A comprehensive diagram that charts the parts of the body that can be affected by stress is presented with key strategies for managing stress. The volume begins with an evocation of the relentless pace of many high-strung professionals, with little socialization or emotional relief, and much in the way of mood and personality disorders. Strategies for developing stress-free solutions for avoiding depression, in addition to detailed data that point to high recovery rates from depression offer readers practical, tangible tools for managing real life, money problems. Pointers on how to avoid The Triggers that Produce Multiple Wounds will play a critical role in helping readers to equip their gyroscope to cope with stress. Among other helpful concepts, the book encourages the reader to examine the ways in which “fear,” for example, is an effective way to battle unhealthy behavior that can lead to psychosomatic symptoms, and if unchecked, to disorders. Money-strewn professions, such as finance, are littered with those who want it all—many of them high-functioning addicts to stress, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and the accumulation of money in its pure state. Volume III offers plenty of stories of excess, most of which, fortunately, include the often painful road back to balance and health. It closes with a meaningful invitation to the reader: Envision Your Own Eden and

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the Good Life—words of encouragement to help them keep their eyes open to considering how much money is enough.

Keywords psychology; immune system; gambling; addictions; sexual misbehavior; sleep deprivation and insomnia; depression and mood disorders; finance; neuroeconomics; behavioral finance; money; morality; Wall Street; increasing consumption; commerce; financial; economics; disbalancing; wealth versus money; corruption; materialism

Table of Contents Foreword................................................................................................ix Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Money Problems—The Effects on the Mind......................1 Money Problems—The Effects on the Body.....................37 The Money Muscle—Effects on the Heart.......................57 Your Autopsy: What Would We Find?..............................79

References..............................................................................................85 A Peek at Volume IV..............................................................................87 About the Author...................................................................................91 Index....................................................................................................95

Foreword In the previous volumes, Dr. Bayer provided a historical look at our relationship with money, and discussed the psychology of commerce and the human evolution of economic theory juxtaposed with concepts in ethics, virtue, and morality. We learned strategies for embracing integrity and rediscovering virtue, and explored lessons in character exemplified by stories about codependency and deceptions on Wall Street. In this volume, the author examines the effects of “money problems” on the mind and the body, and offers deeper discussions and examples that build on the concepts introduced in the previous volumes. For example, Dr. Bayer’s compelling descriptions of the insane, desperate pursuit of a life of money on Wall Street, and the uninhibited love for money reveal what looks clearly like a pathological drive, in financial professionals, to seek and want more and more of it—often to their physical and psychological detriment. Through his lens and credibility, having witnessed the pathology of “money problems” among people who everybody would consider to be “The Haves,” we are able to explore manifestations of excess galore, and the corresponding troubles that, invariably, accompany it: from chemical dependency and sexual misbehavior to gambling and marital infidelity. Of course, no one sets out to become a drug addict or pathological gambler, and they certainly do not aspire to destroy their careers, devastate their marriages, and hurt the ones they love: (but) as we see from the examples in this book, that is, sadly the invariable outcome when the unadulterated pursuit of riches, without considerations for the importance of good character or the need for mind and body balance, drives behavior on Wall Street. This volume, indeed, offers good lessons for all of us who seek money without complementing our pursuit of it with a personal sense of balance. Through each and every page in the book, we are reminded that there are so many circumstances and influences to lure the Wall Street professional from a direction of success and wellness down a path to perdition. Indeed,

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the siren song of greed and excess is deafening, and in reading the stories we are invited to envision for our own selves, as key question: what does having a good life mean, and what is the role of money in our equation? In many ways, the book helps us to examine our own motives, even though the stories are those of financial professionals on Wall Street. For example, we see that Wall Street professionals like to kick up their heels— after all, Work hard, play hard is their favorite cliché. They like money and what can be done with it. They understand money as a tool, more specifically, as an instrument of power, and as the backstory of human experience. They also like “nice things.” As soon as young financial professionals start to make significant money, they become enchanted with brands; they are supposed to; after all, we are a culture of desire. From this, we learn that, like everyone else, financial professionals enjoy making money and spending it—the more lavishly, the better. This is how the Street’s culture measures success, power, status, stature, reputation, and, ultimately, value or worth. For some, on Wall Street, $25 million is considered small change, especially so during the dot-com boom, or if one was not on the wrong end of the subprime meltdown. For others, “living the good life” means spending $1,500 a night at luxury hotels on the French Riviera, or impulsively buying a Rolls Royce for a lover who is a car buff, or enjoying exotic sex on demand. With decades of interaction with Wall Street professionals, Dr. Bayer has heard it all—outlandish tales of debauchery, depravity, and decadence. He shares with us stories he has learned and witnessed both in and out of the office—stories from Street people who felt the need to brag about their ability to overspend and live extravagantly. Bragging about over-the-top vacations, high-priced designer clothing, elaborate parties, in-house chefs, personal travel guides, and more—this kind of talk, conspicuously detailing one’s consumption of luxuries, is ultimately about power, status, reputation, and, of course, about image and control. This volume is, literally, bursting with stories and strategies, including solutions for identifying life’s goals, with an aim to manage internal and external expectations that keep us all on guard. Dr. Anestine Hector-Mason, Managing Director, The Conscious Press, LLC.

CHAPTER 1

Money Problems— The Effects on the Mind There is nothing better and quicker than a huge economic crisis to sober up Wall Street, as well as the rest of us trying to survive and prosper on Main Street. An economic crisis precipitated by much bad, even evil, behavior within the financial industry itself—where people fall easily into a culture of arrogance, betrayal, entitlement, deception; in short, corruption—is especially sobering. An economic downturn forces one to adopt new money-management strategies both personally and professionally, to become more practical and sensible. Virtually everyone’s sense of valuation changes: very few people brag about expensive hotel rooms or Ferraris anymore—even if they can afford them—and for some “the good life” sounds like a thing of the past. When suddenly there is a lot less money to be had, its accumulation and expenditure are exposed as having created false senses of self and of security—an artificial superiority that only serves to numb us to feelings of inadequacy and perpetuate a sense of emptiness. The ability to envision and interpret signs of a looming crisis is also impaired when irrational exuberance colors the human psyche. Our minds become affected and infected! Severe economic downturns and financial disasters take their emotional toll on financial professionals and clients alike. If we are emotionally depressed, our cognitive functioning suffers, and we are less careful, less precise with the data analysis that is required to manage and hedge risk. Still, economic downturns and living well need not be mutually exclusive. The good life can be affordable regardless of economic conditions—you just need to adjust your personal definition of “the good life” by shifting the utilization of your inner resources. People can reconfigure their understanding of what is truly important and see that they

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are wealthy within themselves. After all, a Presidential Diamond Rolex chronometer “doth not a person truly make.”

Money Is Only Part of the Equation If you can cultivate a sense of well-being and “the good life” as being not merely measured by how much money you make, then you can live that good life by relying on your internal creative resources—your skills, your talents—even when your production suffers and the money meter dips. Having meaningful passions and relationships independent of worldly goods will allow you to survive the Wall Street storms: the chaos, the brutality, the pain. You can write that novel or play that you have always wanted to write, or go to art school; or culinary school; or become a farmer; or sommelier. I am serious. Fortunes are made and lost in what seems like nanoseconds, but if you can identify ways of staying centered, in other words, of maintaining a sense of emotional equilibrium and of self-worth, then you will ride out these drops and surges without them affecting the quality of your life. Sometimes in life you need to sidestep everyday reality; that is not always a bad thing. Happiness and contentment are emotional commodities that have no price. This is why financial professionals must create an inner world bathed in their own core values, passions, and close relationships. Before we can talk in more detail about how greater happiness might be achieved, let us identify the symptoms affecting many Wall Street professionals, and try to understand how they can be exacerbated in times of both public and personal crisis. Ultimately, what some consider “the good life” is a mirage born of vulgar materialism, thickly coated deep-seated psychological issues, and unhappiness. The section ahead will explore this irony so as to prepare readers who are developing their gyroscopes.

High-Functioning Addicts Substance abuse is a tragic reality on Wall Street. Many of the clients I treat are or have been addicted to some form of drug, either prescribed or illicit. These are not your typical alcoholics and narcotics addicts. More often than not, these are what are clinically referred to as High-Functioning



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Alcoholics or High-Functioning Addicts (HFAs). They defy many of the stereotypes associated with substance abusers, seeming to sustain successful careers, personal lives, and relationships, while feeding a growing addiction. In many ways, this type of addiction is more serious, because it is not obvious and we tend to overlook the behavior when it does infrequently emerge, excusing its manifestations as isolated incidents. Thus, we inadvertently enable our colleague. We make excuses for him or her. We cover for him or her. Ironically, the ability to function actually reinforces the denial, leading to increasingly reckless behavior and furthering one’s descent into a form of personal hell. Plus, it reinforces a burgeoning sense of grandiosity and arrogance. Even when those close to the addict suspect a problem, they seldom know the extent to which the substance abuse has taken over the person’s life. Inevitably, if the addict excels at everything else, he or she will surely master the art of manipulation and will be able to effectively hide his or her consumption. Meanwhile, overachievers often have a propensity for addictive behavior. In my experience, law and business are two professions where you find high concentrations of overachievers prone to substance abuse as a channel for relieving stressors produced by excessive workloads and other job-related pressures. Stimulants are especially abused in this industry. Chasing a Different Type of Personal High One client I counseled had a sizable client base and was constantly sought out for his expertise. Oh, how shocked his conservatively minded clients would have been upon finding out that he led a secret life in which he was heavaddicted to drugs and alcohol! How aghast they would have been to learn of his twin gambling and sex addictions, particularly of his dangerous obsession with high-end prostitutes. As his star rose, the gorilla on his back grew bolder. Firmly rooted in denial, he convinced himself that he could cope with this endless cycle of addiction, to the point where he made the disastrous decision to seek a new highs, pretty much experimenting with all drugs, mainlining some directly into his bloodstream, which caused required that he wore long sleeves and turtle necks to hide them. This was madness! He had to wear

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turtlenecks, even in the summer, to hide the scarring—sheer, unadulterated madness. His meteoric professional rise and his personal addictions fed each other in the constant quest for new experiences, each more and more intense. It was almost as if his professional persona were in competition with his psychotic self. Actually, their tandem play was literally driving him crazy. There was a very good reason for that anxiety—being discovered by his superiors and losing everything. Unlike addicts in other walks of life, HFAs on the Street are under the constant scrutiny of a heavily regulated and regimented professional environment. It is that much more difficult to hide the revolting effects of drug addiction if you are working on Wall Street. Of course, this was not your typical addict—or so he thought; so they all think. Still, he fell into the same traps. No one is immune to the consequences of addiction—simply no one. His relationship with his wife and two children deteriorated. In the end, he sacrificed his standing at his firm, because when you enter an advanced phase of substance abuse, it is only a matter of time before your behavior becomes your undoing. Fortunately, he eventually agreed to enter a quality rehab in Arizona. Today, remaining drug-free is a constant struggle, one he will wage for the rest of his life, but at least he has finally committed to recovery.

Alcohol Most Commonly Abused Substance Based on my practice, I believe it safe to say that the most commonly abused substance—the drug of choice—is alcohol. The favorite poison on the Street, by far, is vodka: high-quality French, Russian, Polish spirit— the real deal—crystal-clear, quintuple-filtered, and pure as the tears of St. Matthew himself.1 Money, clearly, is no object—thousand-dollar, limited-edition bottles fly off the shelves of the city’s high-end liquor stores during the week before Christmas. Vodka is ideal for the HFA. Colorless, odorless, with relatively few calories, it comes in an endless number of flavors, is easily masked by mixers, and is readily accessible. It also has an oil base and, as such, does not cross 1

As he was a tax collector, St. Matthew has been co-opted as the patron saint of accountants, bankers, and others working in finance.



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the blood-brain barrier until there is a quantity of it built up, at which point it roars across that barrier in full force, the imbiber feeling what is known as hammered (or, in more polite parlance, anesthetized). Thus, the vodka-friendly HFA can get through the day on a relatively sober note, and then, timing it just right, get clobbered right after the close of market. You see, he wants to get clobbered, he needs to get clobbered; he cannot take the pain and the anguish. Being anesthetized is better than feeling. The alcoholic haze soothes wounds and coddles the raw ego. Unfortunately, this is many a Wall Street professional’s goal after a killer session or a nerve-racking day on the Street, compounded by terrified colleagues, anxious clients, abusive managers, and a corporate structure they can barely trust. The old standby, life-giving liquid, aquavit, clear dose of haze in a frosted shot glass—it packs a powerful punch and serves as a coping mechanism: an emotional crutch, a conduit for power fantasies, an artificial sense of well-being. Yes, a modicum of well-being, a quantum of solace—even if artificial and numbing—the clear sap of grain that saps your strength and betrays your clarity; yet, for a small opening in time, makes all your troubles go away. Money-Mind Problems: The Disease With No Known Cure Most financial-industry HFAs I have treated have multiple substance-abuse problems, many capping off chaotic trading sessions with cocaine- and vodka-fueled binges. Some of my clients, when arriving at my doorstep, were so uptight and trapped in cycles of dependency and depression, that they would be hitting the massage parlors during the workday, doing several lines of cocaine after the market closed. Often, they would then be so depressed that they would drown themselves in vodka to head off the crash of coming out of the cocaine high. Yes, they would drink vodka in order to sober up. As it impairs judgment, substance abuse also leads to other types of irresponsible behavior. Cognitive functioning is compromised. Many of my clients report concentration and memory problems, actual memory loss, vivid, terrifying tales of genuine blackouts (as observed by spouses, friends, children), loss of libido, severe fatigue, work-avoidance tactics, and so on. There are personal problems that you can work through by

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yourself, and then there are pending disasters that have the power to jeopardize the smooth flow of the rest of your life. It is nearly impossible to free yourselves of the shackles of serious substance abuse without professional help. It is also uncommonly rare to see someone actively seeking treatment before they have a major traumatic experience. Unfortunately, treatment is usually a measure of last resort. In most instances, control obsessions or fear of embarrassment prevent people from seeking the intensive, immersive rehabilitation treatment that is required to break the cycles of addiction. Even when someone is able to address his or her addiction, he or she is often plunges right back into the fire of enablement and temptation. Unlike other aspects of the gyroscope, when it comes to substance abuse, I do not offer a technique or tactic for incremental improvement. This is a disease, and I would venture to argue that it is one with no cure! It is, simply, but seriously, a matter of life and death: Your life—or your death. The decision and solution must come from within.

Sexual Misbehavior and Promiscuity Dangerous, sexually addictive behavior and sex-related disorders are among the most prevalent issues I deal with when treating and working with Wall Street professionals. In a world where values are distorted, sex can become a commodity to be leveraged. At other times, it is just one of many manifestations of extremely unhealthy behavior, often coupled with chemical abuse, fueled by a decadence-driven lifestyle. There is a vile underbelly to the financial services industry, peppered with myriad massage parlors, sex traffickers, fetish specialists who cater to the most outrageous whims—at exorbitant rates, of course. The commodity being exploited is severe stress, coupled with fear, even terror. When depression and self-loathing are thrown into the mix, troubled brokers are ripe for the flesh trade. Many of my clients find themselves extremely anxious and tightly wound; not surprisingly, they became habitual regulars at elaborate massage parlors geared toward the Wall Street set. This behavior continues with the patronage of high-end prostitution services and invariably involves cocaine or other stimulants. Clients drown themselves in sex, cocaine, and vodka,



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heading into a daily cycle of insanity, always crashing into a hard depression. Of course, these behaviors are likely to provoke hell on the home front. Infidelity is common, both in and out of the office.

Trading in Infamy: Wall Street Sex Scandals 2009—As per the madam who ran one of New York’s largest, most expensive escort services (until it was busted in 2008) Wall Street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs, and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000-an-hour prostitutes. 2008—Steven Rattner, formerly managing director and head of DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, resigned in July 2008 to spend more time with his family, as per a spokesman. The New York Times reported in August 2008 that Rattner stepped down after an Internet campaign by Tommi Cosgrove, the husband of Kelly Cosgrove, a woman Rattner had an affair with 5 years earlier. In a series of website posts and e-mails, Cosgrove accused Rattner of paying his wife $500,000 to leave him. 2007—BP Chief Executive Lord John Browne left his post at the oil giant and his directorship at Goldman Sachs Group after it was revealed that he had lied in court about his young male lover, whom he had met through an escort-service website. 2007—Canadian hedge fund manager, Paul Eustace, as per his own admission in a deposition filed in court, lied to investors and cheated on his wife with a stripper. Eustace also used investors’ money to buy gifts for his mistress. One of the items paid for with investor funds: breast augmentation. Eustace also admitted to stealing $2 million in client cash and losing $208 million for his hedge funds. 2006—Dresdner Kleinwort, investment banking arm of Allianz: strip clubs and prostitutes in the office. In 2006, six female employees filed suit against the company for creating an atmosphere hostile toward women. Among the charges: men asked female colleagues to leave while they entertained clients at strip clubs; some brought strippers to the company’s offices. The $1.4 billion lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum.

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2000—Former Keefe Bruyette & Woods Chief Executive, James McDermott, was found guilty on six of seven counts of insider trading for allegedly tipping off an exotic dancer, Kathryn Gannon—stage name ‘Marilyn Star’—to upcoming bank mergers. Gannon, who reaped $88,000 in profit from the information, was also found guilty. 1987—Peter Detwiler, Vice Chairman of E.F. Hutton & Co., was, as per court testimony, instructed by his client, Robert V. West, Chairman of Tesoro Petroleum, to hire a blonde prostitute for the Finance Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, whose fiscal stance at the time could hurt Tesoro’s profits. Some of my clients maintain apartments in the city, and several even have special deals with boutique hotels. Many FPs become masters of telecom sex by assuming false identities in a variety of sordid chat rooms. Day after day, they engage in all sorts of behaviors; they just pick themselves back up and do it all over again. You see, the more successful they become, the more autonomy and the more resources they have at their disposal to fuel this self-destructive cycle. More money and more freedom beget even more of everything. Sex, for example, is not just something that happens outside the office. Working in a profession requiring long, intense hours of collaborative interaction, it is not surprising that FPs commonly engage in in-office sex. Sexual predators abound and office assistants of all types, all too eager to get an edge, become willing participants in trysts at the actual office, after hours, at nearby hotels, motels, in cars, boats, parks—you name it. Sex in the City It is not only the men I counsel that report such damaging routines. A female broker I worked with settled a major law suit with her firm. She was afflicted with multiple disorders. For instance, she often went on shopping binges at high-end retail shops, such as Saks and Bloomingdale’s (burning through some $30,000 in a typical afternoon). She consistently asserted that she was insatiable with her lover du jour. She claimed that these types of financial highs helped her survive, and that she was then able to engage in heavy-duty oral sex (both ways), which



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she was usually ambivalent about. She consistently preferred younger men (5–10 years younger), was very beautiful, vain, and thoroughly narcissistic. Often, while being penetrated, she insisted that her lover slap her face, which “enabled” her to have vaginal orgasms. After several “ear-shattering” orgasms, she would reportedly pass out. The pummeling she endured had a vague, never-defined association with her hillbilly brother, back home in Pittsburgh. I have also worked with a few gay brokers (both male and female), and several reported that after very stressful days the men would cruise the bars in the West Village and frequently engage in random, binge sex as a way of soothing their stress, fear, loneliness, and anxiety. Indecent Proposals Sex is everywhere on Wall Street. In recent memory, a scandal emerged involving Wall Street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs, and media executives using corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000-an-hour prostitutes, according to the madam (Kristin Davis) who ran one of New York’s biggest and most expensive escort services until its demise in 2008. “Some of these guys, I was invoicing on corporate credit cards,” she said. “I was writing up monthly bills for computer consulting, construction expenses, all of these things; I was invoicing them monthly so they could get it by their accountants,” Davis said. As reported by ABC News at the time, Davis’ stable of 100 prostitutes serviced a client base of 10,000, including: • A vice president at NBC Universal; • The CEO of one of the country’s largest private equity firms, who met “Cameron” at the Peninsula Hotel; • A major New York City real estate developer who, according to the list, “will come to the door wearing women’s panties,” and who spent nearly $100,000; • A partner at the Wall Street law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore “looking for a party girl to come fully equipped” and spent a total of $20,000; • An investment banker from Lehman Brothers who saw “Kelsey and Keely together” and later saw “Aria and Skylar at the same time”;

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• An investment banker at JP Morgan who “loves Brooke” and spent $41,600; • An investment banker at Goldman Sachs who “only wanted all-American girls” and spent $27,000; • A managing director at Merrill Lynch who saw “Lana” using the name “Nataly”; • A managing director at Deutsche Bank “who called about seeing Nataly again.” While Davis is certainly a notorious example, based on discussions in the news at the time, she is just one of many sex-industry entrepreneurs servicthe insatiable collective lust of Wall Street. Interestingly, one of my clients actually bragged about having a friend who “snagged” Eliot Spitzer’s call girl, Ashley Dupre, before Mr. Spitzer indulged himself. My client was very, very happy to know someone who claimed to do that. In fact, not long after Davis’ operation was shuttered (she ran three escort services in New York: Wicked Models, Maison de L’Amour, and New York Body Miracle), Mary Jane Winkler was arrested and charged with running a brothel not too far away, (on Greenwich Street, in the financial district) that allegedly provided services to four to five clients daily. Apparently, Winkler’s chic art gallery was doubling as a lunchtime sexual pit stop for Wall Street brokers. Another Type of Wall Street Index In addition to spending lavishly on call girls, Wall Streeters are also notorious for splurging obscenely on the lewd scenery at strip clubs. In fact, Bronx defense lawyer Edward W. Hayes garnered significant media attention for coining two measurements useful in determining Wall Street’s prospects, The HEGI and the HESI: The High-End Girlfriend Index and the High-End Stripper Index. Apparently, based on evidence Hayes gathers from the women who are his clients, when the outlook for the financial-services industry is bright, traders spend large sums freely on high-end girlfriends and on the sirens at Manhattan strip clubs. And if an economic downturn drives some traders from the strip pits—well, they simply seek out sex workers elsewhere.



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The Happy Ending? Based on discussions with my clients, it is apparent that more and more FPs are eschewing the risk and expense of frequenting escort services and strippers for the convenience of visiting with a different type of sex worker. In fact, by 2008, Page Six Magazine reported that Korean massage parlors had replaced strip clubs as Wall Street’s favorite sex-associated diversion. Much less expensive than an escort and more discreet than a strip club, the massage parlor charges a fee for the initial massage, then a premium for “the happy ending,” negotiated privately with the masseuse. Literally hundreds of these small shops have sprung up throughout the city, including concentrations all over the financial district. Time Out New York even has a section dedicated to the best happy-ending parlors, featuring information on “top rub-n-tug joints” where “your spa visit will end with a smile.” Most notoriously, Bernie Madoff’s longtime administrative assistant, Eleanor Squillari, testified that the Ponzi schemer frequently sought relief from the pressure at such massage parlors. Sex Trade Linked to Wall Street Performance I have yet to come across a comprehensive study on the subject, but, based on my practice in this area, the rapid proliferation of these types of sex workers underscores the relationship between money and the mind. Consider the cyclicality of Wall Street, where sex workers have long plied their trade, since the brothels of the seventeenth century were located near the wall that formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. Since 1854, the United States has been through 32 significant cycles of expansion and contraction. Having treated clients throughout many of these boom-and-bust cycles, I have noticed a substantial uptick in clients seeking assistance for sex addictions during the downturns. This would seem to run contrary to Mr. Hayes’ HESI, which spikes during times of prosperity; however, given the oceans of pornography now available online, escorts that come to you, and the near-instant release available at the local massage parlor, only a short walk away, sex on the Street is as prevalent as ever. Sex is a coping mechanism to relieve the stress caused by various money-related issues—how to make it, spend it, keep it, have the right

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attitude toward it, and so on. In counseling, we need to first unravel these issues and then address the sexual addictions and disorders that are all too consuming and compulsive. I noticed that the common denominator, for many people dealing with these issues, is sexual promiscuity, which is seen as a channel for soothing their underlying depression, as a modulator of their stress. Extreme Lifestyles of The Rich & Famous Individuals who thrive in the financial-services industry tend to have intense personalities. They also want to and feel entitled to play as hard as they work. These are people who are driven to take risks, expand their horizons, stake out new territory. For some, this involves not only expanding their portfolio, but pushing the limits of their sexuality. As with venturing into a new area of investment, crossing personal boundaries tends to involve issues of identity and relationships. In the shallow, materialistic world of financial services, these challenges are often underappreciated. For instance, I knew of a young man in his late 20s who came from a rich family. He is a trust fund baby, and a successful small business man, married, gifted, charismatic, politically savvy, took home seven-figures annually, and spends considerable time trading. What many people didn’t know about this man is that he was miserable. Why? He is a transvestite who has been cross-dressing since the age of six, behavior he feels was initiated via the influence of their neighbor’s daughter and female cousin. He is addicted to his cross-dressing rituals, and masturbates chronically, at the end of every single day, regardless of what happened that day. Ten years ago, he revealed his cross-dressing obsession and, indeed, lifestyle to his wife. Although she adores him as a person, she is openly repulsed by his behavior and it has taken its toll on the marriage. They now have sex very rarely; in effect, she has gone dormant sexually. He is very lonely and frightened about his future, and cannot understand why his wife refuses to accept him for who he is. They are at many painful crossroads. No one else knows about their true situation except me and the two of them. They are a very popular couple in their social network; they play very effective roles in their culture. Deep down, however, they are depressed, lonely, and scared. Their



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lack of authenticity and genuineness has destroyed them collectively and individually. When I advocate self-awareness, I urge my clients to ask themselves the hard questions, to no longer repress their emotions and fears. They need to see themselves for who they are and not through the lens of others’ expectations. They need to be comfortable in their own skin. That, to be sure, is all well and good, but to attain total psychological well-being, people need to command true acceptance and respect from the people in their lives on whom they rely for emotional support. No matter how secure you are in your sexuality, you will always be unsatisfied if those emotionally and physically closest to you are unwilling to come to terms with your personal decisions about lifestyle. This is not an easy dynamic to overcome. When it comes to love relationships, it is very difficult to issue ultimatums or to force someone to accept you for who you are. Some bridges can be burned. Others cannot. Some people we can live without and some we cannot. Getting a Grip on Masturbation I am constantly amazed at the level of anxiety and insecurity among my clients regarding masturbation. Masturbation, after all, is a healthy sexual activity. True, among financial professionals there may be a tendency toward somewhat excessive masturbation behavior. Still, it is extremely rare that you will find a chronic masturbator suffering from any negative physiological consequences. Excessive stimulation of the acetylcholine neurotransmitter/parasympathetic nervous system may make the body overproduce sex hormones and neurotransmitters and result in body-chemistry issues, but again, this is rare. More likely, most people are more anxious because they feel they are masturbating too much, and there must be consequences. Sure, there may be some desensitizing, especially if you require increasingly intense pornographic materials to orgasm during masturbation. Still, excessive masturbation itself is usually not an issue, but rather a potential symptom of another sexual disorder—also, depending on the nature of the subject matter required for arousal. Excessive masturbation may become a problem if it is interfering with regular sexual activity with a partner, or if it is

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done in public. If it becomes a source of distress or interferes with your life, you are not necessarily suffering from a serious psychological disorder. All that is required is some discipline and behavioral modification aimed at setting limits. It is crucial to maintain a healthy attitude toward what you are doing. Unlike other examples of excess, such as substance abuse and sexual promiscuity, heavy-duty masturbation is not especially harmful. It is a release mechanism for the body, physically and spiritually—that is all. Set some limits, eschew guilt, and establish a routine that works for your schedule. For some, this is the essence of treatment: to regain control over your sexuality and eliminate or minimize dangerous or unhealthy sexual behaviors. Marital Infidelity How prevalent is cheating? According to the infidelity researchers at “Truth About Deception”2 anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of “all married individuals (in the United States) will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage … And these numbers are probably on the conservative side, when you consider that close to half of all marriages end in divorce.” I could cite numerous additional sources, surveys, studies, and more. Yet I have always had an issue with the validity of such findings, simply because data on infidelity are dependent on the truthfulness of those being surveyed to admit what few want to admit. In the financial services sector, and in other professional arenas, where reputation is paramount, I think it is even more difficult to derive accurate data on the prevalence of infidelity. An Ideal Incubator for Infidelity Based on my general practice, in addition to my extensive work with financial sector professionals, I would venture to say that Truth About Deception’s statistics are gross underestimates. From my perspective, 2

See http://www.truthaboutdeception.com.



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infidelity in our culture is rampant, even celebrated. With the advent of such websites as Cheaters.com and AshleyMadison.com, the Internet has fueled sexual obsessions and facilitated related addictions like no other medium in the history of human sexuality. This industry is an ideal incubator for infidelity. Financial professionals typically work 60-80-plus-hour weeks in a highly competitive environment rampant with sexual innuendo, and are certainly full of feelings of entitlement. It is too logical that one of the more frequent casualties of such a lifestyle is, unfortunately, marital fidelity. Pressure breeds frustration and erodes responsible behavior. Many are chained to their desks before the market opens and feel compelled to stay hours after the close. These FPs are relentlessly “sharpening the axe,” endlessly cold-calling prospects. They take clients out to dinner, bar hop, conduct after-hours seminars—well, you get the idea. The schmoozing, the selling, the marketing never stops; you are always “on.” In many instances, senior members of a firm stray from the straight and narrow quite publicly, which encourages an air of eye-winking permissiveness, even if it is contrary to formal company policy. Success Fueling Insatiable Excess One of my clients garnered several hundred thousand dollars in profit on the trading floor one morning. She described the euphoria that enveloped her, and compelled her to engage in massive sex binges, first with her boyfriend, then her husband later that evening, and she said it was not even enough. Insatiable, she left home early the next morning only to head to her boyfriend’s office to have more sex. This type of market-driven sexual promiscuity appears to be common for some people. In this case, the secret lovers established a pattern of engaging in reguscheduled illicit trysts at an hourly rate motel. Her routine eventually devolved into a general weekly pattern, where she would work herself to the extreme in pursuit of the next big “score,” then would indulge in more binges after the score. Yet, even as she was successful in eluding detection at home, she eventually was overcome with deep-seated feelings of depression and guilt. It was a vicious cycle with a crash she could only temporarily stave off, through great effort, and one she has yet to conquer.

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For, even if you are not caught, there are often severe psychological consequences to infidelity. Although being discovered in flagrante delicto (Latin for “in blazing offence”) by your spouse brings with it a whole new set of devastating corollaries, those in finance often have the most to lose, as they are driven to accumulate so much. I recall a trader on the New York Stock Exchange. When he came to me, he was married with two children, and had a third one on the way by a young lady he met online. Of the various allures he found in the arms of his paramour chief was her eagerness to perform fellatio—a gift his wife had long since stopped giving him. Inevitably, he grew careless and one evening while he was taking a shower, his wife searched his telephone, and found encyclopedic texts between he and his pregnant girlfriend. She broke a 375 mil of Grey Goose on the bathroom door, and chased him with the broken bottle until he flew out the door to the neighbor’s home with his towel around his waist. She eventually filed for divorce, and he ended up moving in with his girlfriend. It may seem a tad amusing, until you delve a bit deeper into the after math of this little incident, into the shattered lives, and into the psychology of infidelity. Then, the pain, anger, rage, and loss simply explode. The Work Spouse The relationships at the office continue to evolve, or at least our understanding of them does. According to infidelity expert Ruth Houston, we can expect to see a significant increase in “work spouse infidelity– workplace affairs which are an outgrowth of the work husband/work wife relationships which many people consider harmless.”3 This term work spouse is a relatively new concept, used to describe two colleagues that work closely together and usually spend more time with each other than with their actual spouses. When people spend time together, they get close, share much about themselves, expose their vulnerabilities, their sensitivities and preferences, and ultimately their inner secrets. Trouble is often a natural consequence. 3

Ruth Houston. September 1, 2002. “Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs,” Lifestyle Publications.



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Houston asserts: “I’ve been sounding the alarm for two years that work spouse relationships are not as benign as they may seem. Research in this area is still relatively new, but as more studies are conducted on the long-term effects of work spouse relationships, it will become apparent that they’re not so harmless after all. Unless certain precautions are put into place, today’s work spouse relationship will quickly become tomorrow’s workplace affair.”4 Houston adds: “If a work spouse relationship is characterized by sexual attraction and secrecy, opportunity is the catalyst that will take it to the next level. That opportunity can take the form of business travel, working late, company-sponsored social events, or work spouses socializing with each other without the presence of their respective mates.” Sexual Indiscrimination As they have begun to make more money, female FPs have become much more aggressive and outwardly sexual; their libido has increased in direct proportion to their production. It has become quite apparent that Wall Street professionals, women included, feel that since they work very hard, they therefore have entitlements that come with the territory. If they are bored at home, filled with resentment, unfulfilled sexually, then they seek adventure and fulfillment elsewhere. It is a clear formula in the fast-moving, moneyed world of the Street. A high-producing female broker put it to me this way: “I make millions a year. I can do whoever and whatever I want.” Her husband was a high school principal, grinding out a living. She feels entitled to exercise her “sexual prerogatives” as she referred to her lustful needs and active fantasy life, and claims that her production soars when she does whatever she wants. Ultimately, whether it is marital infidelity with a colleague, a superior, a client, or even a neighbor, you should plan to deal with severe psychological, personal, financial, and perhaps even physical consequences. The gyroscope is a model for preparedness. You may not be able to resist temptation 4

“Infidelity Trends to Watch in 2009,” a publicity statement released by Houston, January 10, 2009. 

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yourself, but at a minimum you can avoid or minimize collateral damage. And you can plan to extricate yourself from a bad relationship.

Gambling Addictions Compulsive gambling is a pervasive issue on Wall Street. The ability to understand and avoid this common pitfall is the key to maintaining a functioning gyroscope. Ultimately, nothing can unwind the progress you have made in other aspects of your gyroscope faster than a crushing episode at the casino. Gambling—the pathological kind—is a mental health disorder in which the individual has a psychologically uncontrollable preoccupation with the urge to gamble, ultimately resulting in damage to professional, family, and social relationships. Pathological gambling is evident in the chronic and progressive inability to resist the impulse to gamble. It was first diagnosed and recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 and was subsequently included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, an estimated three million adults in the United States meet the criteria to be considered pathological gamblers, while another 2 to 3 percent have less intense, yet still significant issues with gambling, and are thus classified as problem gamblers.5 Based on the high number of problem gamblers I have treated, I can assert with confidence that gambling addictions are manifested in much higher numbers on Wall Street than in the general population. Many on Main Street perceive Wall Street as one giant, lightning-quick, casino/ roulette, blackjack table. Those in the know are confident that there is a method to the madness. Gambling Away Your Inadequacies I recall a middle-aged broker who was addicted to work. He actually utilizes work as antidepressant therapy. 5

www.ncpgambling.org/



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At the same time, this client reported always having suffered from a massive sense of inferiority. This is a common theme I see with people who come from humble beginnings. They actually tend to be more intelligent, competent, and driven than their more privileged counterparts, and yet they also tend to have that nagging feeling of being an outsider. As they seek to compensate, they sometimes overcompensate, or experience peripheral psychological issues until they come to terms with these deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. This man excelled in college, majoring in accounting, and later became stockbroker at Wall Street firm. Though he rose through the ranks and reached the million-dollar producer level, his sense of inadequacy was never dealt with successfully. He became a perfect target for casino hosts, expert predators, preying on the vulnerable, the depressed, the lonely, the needy, and the empty souls of our society who dream of hitting it big. He almost got swept up in the world of internet gambling. Ultimately, this man was caught by a family member after gambling away hundreds of thousands of dollars later determined as coming from one of his many hidden bank accounts. His treatment involved religious observance of Gamblers Anonymous meetings and regimens, as well as intensive psychotherapy two to three times per week. What many people do not understand is that gambling is such a powerful addiction that it requires a very radical treatment plan to bring someone back from the brink of destruction. Today, he is sober and is slowly building back his asset base. He has faced his demons, but they never quite do go away. He will be wrestling with them for the rest of his life. We are working on the question of retirement and the pursuit of his passions, which include horticulture and collecting Art Nouveau French vintage posters. Mucha, Cheret, and Steinlen are his favorites. Gambling Rampant on Wall Street I would estimate that nearly one-third of the hundreds of finance professionals I have treated over the years had some form of compulsive, or quasicompulsive, gambling problem. When you consider the devastating effects of gambling, that is a pretty powerful statistic. It’s no wonder few are willing

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to discuss this near-epidemic, as such disclosures would almost always lead not just to loss of employment, but a ban from the securities industry. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) first identified pathological gambling as a mental disorder in 1980. They have now labeled it an impulse-control disorder. The DSM, a manual the APA uses to classify mental disorders, itemizes the following criteria for a pathological gambler. • After losing money gambling, the player often returns the next day to get even. • The problem gambler lies to family members or others to conceal the extent of involvement with gambling. • Problem gamblers commit forgery, fraud, theft, and embezzlement to finance gambling. There are no definitive statistics on pathological or problem gamblers among the ranks of stockbrokers and investors. However, based on an article reported in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, Edward Looney, director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, estimates that roughly 10 percent of investors become problem gamblers, and 5 percent more become compulsive gamblers.6 One may argue that there are as many, if not more, distinctions between gambling and investing as there are similarities. Just Do Not Call Them Gamblers In a September 2009 article in New York magazine, Malcolm Gladwell likened Wall Street to games of chance: “Because ability makes a difference in competitions of skill, we make the mistake of thinking that it must also make a difference in competitions of pure chance.” This prompted a negative backlash from the Street. According to a follow-up piece:7 The trading industry is built on the premise that the markets have a logic. Fund managers judge themselves by ‘benchmarks’ that tell 6

Steven T. Goldberg. August 2001. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. “Wall Street’s Gambling Soul Wounded by Malcolm Gladwell,” available at: http://nymag .com/daily/intel/2009/07/wall_streets_gambling_soul_wou.html#ixzz0eQmE5Kqc 7



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them how close they were to getting the market right. To say that Wall Street is a game of pure chance, as Gladwell does, is to imply that the market is a casino, and nothing gets a financier’s blood boiling like the idea that he’s a glorified croupier. A few months ago, a prominent bank executive upbraided me because I said his firm had made a good bet on some securities. ‘Look right there,’ he chided. ‘It’s not a bet! You reporters are always writing about “bets” in the market! We don’t bet! We’re not out there playing roulette. These are educated, considered decisions.’ A securities lawyer pointed out that ‘the odds are always with the house in a casino.’ If that were so, Bear and Lehman would still exist. Still, it is estimated that $11 trillion was traded on the various exchanges in 2010 alone, but only 5 percent of this amount was for nonspeculative investments.8 Meanwhile, in New York City there exists an underground Wall Street poker circuit, frequented by bank and hedge fund traders, with semi-regular games hosted every night of the week. According to the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, there are certain areas more akin than others to gambling, such as trading in options, commodities, penny stocks, index investing, new stock offerings, as well as trading in certain types of bonds and contracts for government securities. Compulsive gamblers have different appetites when it comes to investments. Some like the riskier action that the commodities and option index allows. Others think of themselves as cautious long-term investors preferring the blue-chip varieties. But even the seemingly ultra-safe blue chips dropped in value as much as riskier-type stocks during Black Monday. Both types of gamblers enjoy the anticipation of following the daily activity surrounding these investments. Newspapers, hourly radio and TV reports and hundreds of periodicals and magazines add excitement in seeking the investment edge. ‘Action is their game.’ Investment goals are unclear, they are in it for the feeling it gives them as 8

Problem Gamblers and Their Finances: A Guide for Treatment Professionals, National Endowment for Financial Education and National Council on Problem Gambling.

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they experience the highs and lows and struggles surrounding the play. When this activity starts to affect relationships with spouse, family or employer, or causes financial problems, they have subtly crossed over the line from ‘investing’ to gambling. Caught in Gambling’s Grip I had one particularly troubled, although seemingly oblivious client, who entered treatment because Gamblers Anonymous (GA) was simply not helping her effectively control her addiction. Any regimen is only as good as the commitment to change. She divulged that she gambled more than two million dollars of hard earned cash, and it quickly became evident that she had no respect for money and did not honor her labor in making it; she was self defeating. Professionally, she was an exceptionally gifted trader, yet she was incorrigible, immature, utterly irresponsible, and just could never keep pace with her losses. I used bibliotherapy techniques—therapy that leverages books, poetry, and other materials to help foster relationships and increase self-awareness. I had her research the history of money. She came from a single-parent family and the reading made her “feel part of something bigger than” herself. Through this technique, she gained respect for money and her “place in history as a trader.” We also explored the necessity of hedging and protecting her trades. We discovered that her early-life paradigm transferred to her current-day trading practice, which drove her to GA. She got caught up in the gambler’s “magical think” syndrome; she also lacked discipline and consistency. We built in a stop-loss model that had to be applied on every trade, and slowly she dug herself out of the hole. Still, as other problem gamblers, she will wrestle with that demon for as long as she lives. Obviously, there are many differences between the lives of gamblers and those of Wall Street professionals, but there are also some similarities. One major difference is that, whereas problem gambling is universally viewed as a plague, poor investment decisions are seen as an occupational hazard. Results in both arenas are rationalized and/or denied almost instantaneously. Yet the process in each job is, at times, similar especially when times/mood/the market is bad.



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Professional gamblers hedge their bets and work on an annual 2 to 3 percent earnings ratio. Their mission is to take as much action as they can handle (up to $500,000 a year according to gamblers I have treated) and earn 2 to 3 percent on average, which is no doubt a darn good year in any field. Compulsive gamblers, by contrast, get high from the action; winning is not necessarily the big goal. At open meetings, it is not uncommon for GA members to brag about how much money they have lost. It is a twisted form of one-upmanship, for which they earn status and recognition. A client once told me that the “kiss of death in GA was to be a $20 horseplayer, rather than a bankster who embezzled millions, and went to Vegas every week.” The Physiology of Compulsive Gambling Is gambling a psychological disorder? Is it a physiological defect? Is it a combination of both? Well, we are not entirely sure. What we do know is that compulsive gambling is a type of impulse-control disorder. Its exact causes cannot be specifically determined, though researchers do point to genetics and dysfunctional chemical relationships in the brain. According to “Genetics of Pathological Gambling”9 which appeared in the Journal of Gambling Studies, researchers at University de Alcalá (Madrid), Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid found that: Pathological gambling (PG) is an impulse-control disorder and a model behavioral addiction. Familial factors have been observed in clinical studies of pathological gamblers, and twin studies have demonstrated a genetic influence contributing to the development of PG. Serotonergic, noradrenergic, and dopaminergic dysfunction have been reported as biological factors contributing to the pathophysiology of PG. As the author interprets the findings of various studies, neurotransmitters and the production of serotonin, norepinephrine (or noradrenaline) 9

March 2003. “Genetics of Pathological Gambling,” Journal of Gambling Studies 19, No. 1, pp. 11–22, DOI: 10.1023/A:1021271029163

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and dopamine are what researchers point to when they attempt to uncover the mystery of gambling-impulse-related brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters serve as chemical conduits that enable communication between neurons (our nerve cells). When neurons do not produce certain chemicals in adequate amounts, communication suffers. One of these chemicals is serotonin, which governs mood and behavior. Norepinephrine, a hormone released during episodes of stress or anxiety, also plays a role. Dopamine, the pleasure-sensation chemical, is also part of the mix. Neurotransmitter dysfunction is thought to fuel propensity for risk-taking, internal arousal, and pleasure sensations that collectively lead to compulsive gambling. Gambling One of Many Woes Chemical imbalances alone cannot explain all cases of problem gambling. Research indicates that those suffering from a gambling addiction might also be wrestling with other issues. One study conducted by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center found that “Pathological gambling is highly comorbid with substance use, mood, anxiety, and personality disorders, suggesting that treatment for one condition should involve assessment and possible concomitant treatment for comorbid conditions.”10 According to the study: The lifetime prevalence rate of pathological gambling was 0.42%. Almost three-quarters (73.2%) of pathological gamblers had an alcohol-use disorder, 38.1% had a drug-use disorder, 60.4% had nicotine dependence, 49.6% had a mood disorder, 41.3% had an anxiety disorder, and 60.8% had a personality disorder. A large majority of the associations between pathological gambling and substance use, mood, anxiety, and personality disorders were overwhelmingly positive and significant, even after controlling for socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics. (p. 5) 10

Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center. May 2005. “Comorbidity of DSM-IV pathological gambling and other psychiatric disorders: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions,” The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 66, no. 5, pp. 564–574.



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Compulsive gamblers may not be able to control the urge, the impulse to gamble, even as they know it is damaging them and their relationships with others. Gambling becomes an obsession that entirely consumes their lives. Experienced though they may be, even when they know the odds are well beyond what they should be to expect a reasonable return, they do not have the requisite control to stop, and they continue—over the edge, into the abyss. Many investment bankers, stockbrokers, and traders exhibit similar characteristics symptomatic of their professional roles. The difference, however, is that the stakes are much higher and the casualties more numerous. Additionally, collateral damage can be enormous. Equally troubling is that many of the FPs with severe gambling addictions whom I have treated, exhibit those same compulsive tendencies in their professional lives, creating a self-destructive, and eventually even lethal cycle of obsessive-compulsive behavior. Ultimately, because they cannot stop, they crash and are completely wiped out, leaving naught but traumatic wreckage in their wake. It is very difficult for them and their families to recover financially, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. Many must go on psychotropic medications, primarily SSRI’s11 and other anxiety- and depression-management drugs. Are You a Problem Gambler? As we have mentioned, gambling addiction, also known as compulsive gambling, is categorized as an impulse-control disorder. The following is the diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV for 312.31 (Pathological Gambling).12 Persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior is indicated by having at least five of the following: • is preoccupied with gambling (e.g., preoccupied with reliving past gambling experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, or thinking of ways to get money with which to gamble), 11

Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of drugs typically used as antidepressants in the treatment of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. 12 Source: American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, 1994.

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• needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement, • has repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling; • is restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop gambling; • gambles as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphonic mood (e.g., feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, depression); • after losing money gambling, often returns another day in order to get even (chasing one’s losses); • lies to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with gambling; • has committed illegal acts, such as forgery, fraud, theft, or embezzlement, in order to finance gambling; • has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity because of gambling; • relies on others to provide money to relieve a desperate financial situation caused by gambling. Ironically, Gamblers Anonymous, an international organization founded in 1957, addressed this type of gambling in literature for their membership. It states “Don’t tempt or test yourself. Don’t associate with acquaintances who gamble. Don’t go in or near gambling establishments. Don’t gamble for anything, this includes buying from the stock market, commodities, and options.” GA lists the following 20 questions to determine whether or not a person is a compulsive gambler. 1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling? 2. Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy? 3. Did gambling affect your reputation? 4. Have you ever felt remorse after gambling? 5. Did you ever gamble to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties? 6. Did gambling cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency? 7. After losing, did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?



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8. After a win, did you have a strong urge to return and win more? 9. Did you often gamble until your last dollar was gone? 10. Did you ever borrow to finance your gambling? 11. Have you ever sold anything to finance gambling? 12. Were you reluctant to use “gambling money” for normal expenditures? 13. Did gambling make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family? 14. Did you ever gamble longer than you had planned? 15. Have you ever gambled to escape worry or trouble? 16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance gambling? 17. Did gambling cause you to have difficulty in sleeping? 18. Do arguments, disappointments, or frustrations create within you an urge to gamble? 19. Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling? 20. Have you ever considered self-destruction, or suicide, as a result of your gambling? Most compulsive gamblers will respond “yes” to at least seven of these warning signs. How many questions did you answer with a “yes”?

The Consequences of Successful Deception Within the nexus of the mind and its relationship with money, when you are deceptive, you are sometimes the one who is most deceived. In the long run, material gains rarely outweigh the psychological consequences. “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truth without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." —Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785

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Not Exactly the Best Policy I learned of a man who learned the hard way about the psychological pitfalls of purposefully mismanaging other people’s money. As most high-profile brokers entrusted with vast sums of money, this man was exceptionally charismatic and leveraged his affability quite deviously and maliciously to lure unsuspecting friends and relatives into investing in projects for which he structured the financing. There was this one seemingly sure-fire deal (don’t they all seem to be so at a certain stage?) where he assembled a hotel package designed for an elite resort in France. He knew all the right things to say and had all the data he needed to support his claims. In reality, it turned out he was pocketing the money, cooking the books, in short—abusing everyone he bilked by stealing from them, lying, and attempting to Madoff them. Eventually, his scheming began to unravel. One can only trade on the currency of friendship and family relations for so long, especially when money is involved. Here was a charming, good-looking, charismatic sweet talker, who went to excellent schools. But there was a darker side to him. He had never quite lived up to the expectations of his parents, nonetheless, and fancied expectations himself the black sheep of the family. As a result, he spent his life underachieving, scamming, stealing—all under the aegis of seeming gentility and decorum. Ultimately, he deceived himself into masking his inadequacies with feelings of superiority, which led to nothing but contempt for his clients and the investors in his projects. Eventually, everyone grew to despise him, and he engaged into a series of freaffairs. When you steal from family or cheat on your loved ones, deep resentment abounds. Even before he was found out, his life was alspiraling out of control, descending into chaos fueled by alcoholism. In treat we can only seek to stabilize his psyche as he strives to get on the path to redemption. The Tangled Web We Weave Deception, to varying degrees, is part of many economic interactions. Psychological mind tricks may consist of persuasive communication



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techniques to make a person doubt his beliefs and values. This can actually mislead someone into thinking that what is really right is wrong, and vice versa. These tactics involve crafty persuasion and communication skills that can ultimately influence someone’s thoughts and decisions in strategic fashion. These types of techniques are very common in the world of financial professionals (FPs), who often use them to convince clients to make certain decisions. Many times, of course, the FP is acting sincerely in the best interest of the client. Other times, however, the FP can have other motives for being very persuasive with his clients. Regardless of the reason, successful deception can be exhausting—more consuming than one could ever fully realize. If a person lies and develops a pattern of lying as a way of life, he or she will continue to slip toward deception, which leads to an entirely new set of problems. Someone who becomes proficient at lying loses the fear of being discovered, and can move on to any number of detrimental actions. He likely will become arrogant, self-assured, or even reckless. As we have seen time and again, some come to genuinely believe that they are above the law. You should fear people like this. If such a person is discovered in a lie and confronted with hard evidence, that individual may be forced to admit the indiscretion, but will likely seek retribution afterwards. Just as fear may produce a lie, lies will produce fear and anxiety, leading some to desperate actions. Dr. Bayer’s Consequences of Successful Deception 1. The attraction of other deceivers, some pathological, that will ultimately threaten you with their own lies and deceptions. 2. Any success you achieve may be tainted by completely unrelated deception. 3. You may face litigation and perhaps even harsh fines and imprisonment. 4. You will be shunned by peers and superiors seeking to distance themselves from your dishonesty. 5. You will lose the respect and trust of loved ones. 6. You will undermine your credibility and ability to perform your job. 7. Relationships will become difficult.

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The bottom line with the great majority of financial professionals whom the author has treated is that doing it right from the start is what it is all about: staying on the straight and narrow yields infinitely greater monetary and emotional dividends than any other course of action. This message cannot be brought home too forcefully or too often. “Another week, another corporate perp walk. Two former WorldCom executives were led by government agents to federal court in Manhattan, where they face charges related to that company’s misstatement of billions in expenses. Scott Sullivan, former Chief Financial Officer, and David Myers, former Controller, join top officers of Adelphia Communications and Imclone on the list of those recently arrested in the crackdown on corporate crime.” – Kurt Eichenwald “Perp Walk,” The New York Times, August 4, 2002 Avoiding the “Perp Walk” One of the key concepts of The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope is disaster avoidance. As I have found, however, disaster is a relative term on Wall Street. You see, much of what is done in finance is envisioned in the abstract. The rise of the Internet and the advent of electronic trading have further virtualized the industry. I may be giving them too much of a benefit of the doubt, but it is perhaps for this very reason of being removed from physical reality that my clients fail to appreciate the potential consequences of their actions. That is, until law enforcement separates one from the herd in order to make an example. Money-Mind Problems: Deer in the Headlights For instance, there was one unfortunate case of a person who had worked out a clever scam, by which he would slow down, on a micro level, the flow of pricing information to the commodities floor of the exchange, thereby positioning himself to take advantage of the direction in which he knew investors would be headed. He was not a sinister mastermind, but he was not exactly innocent either, and knew that what he was doing was wrong. He just did not really think it was that wrong.



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Speaking in psychological terms, he repressed his awareness of the consequences of his actions. In the blind pursuit of financial gain, he surrendered intellectually and emotionally. In his mind, he convinced himself that his actions were not necessarily illegal. Now, this was not one of the shooting stars of Wall Street who thought himself impervious to the long arm of the law, who was confident that he could stall the process, tying up the government in legal proceedings for years. No—my client was one of the little guys. When his scheme was un he ended up losing his job. The Street may turn a blind eye to your indiscrefor a time; until you get caught. Then, you are excommunicated. This guy was emotionally devastated, shunned by everyone. He was distraught, could not sleep, and suffered severe anxiety to the point that he could not even function in key aspects of his life. It was the overwhelming sense of shame that was so painful to deal with. His identity was wrapped up in his occupation. When he was found out to be a fraud, it shamed him to his core and stripped from him everything to which he had moored his life. He will bear the burden of that shame for as long as he lives. Eventually, he retooled himself and found a job, but he is not the same man. He is so frequently reminded of his shame by so many quotidian occurrences that he will likely never escape the shadow he has cast on his own life. I share such cautionary tales to help my clients better understand the consequences. Many of the exercises I provide in The Wall Street Psy’s Gyroscope include self-assessments and explorations of key themes, such as virtue, integrity, honesty. When you have such awareness and regularly take moral stock of yourself, you are less likely to overlook the consequences of your actions in the heat of the moment. Money-Mind Problems: Eastern Parallels The Chinese have an acute appreciation of the psychological potency of shame. In July 2010, the New York Times reported that: The Chinese government has called for an end to the public shaming of criminal suspects, a time-honored cudgel of Chinese law enforcement, but one that has increasingly rattled the public.13

13

A. Jacobs. July 27, 2010. “China Pushes to End Public Shaming.” New York Times.

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Public shaming of the accused and the condemned has been a long tradition in China—one that the Communist Party embraced with zeal during episodes of class struggle and anticrime crusades. Although public executions have been discontinued, provincial cities still hold mass sentencing rallies, during which convicts wearing confessional placards are driven through the streets in open trucks. These shame parades were as much a deterrent as they were a punishment, since humans have an inherent abhorrence of public humiliation. Money-Mind Problems: It Will Never Happen to Me In terms of self-awareness, honesty is essential. Sometimes, focusing on the consequences helps jar the client into curbing the self-deception which impedes the creation of a functional gyroscope. In order to accentuate the urgency of preparing to avoid disaster, we must first eliminate the “Oh, everybody does that” and “It will never happen to me” mentality. To do this, we must focus on the consequences— the more extreme, the better. One particularly jarring mental exercise in exploring consequences is “The Perp Walk.” The Perp Walk is a law-enforcement practice of intentionally parading an arrested suspect (or perpetrator) through a public place so that the media may observe and record the event. Many people disagree with this practice, seeing it as a re-staging of the arrest in order to accommodate the media, and a violation of the suspects’ rights. Notorious corporate examples of perp walkers include the former head of Adelphia, 78-year-old John Rigas, and ex-WorldCom CFO Scott Sullivan, who turned himself in during the investigation. Despite requests from their attorneys to minimize the media spectacle, law enforcement still invited the media, effectively unfolding the drama for the entire world, in real time. Not everyone is a John Rigas or Scott Sullivan, though I highly doubt that either of them thought their nefarious activities would be so prominently publicized, images of their walk of shame now indelibly recorded as symbols of corporate greed and malfeasance. This speaks to one aspect of consequences many in the corporate sector fail to contemplate: the



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psychological impact caused by the stress of being linked to a corporate debacle. In October 2009, billionaire hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and executives from various prominent US corporations became embroiled in the largest hedge fund insider-trading scheme on the Street. The scandal was particularly noteworthy, as it marked the first time investigators had employed court-approved telephone wire taps in a Wall Street insider-trading case, propelling shock waves of fear throughout the financial services industry. Apparently, white-collar criminals do not hold up well under questioning, as several individuals close to Rajaratnam, then 52 and considered the richest Sri Lankan in the world, had been cooperating with investigators in order to avoid penalties of their own. One has to wonder why a tycoon of Rajaratnam’s ken would resort to such tactics, and, based on the wiretaps, would be so oblivious to the risks. Comparatively speaking, the $20 million gained over the course of several years, does not seem worth the risk to a billionaire, not to mention worth tarnishing the reputation of an individual considered Sri Lanka’s favorite son. Those touched by a scandal such as this are irreparably harmed, and not only in the more obvious ways of fines, financial penalties, and destroyed careers. Once found out, the perpetrator of a financial crime, a white-collar criminal obsessed with money and success, sacrifices his reputation and the very essence of his being—well, the little they may have left. Having to cope with such a severe comeuppance is nearly impossible without bearing heavy emotional scars. For those who are supposed to be experts in judging risk versus reward, many fail to consider what life would be like should the life they know fail to continue. For them, the perp walk is more than a pariah moment, but a parade that never ends. Money-Mind Problems: The Problem Following a Psychopath Now, for those who blindly follow the lead of others, I emphasize that there are some who likely have less fear of the perp walk than others; case in point—our friend, the financial psychopath. Perhaps the most widely publicized image in the annals of corporatepsychopath perp-walking is that showing infamous Ponzi swindler

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Bernard Madoff exiting court in December 2008, plowing through a pack of photographers and shoving one of them, who then suddenly shoves back. In that brief instance, the instinctual human response is to feel sorry for Madoff. However, that feeling immediately evaporates when your brain processes the context of his crimes. Still, if you freeze that moment, as a hunted man surrounded by a throng is rudely shoved, a sense of outrage is sparked. That spark is what separates the human race from the psychopath. In that moment, the automatic response mechanism within normally functioning humans prompts a feeling of empathy. Psychopaths do not have that luxury. True-blue Grade-A psychopaths like Madoff lack the capacity to experience, or even remotely fathom empathy. Madoff was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 150 years in prison. In a shocking jailhouse profile that was a New York magazine cover story,14 he allegedly demonstrated a jaw-dropping, hard-wired lack of empathy. This extensive profile detailed his incarceration at the federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina; from his diet and medication regimen to a list of his notorious neighbors (gangster Carmine Persico, spy Jonathan Pollard). Yet, what jumped out at me was one alleged direct quote: According to K. C. White, a bank robber and prison artist who escorted a sick friend that evening, Madoff stopped smiling and got angry. “Fuck my victims,” he said, loud enough for other inmates to hear. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years. Where’s the equity here, Bernie? Strategic omissions and feigned ignorance are not recognized protections under US securities law. When you turn a blind eye to malfeasance, even if everyone else seems to be conceding, you invite consequences. I encourage my clients to take notice when such public displays occur, and learn these lessons well. Whether or not he is a financial

14

S. Fishman. June 6, 2010. “Bernie Madoff, Free at Last,” published in a New York magazine.



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psychopath, an FP needs to understand the far-reaching consequences of his actions, which include possible public humiliation. Can you handle a perp walk? Or, are you willing to follow a psychopathic CEO into the spotlight? Here is how to avoid the dire experience: 1. Be fiercely honest with yourself and others. 2. Take a fearless inventory of yourself every morning; set your sights and goals, list your weaknesses and moral vulnerabilities. 3. Stand up for what you think and feel. A righteous, well-constructed and -honed gyroscope has no place for a perp walk, or, for that matter, for psychopaths. Worry not. There is inherent virtue in doing the right thing. You can certainly sleep at night, and your head can stay on straight; you do not ever have to look behind you. It is the basics that count.

CHAPTER 2

Money Problems— The Effects on the Body For over three decades I have treated Wall Street professionals for a wide range of maladies. More often than not, what drives these troubled souls to my office are profound emotional and psychological disturbances that make their lives unmanageable. In spite of enormous financial success, many of them feel lonely, fearful, unappreciated, and desperate. At the end of the day, many feel emotionally drained. As a result of the intense stress of living with protracted psychological imbalances, many of my clients suffer from a variety of physical and psychosomatic ailments.

The Unbreakable Bond Between Body and Mind Obsessed with money and power, many financial professionals (FPs) fail to see that they are overlooking what should be their most prized possession: their health and sense of safety and emotional well-being—essential components of The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope. What many of my clients fail to realize as we start out on our healing journey is that the mind and body are connected in myriad ways. Psychological problems, especially those endured for a long time, often have a corresponding physiological consequence. As we continue to explore the substantial effects on FPs of immersing themselves in Wall Street culture, we need to incorporate in that exploration a view of how the human body can be damaged. After all, it does only limited good to heal the mind if the body wastes away. My intention here is to foster awareness of some of the warning signs of psychosomatic disorders. I will also provide a more comprehensive definition of the mind-body connection, the origins of which date back to

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the Greeks in western culture and to the Chinese in the East.1 I will then discuss a few individual disorders, along with corrective measures useful in addressing these unfortunate maladies. Finally, I take a darker tone in “Your Autopsy—What Would We Find?” My intention is not to sensationalize the subject, but to speak in stark terms about the specific physical damage you may be doing to yourself. Far from alarming you, this is a call to action. Ultimately, if any of this material is unsettling to the point that it prompts you to seek help or reassess your behavior, I have accomplished my goal. The Psychology of the Win/Loss Ratio Pardon me as I quote an already over-quoted old statesmanlike gambler: “You’ve got to know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.” Well, do you? Do you know when to walk away? When to run? Many traders and investors, unfortunately, do not. An Emotional Rollercoaster You Cannot Leave When you are on a hot streak, overtaken by euphoria and irrational thoughts, you are desperate to keep trading, to keep the run of luck alive. You become increasingly anxious about missing out. Should you stop trading, you think, you will undoubtedly miss even more lucrative opportunities. You may be engaging in rampant magical thinking, which creates causality where only correlations exist. This is part of being human, particularly when money is involved. In fact, such out-of-control behavior is quite common and is not limited to the trading floor. Many of the financial professionals I have treated have confided to me that they only speak honestly about their win/loss ratio in the confines

1

And the Chinese have been practicing medicine since at least the Middle Bronze Age (beginning roughly 2200 BC).



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of our sessions; not with their colleagues, nor even with their spouses or domestic partners, and certainly not with their neighbors or friends. In those contexts, they have ample incentive to revise, or even entirely fabricate reality. When they are under the cover of treatment, where there is actually an incentive not to lie, it is a different dynamic. At the firm, however, they collectively play it close to the vest, with few exceptions. In other words, image management rules! They are also very sensitive to their image at home (and within their zip code), as they trade their own accounts and the accounts of their children, as well as many of their neighbors and their neighbors’ children. As a result, they feel that much of their identity is derived from their role as a successful FP—and not, mind you, a marginally successful one, but an exceptionally successful FP! When market performance does not match the construct of their self-promotion, the duplicity involved in maintaining the myth can become a source of great anxiety—anxiety that adds to the constant pressures that come with underperforming. So they brag about the fact that they can trade nearly for free, and that the cost-basis for their habit is thus negligible. In essence, they are gratified, as they feel they are “getting over,” that is, beating the system, even if they are losing money. Denial and rationalization are key mechanisms applied in order to cope with their not-so-hidden pain if they “bet” and lose big. Softening self-expectations leads to a more finely tuned gyroscope, as well as a modicum of inner peace—some salve for the pain of massive losses. Place Your Bets Here! Interestingly enough, brokers still talk about what they do in terms of Bets, as does the media. Little is spoken of the arduous, time-consuming research, the exhaustive technical analysis that is invested in each so-called Wager. There is a kind of Wild West mentality that FPs like to tout, and, for many, this deeply affects decision making. For instance, I knew a man who received a million-dollar-plus signbonus, based on assets under management that he could carry over if he gingerly jumped ship to a competing investment firm. Yet he simply

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could not handle the good fortune for which he had worked so hard. He soon blew more than $300,000 of his bonus money on a cruise ship gambling vacation, during which he was seduced by “comps” and “free gifts.” He is certainly not alone. More often than not, the actual sums involved are almost beside the point, ridiculously large though they may be. It is that thrill of victory and the emotional high that offsets the FP’s fear and the depression they are rabidly escaping. Interestingly, I have found that in most FPs the awareness of depression is generally nil, even though many are severely beaten down and hurt on the inside, in spite of the lavish external trappings. Image is critically important on the Street. It is often about impression management to the detriment of inner peace and genuine self-satisfaction, and it is frequently a losing game. It also means that the agony of defeat is that much more devastating. When traders hit rough patches, they become emotionally affected, demoralized, depressed. Their judgment and cognitive functioning may begin to deteriorate. Their memory systems falter, they “forget” to return calls, their attention span dissipates, their libido collapses, they no longer read research reports, and so on and so forth. The amplitude of the FP’s mood swings can be attributed to temperament, inexperience, physiological factors, background, sense of self-strictures, and myriad other variables. The key to balancing your emotions and avoiding emotion-driven missteps is to develop and adhere rigorously to well-established, thought-through risk- and moneymanagement guidelines. This, however, is often easier said than done. Anyone engaging in high-risk activities—substance abuse, outrageous spending, marital infidelity, questionable business practices—develops a pattern for breaking the rules. Thus, it becomes that much more difficult to adhere to any standards, such as risk thresholds, especially in the heat of the moment, say, during a trade. It is as if you no longer can even maintain your own code to yourself. Yet, one must maintain consistency and discipline in one’s life to be able to control emotions and trade in a calculated fashion, that is, to trade successfully. Rules, boring though this is, were actually made for a reason. Analyze the trades where you deviated from your risk thresholds or stayed in the game too long. Then, expand the context. What happened that day or the day before? What outside pressures were being exerted?



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Here is a positive example. A young independent trader from a very wealthy family set up shop on his own in his elaborate bachelor pad. He had worked for an old-line firm, and had obtained all the proper credentials, allowing him to trade for others as well as for himself. But he was having trouble building a trading system that would work. He lacked consistency, and, reluctantly, had to admit that he indulged in get rich/bet big gambling fantasies. He finally got to the point where he recognized that he had to factor emotion completely out of his trading. So he built in stop-loss thresholds of 5 to 10 percent on every trade. He began to repeat to himself the slogan: “It’s just all about the trade.” At that moment in time, the trade is all that counted. This mental shift helped him tremendously, and he was able to be “green” on nearly two-thirds of the 20 or so monthly trading days. Not thinking about the big score, he began to make money consistently. He let go of the fantasy about what the trade should be, could be, must be. Instead, he created a system that enabled him to be a professional trader and have a genuine, well-earned identity. There is something in this story that merits repeating. Again, it was all just about what a specific trade was. He was no longer inflicting his will on a market where so many external factors are out of one’s control. He had built up the confidence and strength to slay his darlings, à la William Faulkner. Faulkner famously contended that the seasoned writer must be able to “kill [his] darlings.” The writer must have the courage to get rid of the characters he loves or is attached to when they have strutted their hour upon the stage and now must yield to others, who will take the story forward. It is all about the story; it is all about the trade. The smart trader learns to neutralize the emotion-driven mechanism trading tends to bring out. One should avoid the common mind trap of, “I have worked so hard in setting up the trade, researched so well, that therefore I must be right, and I have to hold on to the position.” This can create a suicidal position which somehow seems noble or correct but is nevertheless doomed to fail. Again, factors and even facts beyond our control and knowledge can sour the trade regardless. The lesson for the broker/trader is: just because I think it will work, it still does not mean it has to work. So, the thing to do is to learn to control the factors we can most influence. The young

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trader mentioned earlier came to a creative realization: “I can’t start making money until I stop losing money—no doubt a truly profound observation. In short, you need to be honest and aware of how your emotions are affected by external influences. Ultimately, with trading, it is not only about winning or losing; it is also about how you play the game. Once you establish the type of discipline or routine that you can easily follow, psychologically you will be better equipped to roll with the ebb and flow of the market, and you will start mastering the game. Discipline and consistency are key components of The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope. And although we all know too well that it is easier said than done, it is definitely worth a shot. Just look at the alternative.

A Warning about Warning Signs Individuals experiencing deep emotional pain, the type that often leads to disaster—irrational responses, desperate outbursts, high-risk behavior, self-inflicted personal/emotional damage, physical assaults, murder, suicide—sometimes, although not always, exhibit warning signs. Being able to identify these early warning indicators may mean the difference between avoiding devastating consequences or being forced to accept them after the fact. Money-Body Problems: When You Know You Could Have Done Something Whether it is a colleague, a friend, a family member, or even yourself— are you willing to accept those consequences? An individual in deep emotional trouble may exhibit signs of overwhelming pain and hopelessness. They may confide in you their feelings of powerlessness, lack of self-worth, resignation to factors they feel are beyond their control; they may speak of or intimate shame, guilt, even self-loathing. They may express lack of self-control, possibly fear of what they may do to themselves or to others. Behaviorally, the person may appear depressed, apathetic, at times lethargic, while at other times he or she may be prone to angry outbursts and fits of irritability. Work performance may



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slip noticeably, as may interest in social activities and relationships. Substance abuse may become more evident, and there may be signs of other irregular behavior (a decreased interest in sex, food, personal appearance; changes in eating and sleeping habits). Bouts of depression may also feature an obsession with death, including statements such as, “I wish I were dead,” or “They would be better off if I were no longer here.” They may engage in risky behavior, such as reckless driving, copious drinking and drug abuse, excessive gambling, or unprotected sex. They may suddenly make out a will, start to give away prized possessions, or exhibit wild mood swings. If you witness these types of warning signs, encourage the person to seek help, in the form of a mental health professional. If he declines—and he may turn on you—do not give up. If he appears to be in immediate danger of hurting himself, do not leave him alone. Remove anything he could use to hurt himself, and get him to an emergency room as soon as possible. Last and very important—some may be very good at masking such indicators, so try to be as perceptive as possible.

Understanding the Mind-Body Connection The mind-body connection means that interactions take place within your mind-body-behavioral nexus, your core. All is interwoven, profoundly interrelated. Everything that human beings experience travels through their mind, their body, their heart, their spirit. Greeks and Romans maintained that physical development and exercise were paramount for a healthy and productive mind. Somehow they innately knew about neurotransmitters and endorphins; they must have been exceptional observers as well as theorists of human behavior.

Harmony and Moderation Harmony and moderation were Greek ideals. In The Republic, Plato advocated for a healthy mind in a sound body. The ancient Romans expressed this concept as Mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body). It was felt that a strong body fed and supported the mind, and that a

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healthy mind directed and improved the body. With regard to moderation, the ancient Greeks claimed that a temperate lifestyle promoted and maintained health. Several illustrative studies are worth mentioning. In one study, a London trader who one day had a P&L2 result several times his daily average, saw his mean testosterone level rise 56 percent above his average for the other days during which he was under observation. Another trader enjoyed a six-day winning streak, averaging about twice his historic daily P&L, and in the course of this streak his mean daily testosterone levels rose 74 percent. Despite the high levels of these individuals’ testosterone readings, none of them constituted an outlier. Traders’ cortisol levels had an even higher day-to-day variance than seen with testosterone. (See: Testosterone Levels and the Effect on Trading; www.pnas.org/ content/105/16/6167.abstract.) Meanwhile, another study investigated whether between- and within-gender variation in financial risk aversion was accounted for by variation in salivary concentrations of testosterone and in markers of prenatal testosterone exposure in a sample of more than 500 MBA students. Researchers found women to be generally more risk-averse than men. (See: Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone; www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268 .abstract.) Higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women, but not among men. At comparably low concentrations of salivary testosterone, however, the gender difference in risk aversion disappeared, suggesting that testosterone has nonlinear effects on risk aversion, regardless of gender. A similar relationship between risk aversion and testosterone was also found using markers of prenatal testosterone exposure. Finally, both testosterone levels and risk aversion predicted career choices after graduation: Individuals high in testosterone and low in risk aversion were more likely to choose risky careers in finance. These results suggest that testosterone has both organizational and activational effects on risk-sensitive financial decisions and long-term career choices. 2

Profit and loss.



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Emotionally healthy traders are more in tune with their emotions and better able to control their behavior. Part of this is certainly attributable to the effective ways in which they manage stress and cope with adversity. There can be many types of stressful events that can culminate in negative physical consequences; some examples: • • • • • • •

Workplace confrontations Being passed over for a promotion Receiving inadequate compensation (especially bonus-wise) Suffering the behavior of colleagues Death of a loved one Divorce or estrangement from loved ones Resentment and jealousy over a colleague’s promotion/praise perceived as unfair

Now, below I list some physical consequences that are seen as being triggered by stressors, underscoring this concept of a mind-body connection: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Back pain Change in appetite Chest pain Constipation or diarrhea Dry mouth Extreme tiredness General aches and pains Headaches High blood pressure Insomnia (trouble sleeping) Lightheadedness Palpitations (the feeling that your heart is racing) Sexual problems Shortness of breath Stiff neck Sweating Ulcers Upset stomach Weight gain or loss

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Poor emotional health can weaken your immune system, making you more likely to get colds and other infections during emotionally difficult times. Also, when you are feeling stressed, anxious, or upset, you may not take care of your health as well as you should. You may not feel like exercising, eating nutritious foods, or taking medicine prescribed by your doctor. Abuse of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs may also be a sign of poor emotional health. Of course, there is no psychological wellness without physical health. To maintain a functional gyroscope means to select activities that enable you to achieve incremental gains in mind and body excellence. An improved physical condition alleviates psychological stress, and better coping skills help with ailments such as high blood pressure. It is all interconnected.

Omnipotent Impotence Erectile dysfunction, sometimes called impotence, is the repeated inability to get or keep an erection firm enough for sexual intercourse. The word impotence may also be used to describe other problems that interfere with sexual intercourse and reproduction, such as lack of sexual desire and problems with ejaculation or orgasm. It also implies a generalized sense of powerlessness, especially in emotional arenas. Impotence represents the antithesis of an archetype persistently favored on Wall Street: the Big Swinging Dick popularized in Liar’s Poker, the semiautobiographical book by Michael Lewis and a revealing look at the life of a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers—now-defunct, but it was the place to be on Wall Street during the anything-goes, gung-ho, go-go 1980s.3 Masters of the Universe? The reality for many Wall Street “masters of the universe” is that the psychological pressure of their occupation and associated lifestyle can have a profound physiological impact, rendering them anything but BSDs. Several 3

Big Swinging Dick (BSD) is a big-time trader or salesman. (“If he could make millions of dollars come out of those phones, he became that most revered of all species: a Big Swinging Dick.” p. 52) The opposite of this term is geek, used to describe a just-hired trainee.



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years ago, I counseled a very successful chief investment officer for a private equity firm with $15 billion in assets under management. Like many in his position, that is, people who had attained conspicuous professional success, he sought personal fulfillment in the form of a trophy wife. After a relatively brief courtship, he married a stunning beauty 15 years his junior, a woman who apparently had been in pursuit of a wealthy husband. This was her primary criterion for marriage. She had come from a striving middle-class background; her family always struggled and lived beyond their means. Her husband had come from a solid upper-middle-class background. He was very bright, capable, welleducated. They settled unhappily ever after in a vast, completely refurbished, $5 million-plus co-op apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with an equally impressive “country house” in Greenwich, Connecticut. They had children who attended elite private schools, and had been married for 16 years by the time I met the gentleman. In all those years, she had not had an orgasm, at least not with her husband. She began having an affair with her first lover, an Asian man who deflowered her at age 17, and they practiced Kama Sutra-style sex in multihour sessions. One night, when husband and wife were attempting to make love, he said that though she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and he was sincere, he could not muster an erection. She asked him whether he was turned on by her. He replied: “I’m not sure.” Themes of Love, Power, Control Love, money, self-esteem, power, control—for many of my clients, all of these swirls in a toxic maelstrom has become their lives. Feelings of inadequacy often fuel a desperate quest for superiority. Success professionally, financially only accentuates the painful insufficiencies of one’s private life. No matter how much you earn, or how many corporate mountains you climb, some inadequacies persist. As you gain more power and accustom yourself to controlling others professionally, the uncontrollable aspects of your personal life become increasingly frustrating. More than 25 years ago, I worked with a banker in a position of power, and his compensation package has climbed steadily to a point now approaching $3 million annually at the time, not including bonus, stock

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options, and other incentives. His ascent through the ranks fashioned an entirely elitist demeanor and an utterly narcissist personality. He became at the bleeding edge of materialistic tendencies, regularly bragging about expensive, custom made shoes and clothes. In his narcissistic fantasies, he attributes his many vicious boardroom conquests to his being a kind of master genius. I could still remember to this day that he was arrogance, almost a caricature, a two-dimensional movieland creation. As our sessions evolved, a different picture emerged, with his revelations of chronic premature ejaculation and deep-seated inadequacy about his genitalia. He admitted to fears of never being able to sexually satisfy his third wife, which had contributed to the end of that marriage, and has been a focal point of intimacy issues developing since his first marriage. Such shortcomings were only amplified by the glare of the out sized persona of his new woman he was dating. Essentially, this man relied on the elitism in his professional persona to sustain his fragile, lonely ego, to buoy him in the sea of sexual frustration and feelings of inadequacy, as he shuttled to, from, and between work and home—an empty soul devoid of true happiness, desperately craving his nightly antidepressants throughout the day. The Importance of Knowing Your Limitations The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope is not only for those on the lower rungs of Wall Street’s corporate ladder. As this section indicates, very few people are actually omnipotent across all aspects of their lives. As we have all gotten to know from cringingly heartwarming quotes proliferated on many a Facebook profile, happiness is not a destination— it is a journey. Fulfillment and wellness are states of being that can easily evaporate. Satisfaction is defined vis-à-vis an individual’s perspective and circumstances. If you are unhappy, it does not matter that you have reached the pinnacle of your profession and command armies of groveling minions. You may control your spheres of influence, yet be controlled by the whims of a single person, or haunted by the memories of another. Even the most successful among us have limitations and need to be in touch with their emotions to nurture their well-being.



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Effects on the Immune System Stress is a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental (emotional) tension that is frequently a causal factor of diseases via its influence on the immune system. Stress can be categorized by time of exposure (chronic stress), effects it has upon the person (positive or negative), or according to the origin of the stress (workplace). Greatest Strength, Greatest Weakness The two types of stress I see most frequently in my practice are chronic stress and workplace stress. For some Wall Street professionals, the two are intertwined. Chronic stress is persistent mental pressure that can lead to illness or a mental disorder. Workplace stress is, of course, induced by the work environment, and is a subtype of chronic stress. I recall the case of one client in particular, an immensely successful man. He rose through the ranks at a major financial institution, in part through his obsession over details, and uncompromising standards. He was also quite forward and articulate in voicing his dissatisfaction. He was also quite forward and articulate in voicing his dissatisfaction. He was a tireless worker and a driven perfectionist who, throughout his career, had consistently exceeded expectations. Unfortunately, these same strengths of character would contribute to his greatest weaknesses. His discerning nature was not only limited to the banking sector, but to meticulous self-examination that eventually affected his mind to the point that he became a hypochondriac. This unhealthy, obsessive preoccupation with his health manifested itself in his constantly diagnosing ailments, perceiving symptoms where none existed. Moreover, this man demonstrated control issues, as many senior Wall Street executives do. So, even when he was faced with the opinion of medical authorities or sources that dismissed or properly diagnosed his maladies for what they were, he resisted any opinion (no matter how authoritative or well-informed) that contradicted his initial assessment of anything suspect. His psyche was so enmeshed in his professional identity that it had consumed his personality. His mind rarely relaxed. He was always in a heightened state of focus. His control issues became so severe that, ultimately, he could not yield any authority to anyone. Small issues that previously

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could have been easily delegated to others were now commanding his attention—and frustration. It did not help matters that he was convinced his both his housekeeper and secretary were stealing from him. This may have been true. Or, it may have been a figment of his overly suspicious, overtaxed imagination. The sad reality was that he did not have to work. He had already reached the mountaintop. But he simply could not let go, and so drove himself harder and harder. Inevitably, through years of relentless hard driving and his intensifying anxiety and hypochondria, not to mention other less-than-ideal life choices, he developed a series of chronic immune-related illnesses. Through a combination of chronic workplace and personal stress, his imagined physical illnesses became real. We all face the onrush of time as it erodes our health. Yet, the physical and psychological burdens a position in the financial services industry brings with it can come with consequences. Money-Body Problems: Equipping Your Gyroscope to Cope with Stress As time goes by, it does not get any easier to deal with stress. Instead, stress eventually manifests itself in both physiological and psychological ways. Stress can either boost or suppress responses in the immune system. In terms of a sympathetic nervous system response, stress can prompt the immune system to ready itself for insults from the minor to the severe: scrapes, bites, infections, injuries, attacks, or worse. Chronic stress may suppress the immune system on the cellular level and impact broader immune functions. The longer and more severe the stress, the more the immune system’s functioning diverges from the status quo, and the more susceptible the body is to infection and disease. When you are resolved to take steps toward physical and psychological wellness, and develop your gyroscope, it may be necessary to seek help to assess your emotional state. I find it very disturbing how so many of my clients have suffered in silence for years. Many Wall Street professionals have complex disorders and there is rarely a silver bullet, but there are treatments available that clearly help lighten the load. The sad reality is that to be successful in this industry requires developing a thick skin, burying your emotions, and soldiering on. Stress is



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interwoven in one’s defensive systems regardless of how successful one is at repressing one’s emotions and impulses. The more we bury, the more our core is eaten, and the more we suffer. Humans are experts at self-deception, although up to a point. We can run—some of us much better than others—but we cannot hide in perpetuity. As a result, many of my clients have suffered chronic anxiety, acute depression, and focusing issues. In fact, many have lived their adult life with undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), until they came into treatment. Treatment is essential. It is devastating to witness the pain, the physical and mental damage that stress inflicts on the human body. As a result of stress, many of my clients suffer to the point where their immune systems have been compromised. Several have developed chronic stomach disorders, obesity, Crohn’s disease, hypertension, ulcers, chronic colds, coronary artery disease, and a litany of other ailments. Urinary tract infections, aided and abetted by stress, are particularly common in female brokers. Many of these symptoms are hastened by immune depressed/ compromised syndromes and lifestyles. This is why the concept of the gyroscope is particularly important, because it conditions the individual to take a more encompassing, holistic approach to achieving personal and professional health and fulfillment. As the mind and the body have such a close connection, physical and psychological remedies must be sought simultaneously. The good news is that, once my clients do seek treatment for stress-related disorders, most respond favorably to medications and make the lifestyle changes that create a healthier existence. The third section of this book provides a wide range of exercises, techniques, and activities that can help reduce the amount of negative stress in your life and offset the damage done. Many of them require minimal effort and are actually fun and engrossing. All they require are practice and consistency, commitment, and dedication—qualities most FPs have in spades. Select one or two activities to get started. In virtually all instances of treatment I have been associated with, clients who consciously participate in an activity with the intention of reducing stress levels report some level of success. Open your mind and accept that you deserve to be happy and fulfilled rather than miserable and stressed. You owe it to yourself.

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Sleep Deprivation and Insomnia For many professionals on Wall Street, sleep deprivation is an unavoidable occupational hazard. Inevitably, your body will begin to wear down, your performance will deteriorate, and you will face increasingly severe physiological ramifications if you do not sleep properly. Sleep, to paraphrase an oft-misquoted German political philosopher, is the true opiate of the masses, or at least it needs to be. Good sleep is essential for emotional and physical wellness. Your immune system absolutely requires sleep. Prolonged episodes of sleep deprivation can lead to sleep disorders, such as insomnia, and other unpleasant consequences. According to data provided by the National Sleep Foundation:4 • Reports from the National Center for Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health state that some 30 to 40 percent of adults say they have some symptoms of insomnia within a given year, and about 10 to 15 percent of adults say they have chronic insomnia; • People who have trouble sleeping every night without exception for months or years are fairly rare; • More often, people experience chronic-intermittent insomnia, which means difficulty sleeping for a few nights, followed by a few nights of adequate sleep before the problem returns; • Left untreated, insomnia is linked to increased illness (morbidity); • There is a wealth of research indicating that people with insomnia have poorer overall health, more work absenteeism, and a higher incidence of depression. As part of a 2008 NSF-sponsored Sleep in America survey, researchers found that “The average American worker sleeps for only 6 hours and 40 minutes on workday nights, despite long work weeks (54 percent work 40–49 hours per week, 17 percent work 50–59 hours, 13 percent work 4

The National Sleep Foundation’s website: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/ sleep-related-problems/insomnia-and-sleep



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60 or more hours weekly) and commuting for 46 minutes each workday.” Fatigue from such sleep deprivation makes sufferers “cognitively and socially less responsive to people, situations, and events.”5 Some of the physical consequences of sleep deprivation include:6 • • • • • • • • • •

Heightened appetite and hunger, thought to contribute to obesity, Diminished respiratory muscle endurance, Depressed ventilatory responses to hypoxia and hypercapnia, Impaired immunity, marked by increased tumor necrosis factor and interleukin 6, Possibly increased risk of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, diabetes, and certain cancers, Significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in all cognitive performance tasks, Erosions in short-term memory, and impaired attention, Diminished motor skills and cognitive information processing, Changes in mental status that resemble those associated with depression/anxiety, Diminished reported quality of life.

Non-peaceful sleep seems to be par for the course for many of my financial-sector clients. They worry, they obsess, they belabor, often to the point where they are consumed with fear and guilt, and simply cannot relax when they do have the opportunity to sleep. Also consider that the problem is exacerbated by those who are forced to minimize the amount of time available for sleep to keep pace with the demands of their careers and personal lives.

5

The National Sleep Foundation. 2008 Sleep in America Poll: Summary of Findings. Washington, DC: National Sleep Foundation; 2008. https://sleepfoundation.org/ sites/default/files/2008%20POLL%20SOF.PDF 6 Van Dongen H.P., G. Maislin, J.M. Mullington, and D.F. Dinges. 2003. The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Posted on Critical Care Nurse Editorial referencing: Sleep. 26, no. 2, pp. 117–126. [Medline]

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Sleep deprivation leads to immune system suppression, psychosis (in extreme instances), irritability (at the very least), impaired judgment and concentration, and other conditions. Freudian theory has detailed just how essential sleep is to cleansing our minds, heart, and souls. Given enough sleeping time, we can dream in black and white or in Technicolor, to our heart’s content. We produce and direct our dreams, and they have complete, often difficult to understand themes and meanings. But they are great examples of pure psychophysiological freedom. Sometimes, though, there are more serious issues on the table than just self-imposed sleep deprivation, issues that need to be dealt with. For instance, I knew a woman with chronic sleep/dream disorder, including obsessive, recurring nightmares manifesting a fixation on losing all her money. She was prone to fits of rage, after which she would experience deep feelings of regret and depression for her behavior, which was out of character. As a result, she was also plagued with exhausting earaches. This client was suffering greatly, so I referred her to a clinic. After testing, it was discovered that there was an actual physiological basis for her health problems. She was diagnosed with a temporal lobe issue and was medicated accordingly. The Consequences of Sleep Deprivation According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, which appeared in a 2009 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, even a single night of sleep deprivation makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns, akin to power failures—brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness. While financial services professionals do not hold the lives of others in their hands—as do train operators, medical professionals, or police officers—substantial degradation in decisionmaking capacity can cause catastrophic results. The findings of this survey indicate that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing. The findings are based on brain imaging studies on 24 adults who performed simple tasks involving visual attention when they were well rested, and then, when they had missed a night’s sleep.



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It is imperative that an FP’s cognitive functioning be finely tuned daily, based on the demands and stress levels of his or her job. Anything less can lead to error in judgment and physical performance, alertness, and speed—especially for those in high-pressure situations, such as trading, where memory lapses or cognitive impairment can have catastrophic consequences. Mental exhaustion can wreak havoc in myriad ways. A trader can make a mistake in placing an order. A senior executive may reveal material information that can destroy share value. A compliance officer may miss, or fail to act upon, a key portfolio alert. An investment manager may snap at a client. I knew a man who suffered from a chronic sleep disorder. He would sleep intermittently for one to two hours at a time, but no more. This ruined his dream cycle, a critical psychological function, as dreams are one mechanism we use to neutralize anxieties. As a result, he was always irritable and prone to explosive fits of anger. He was referred to a sleep study, which led to a diagnosis of sleep apnea—a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing. His breathing was interrupted by a physical obstruction to his airflow. Even upon waking, he was unaware of such an obstruction. Still, sleep apnea turned out to be just one of the components in the Man’s overall sleep disorder, the others being his constant aggravation with his job performance and his marriage. With a combination of various types of treatments, he was able to restore healthier sleeping patterns, although he is by no means cured. It is necessary to become attuned to the physiological consequences of driving your body beyond its limits, and to make the necessary adjustments to avoid long-term repercussions for body and mind.

CHAPTER 3

The Money Muscle— Effects on the Heart We have established that stress—in many instances unusually intense and prolonged stress—is an unfortunate part of the high-octane world of Wall Street. When discussing the dark subject of the physical consequences of success, I immediately think of one particularly tragic example from earlier in my career—the case of a Wall Street professional who was somewhat of a legend in certain circles. This man had risen through the ranks at a major Wall Street investment bank on the strength of his impressive intellect. In the latter part of his career, he held an executive-level position, while also serving as an economics professor at a major institution. In addition to this, he held seats on many boards of directors and was a public speaker, highly sought after for his acumen as a market specialist, and for his trading theories and model-building strategies. This prestige did not come without a price. On his endless quest for perfection, he was forever besieged by doubt and fear. When I say that this man hated to make mistakes, I mean he hated himself for making mistakes. He also suffered from an inferiority complex. This originated from childhood. During our sessions, he would tearfully recall how his demanding father had frequently and severely beaten and whipped him with wire hangers. He never did appreciate his accomplishments as much as he should have. Nothing was ever good enough. His was an intellect forever dogged by an incessant desire to be wealthy. His greatest assets, his intelligence and charm, were of secondary consideration to the value of his portfolio. He tirelessly dedicated himself to social climbing as a method to soothe his sense of being less than. Inevitably, something had to give.

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One day, he was engaged in a fervent discussion—part of a heated battle at a corporate board meeting. Without warning, his heart seemed to explode. He had a massive heart attack and literally dropped dead on the board table. Paramedics arrived within minutes, and a physician-by-trade board member worked on him to no avail. His colleagues were in a state of shock. It was a tragedy. Later, it was determined that he had been overdosing on experimental precursors to Lipitor, and that his low-density lipoprotein (LDL) count was off the charts. The vessels in his heart had simply burst. At his funeral, well-attended and very emotional, I remember thinking that for a man who had climbed to such impressive heights, who had such a solid body of work, whom so many held in high regard, he never did fully appreciate himself, or take care of himself properly. And that very well may have cost him his life.

Inviting the Inevitable versus Avoiding the Avoidable Many people I counsel have a particularly unhealthy and fatalistic view of the inevitability of stress, as if it were something from which they must suffer and ultimately cannot avoid. For them, stress is a ubiquitous threat constantly stalking them, threatening their success, even as they feel powerless to avoid succumbing to its effects. A significant number of my clients have had to have “stat”1 stress tests performed as a function of chest pain (real or imagined) or severe anxiety, with heart-rate increases and possible arrhythmias. For the uninitiated, this is a terrifying experience: the severe chest pains, increasing in intensity, until they reach a crescendo of agony; the shortness of breath, the overwhelming nausea, the heavy sweating. If these sensations arrive one at a time, the sufferer can shrug them off at first, but as they build in intensity, some realizations dawn: “I am having a heart attack. I am about to die.” These are not uncommon statements from my clients. Unless we are talking about the samurai of yore, yogis, enlightened masters or master Taoists, no one is ever ready to die. And, that is exactly how it feels—as if you are about to die. That additional anxiety heightens an already desperate situation. I have had—not one, but two—clients 1

Immediately indicated and ordered.



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suffer angina attacks in my office or waiting area and they had to be rushed to the emergency room. Most clients who suffer from severe, acute stress immediately make dramatic changes in their lives. Some slide back into their unhealthy behavioral patterns once the storm has passed. Far too many seek negative outlets to channel stress, such as alcohol and illegal substances, always to little or no avail. And those in high-stress, volatile positions, such as floor traders on the exchanges, frequently report severe migraines and chest pains. Of course, a certain level of stress is unavoidable for a financial professional (FP), but it is important to keep in mind that stress is often one of several factors, which, combined with other variables, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol, produces heart disease. Due to the rigors and emotional/behavioral volatility of their profession, FPs tend to lead less than healthy lifestyles, manifested by sleep deprivation, poor diet, lack of exercise, and substance abuse; these are contributing factors that work in concert to affect the heart. Now, even though stress may not be a specific risk factor cited for heart disease—and stress may not affect everyone equally, as some have higher thresholds for stressors than others—consistent, frequent, prolonged stress has been shown to elevate hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, which have been linked to blood clotting and also contribute to heart disease. With this in mind, I have encouraged most of my clients to visit the cardiologist, to be monitored medically and to have annual physicals in order to at least increase awareness of stress-related health issues. This awareness and the subsequent physical health maintenance regimen are key components of The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope. The financial profession is more cerebral than physical, but, as in any field of endeavor, physical ailments limit the potential for success and harmony.

The Warning Signs of Stress When the Wall Street professional is exposed to lengthy bouts of stress, the body produces warning signs, including: Physical: Aches/pains, clenching/grinding teeth, dizziness and disorientation, indigestion and nausea, insomnia, ear ringing, heart palpitations, excessive sweating, tremors, weight gain/loss.

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Psychological: Anger, anxiety, depression, dread, desperation, inability to make decisions or concentrate, irrational behavior, absentmindedness/memory loss, nervous behavior, impatience, irritability. Behavioral: Compulsive eating, explosive confrontations, dramatic mood swings, overreacting, increased substance abuse, withdrawal from relationships, frequent outbursts, sudden emotional breakdowns/crying. The smart FP fully realizes that stress inhibits and limits production, efficiency, mental acuity, and overall deal-making and client management ability. Stress must be kept in check. It cannot be ignored. It is a force that needs to be handled and mastered. It is a major sapper of energy, and G-d knows, on Wall Street, we need all the energy we can muster.

Alone in a Crowded Room Many Wall Street professionals suffer from acute loneliness. An obsession with money creates a kind of emotional confinement. Moreover, often it is the FP alone who has been entrusted with the fortune and financial future of his clients, and the pressure of this responsibility is indeed overwhelming.

“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.” —Thomas Wolfe

Wall Street is inherently lonely. In many situations, there is no camaraderie or consensus. More often than not, it is the individual in a dogfight, with only his own instincts and intellect to guide him. If he succeeds, he alone is lauded for his success (or, at times, his thunder is stolen by a superior). Sycophants surround him, stroking his ego, lying in wait for the opportunity to feed from his trough.



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Should he fail, no one rallies around him, unless it is to gloat, ridicule, or to seek favor by comparison. In times of crisis, unless you are the source of shelter from the storm for others, you will find yourself alone. An Intensity that Ensures Isolation As my career has spanned a number of boom-and-bust cycles, I have seen great despair and desolation in many of my clients. It is, again, a profession characterized by loneliness—loneliness intensified by the extreme pressure, cynicism, and cyclicality. A great deal of office rivalry lies just below the surface; petty jealousies abound, and competition is frequently the order of the day. Before seeking treatment, some Wall Street professionals cope by overdrinking, over-spending, engaging in adulterous sex, gambling, or simply surrendering to the isolation. I remember one client, who worked in a position that required extensive travel and a certain level of interpersonal skill, but the assignments were usually scheduled engagements, and his success depended more on his technical knowledge of the financial products than on his networking skills. He was an extrovert to begin with, so his extensive road schedule intensified his existing feelings of loneliness, disconsolation, and depression. In the cities where he regularly traveled, he cobbled together for himself a network of high-end escort services, where he would request his “regular” girls. The purpose of these interactions was not so much to receive physical gratification, but to have an emotional experience. During treatment he discovered the source of his loneliness; it stemmed from childhood experiences related to foster home placement beginning very early in life after he had been abandoned by his teenage parents. As was evident in this case, my clients often do not understand the nature of their loneliness or its debilitating effects, even as they engage in dangerous behavior to cope with their pain. Obviously it is important to discover the roots, the core issues. Otherwise, true change and healing cannot take place.

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Relentless Pace Leaves Little Room for Emotional Relief The Wall Street professional’s performance is monitored relentlessly every market day. He cannot hide. He is accountable in monthly statements to his clients—and daily in his office, to his colleagues, and himself. The daily report is open for all to view at the end of the trading day. FPs not only compete with themselves, but also with their colleagues, and their colleagues’ burgeoning empires. The firm surveys and monitors production continuously. Production advertises and symbolizes “success.” In order to achieve it, the FP is constantly working within himself. Ironically, in order to strategize on behalf of others, and to maximize his clients’ gains and protect their assets, FPs work in a universe where they often feel that no one is looking out for their emotional and financial well-being. It is lonely and tough out there. Wall Street professionals ply their trade in the war zone of the marketplace, which is savage and predatory. And when one feels alone in stormy waters it is very difficult to work efficiently and rewardingly. This becomes a natural breeding ground for negative cycles. John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick’s book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, reveals that persistent rejection and loneliness can impede proper development and functioning of the cellular structures in one’s immune system. The emotional and psycho-physiological components of our health are exquisitely intertwined. Loneliness can impact stress levels, sleep, and breathing patterns, as well as diet—and thus, the immune system. Persistent loneliness can impair thinking, perseverance, and willpower. At the same time, this type of breakdown can limit persistence, jeopardize thinking skills, and interfere with the will to succeed. Socialization Is Key to Emotional Wellbeing Human beings are social animals, and the Wall Street professional and his clients are no exceptions to this rule. One of the paradoxes of the journey to the top, where it is supposed to be lonely, is that surviving and competing as an FP carries with it the twin burdens of loneliness and isolation, which must be offset by connectedness to others in order to maintain an overall sense of wellbeing and health.



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If you do not build and maintain good relationships with clients and colleagues, as well as with family and friends, there will not be enough emotional balance and insufficient strength to compete in the brutal, unforgiving world of money madness. The Wall Street professional is in the trenches, where performance and expectation are strictly required; to think otherwise is to be naïve. Thus, the effective professional cultivates awareness of his clients’ need for contact and reaches out to them systematically. For many clients, the FP is not just a financial channel, but a lifeline as well. On the other hand, the FP needs to be emotionally gratified by his work with clients. Patently obvious though this may seem to be, Wall Street professionals must also take the time to initiate and maintain meaningful relationships with family members and friends outside the workplace. We will discuss specific ways to do this later in this book; meanwhile, give some thought to those relationships that already make you feel happy and needed in a positive way, and consider what it is about those relationships that make them positive ones—and whether, and how, you can cultivate more relationships like them.

Mood Disorders Understanding mood disorders (and other maladies of the mind) is an essential aspect of The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope for a number of reasons. The most common mood disorders—also known as affective disorders—include depression, bipolar disorder, postpartum depression, cyclothymia, schizoaffective disorder, and seasonal affective disorder. Basically, mood disorders form a group of mental illnesses with the common underlying characteristic being a distinctive mood that is abnormal for the situation. It is important to comprehend this common definition of mood disorders. A mood disorder transcends simply acting out, both in terms of intensity and frequency. The individual displays tendencies to behave in a manner that is atypical for the circumstances. Feeling depressed when a lover leaves you, or when you lose your job, or when someone close to you passes away does not constitute

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clinical depression, but rather a natural mood state. What is not a natural mood state is suffering prolonged bouts of depression when you have a beautiful wife, healthy children, a Park Avenue duplex, summer homes in Aspen and the Hamptons, a compensation package in the stratosphere, and are not experiencing any of the substantial life challenges that average people do.

The Basics: Depression, Mania, Bipolar Disorder Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans age 18 and older—about one in four adults—suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Approximately 20.9 million American adults or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year have a mood disorder.2 When a single, unhealthy, intense mood dominates a person, the person is said to have unipolar disorder. The most common unipolar disorder is severe depression, which is relatively common among both adults and adolescents. The symptoms of severe depression are numerous, including diminished pleasure or interest in activities previously seen as interesting or pleasurable, irregular sleep patterns, fatigue, lack of concentration, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of guilt. Clinically speaking, I would diagnose a client with depression if that individual demonstrated four or more of these symptoms within the span of two weeks, accompanied by lethargy and/or a prolonged depressed mood. Major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the United States for ages 15 to 44.3 It affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.4 2

R.C. Kessler, W.T. Chiu, O. Demler, E.E. Walters. June, 2005. “Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of twelve-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication” (NCS-R), Archives of General Psychiatry 62 no. 6, pp. 617–627. 3 The World Health Organization. 2008. “The global burden of disease: 2004 update, Table A2: Burden of disease in DALYs by cause, sex, and income group in WHO regions, estimates for 2004.” Geneva, Switzerland: WHO, 2008. 4 R.C. Kessler, W.T. Chiu, O. Demler, E.E. Walters. June, 2005. “Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of twelve-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity



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A different type of common unipolar disorder is mania, which is the opposite state to depression. Symptoms of mania include excessively positive self-image, sleep deprivation with no appearance of fatigue, agitation, elevated aggressiveness, distractibility, an inability to concentrate, a continuous and scattered stream of thought/communication, and deriving pleasure from the process of engaging in harmful activities. Some of these behaviors may be the result of substance abuse; however, if such behavior persists for more than a week, to the point that it is noticeable and affecting performance and relationships, and substance abuse is not evident, it may be an instance of mania. Meanwhile, bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a mood state in which mania and depression coexist, though at different times. Bipolar disorder is particularly unsettling, as the individual will suffer a state of mania, followed by a period of depression. These swings in mood often follow a set pattern, with mood changes engaging anywhere from once every few months to, in certain rare instances, once every few hours. Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.5 The median age of onset for bipolar disorder is 25 years.6 The Importance of Knowing If you suffer from an undiagnosed mood disorder, by coupling the introspection I advocate with a better understanding of how mood disorders work, you will move one step closer to identifying and dealing with your issues. After all, self-awareness and education are the building blocks of any fully functioning gyroscope. In fact, the act of gaining such knowledge itself is a component of treatment. Sometimes, just knowing what may be wrong, as opposed to

Survey Replication (NCS-R).” Archives of General Psychiatry 62 no. 6 pp.617–627. 5 Ibid. 6 R. C. Kessler, P. A. Berglund, O. Demler, R. Jin, E. E. Walters. June 2005. “Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).” Archives of General Psychiatry 62 no. 6, pp. 593–602.

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facing the abyss and not knowing the source of such pain and sadness, provides a level of relief. What is more—if you have not experienced a mood disorder personally, you cannot fully appreciate how it may severely affect the behavior of those who are depressed, bipolar, or manic. In the callous, fast-paced world of Wall Street, it is particularly easy to gloss over someone’s disability. Yet, by gaining a fundamental understanding of these disorders, you can allay your frustration, enabling you to intervene, or protect yourself professionally from the actions of others. Even if you are emotionally invested in the individual, or even if the individual is in denial or refuses help, understanding more about why he or she is behaving in such a bizarre manner can help make the unpredictable a bit more predictable. For instance, I have a client whom I clinically diagnosed as bipolar. When properly medicated, he can control his condition. Unfortunately, the problem with many people who suffer from bipolar disorder is that they resist adhering to their medication regimens. One reason for this is a function of the physiological effects of the drugs themselves. Many bipolar clients feel that the medications blunt creativity and hamper performance. Moreover, many bipolar clients will wrongfully conclude that they are getting better, and stop taking their medication. Still others may be taking multiple medications for bipolar and other disorders, and may simply get confused or have difficulty faithfully adhering to their regimen. He often stoutly refuses to take the medications that treat his bipolar disorder at key intervals because he is convinced they take his edge off. As a result, when he is at work, he is gripped by a manic euphoria that fuels insane risk-taking, resulting in massive trades he would never attempt otherwise. For someone charged with managing huge sums, this is a problem. In his unmedicated state, on a manic and/or substanceinduced high, he has been known to lose tremendous amounts of money. When he crashes down to Earth, he desperately claws his way back. His losses feed his depression. His incredulous colleagues both ridicule and praise his high-wire act, yet no one in his sphere has a clue that his behavior is influenced so heavily by an actual psychological disorder. When he is unmedicated, he is a menace to himself, his colleagues, and his clients, who trust he will not



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make an unreasonable gamble that could severely damage their institutions. If they only knew what really lay in store for them. Like other diseases, mental illnesses can be treated. The encouraging news is that most people with mental illness, even serious cases, can lead productive lives with proper treatment. Mood disorders are one form of serious mental illness. Life is relative and happiness is elusive for us all, regardless of the size of our income or where we summer. However, profound sadness, dangerous fits of mania, and other unusual, mood-related behaviors must be addressed. Most mood disorders are at least somewhat treatable with drugs and psychotherapy. In all my years of experience, I have found that, unlike certain physical ailments that might mend even if not treated, untreated mood disorders do not spontaneously go away or dissipate on their own. In fact, the abyss within the mind usually gets deeper and darker until it consumes the individual’s life force.

Understanding Stress Understanding the exact mechanism of stress’ effects on the body is crucial in developing coping strategies. In graduate school, I was fortunate enough to attend a series of lectures given by Hans Hugo Bruno Selye, a visionary Canadian endocrinologist who produced exceptional research on the hypothetical nonspecific response of the human organism to stressors. Selye is most often quoted regarding the effects that stress has on our bodies: “Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older.” Think about this statement and then think about the psychological and physiological wear and tear brought about by stress. The very term stress was first used in the context of biology by Selye. He maintained that stress was an inappropriate physiological response to any demand. Stress may be defined as a condition and the term stressor refers to the stimulus that is causing the condition of stress. As professionals in the financial services industry are well aware, indications of stress can be emotional, physical or cognitive, including:

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moodiness, worrying, agitation, irritability, feelings of loneliness or depression, aches and pains, a negative worldview and outlook, bowel issues, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, appetite disturbances, sleep disorders, social isolation, procrastination, drug/alcohol consumption, obsessive thinking, rage and anger, severe frustration, desire for isolation, impaired judgment, loss of concentration and focus, loss of libido, fear and anxiety, task avoidance, impulsive behavior. The list is nearly endless. In 1936, Selye cataloged the stages of stress in his groundbreaking “General Adaptation Syndrome” model, which has three progressive phases.7 These progressive phases have a definitive effect on the biological and chemical functions of the body, and ultimately cause disease. Essentially, Selye posits that the human body has limited ability to adapt to stress before the individual starts to suffer adverse physiological consequences. Selye’s three adaptive phases include: Alarm stage The body senses danger, and an immediate chemical reaction occurs in order to respond to it. During this phase, also known as the fight or flight response, the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline are released into the bloodstream to enable a physical response. The lack of a physical response can be detrimental, as can the elevation of blood pressure. Cortisol can also damage cells, leading to cardiovascular ailments. Resistance stage As stressors continue to influence the psyche, the body recovers from the initial shock and hormones seek normal levels, though the individual has a lower capacity for adaptive response, even as the senses remain heightened. This limits recovery abilities. Exhaustion stage Prolonged exposure to stressors erodes the body’s “alert and resistance” capabilities, produces psychological exhaustion, commonly referred to as being burned out, and can lead to a wide range of physiological dysfunctions, especially in the heart and brain.

7

Hans Selye. 1956. The Stress of Life, (NY: McGraw-Hill).



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Money-Body Problems: Stress as a Fact of Life Circa AD 100, the Roman poet Juvenal wrote wisely of the benefits of a sound, stress-free existence in his Xth Satire: Still, if you must have something to pray for, If you insist on offering up the entrails and consecrated Sausages from a white pigling in every shrine, then ask For a sound mind in a sound body, a valiant heart Without fear of death, that reckons longevity The least among Nature’s gifts, that’s strong to endure All kinds of toil, that’s untainted by lust and anger… Such is not the case on Wall Street. For professionals in today’s financial services, stress and anxiety are everyday facts of life. They are the norm. It is simply not reasonable to ask a financial services professional to avoid stress. Hard-driving FPs, usually averse to therapy, are often obsessive, ultracompetitive, combative, and … frightened. According to a recent study,8 based on interviews with 200 Wall Street employees, it was found that 64 percent of workers were considering leaving their jobs because of stress; 24 percent said they were looking for another job as a result of stress; 49 percent of respondents cited unpredictability as the main source of their stress, up from 7 percent who gave that reason the year before. Wall Street professionals are paying the price for these stress levels. In the Center for Work-Life Policy study, 66 percent said they were not getting enough sleep, up from 48 percent the previous year. Thirty percent said they needed a drink at the end of the day in order to relax, up from 23 percent a year ago. So, while we may not be able to avoid it, we can do a better job of managing stress, anxiety, and depression via an understanding of the elements that bring them on. Ultimately, stress cannot be entirely avoided. However, the psychological and physiological effects can be managed, and the harm to the

8

Conducted by the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, a unit of the Center for WorkLife Policy, the New York-based think tank, 2008.

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individual minimized. Certainly, such coping mechanisms are no small tasks for the FP, but not entirely impossible to achieve. Money-Body Problems: Developing Your Stress-Relief Strategy In Volume 4, I provide a wide range of modalities, from breathing exercises to meditation, to progressive muscle relaxation, to self-hypnosis. These are just some of the viable recommendations, for the options are legion. Relieving stress can be a phone call to a friend, a trip to the theater, a walk around the block, a few minutes on the treadmill, a few moments of flipping through the pictures in your wallet, a shopping spree, surfing the web, booking a luxurious trip, eliminating a few unnecessary expenses, placing a bid at auction. The list is endless. Ideally, for those in prolonged, high-pressure situations, a stress-relief strategy would include some sort of professional physical and psychological assistance. In lieu of that, I would recommend doing something— anything that gets your mind off the stressor, that removes you from the unhealthy circumstances. Comparatively speaking, with obsessive-compulsive disorders one key milestone in treatment is getting the individual to recognize that negative behavior is happening at the moment when it happens, and to make a conscious effort to try and limit, control, or stop the behavior. Understanding the physiology of stress and its effects on the body can better equip the individual to respond rather than continuing to suffer. If you feel the fight-or-flight dilemma, if you have shortness of breath, dizziness, if you feel burned out, then making the connection between the stressor and your physical deterioration can help empower you to act and save yourself. You should seek professional assistance, but if you cannot or will not, you yourself should do something. The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope provides you with some alternative techniques and exercises that can be your first baby steps on the way to living a healthier, happier life. Money-Body Problems: When Enough Really Is Enough In finance, there is nowhere to hide from stress. The more successful you become, the broader your shoulders must become in order to… well, shoulder increasing responsibility. Meanwhile, for those a few rungs



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down the corporate hierarchy, plodding up the mountain can be even more stressful, as it comes without the spoils of a successful climb. Nearly 20 years ago, in the mid-1990s, I began working with a client who was a moderately successful sales associate. Pressured into using dishonest sales tactics, she pitched to the people she cold-called questionable, even fraudulent “investment opportunities.” She was constantly besieged by drill sergeant-type managers as she scrambled to log hundreds of calls per day—day in, day out. Between the high-pressure environment and the aggressive work conditions, she was a psychological mess, besieged by chronic stress and anxiety. She had poor money-management skills to begin with, and soon found herself in deep financial trouble. She also became an alcoholic, which inevitably caused major problems for her. Out of all of this, she experienced an insight: life was more about working hard; it was also about managing your circumstances and disengaging from unhealthy behavior. Eventually, she quit her job, but even if she were still able to work, she knew this was not her desired career path. Fortunately, she was able to go into another business, and today, I imagine, she is likely the most satisfied employee in “suburbialand.” Regardless of whether you are a boiler-room bandit, a raider plundering corporations, or a chief executive at a major U.S. bank, you have to master stress; otherwise, it will consume you, and ultimately destroy you. Stress on Wall Street is simply inevitable. To survive the striving means learning how to cope. Further on in this book I provide various recommendations on specific stress-relieving activities. It all starts with self-assessment. Stress is driven by the choices we make, the situations we place ourselves in, or the circumstances we create by our actions. If you have a passion for your position and a vision for where you want to go—even if you have the drive to climb mountains, you still need to be able to manage stress. If you are mired in a desperate funk, attempts at stress management are transient. You most likely need dramatic life and career changes. And change is good. Even the idea of change is good. Remember: when we are miserable in life, we can only tread water for so long before we drown in our circumstances.

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Depressed? You Are So Not Alone Being able to build and maintain a functional gyroscope means having to cope with previously undiagnosed psychological disorders. Let this not be unexpected. When the superficial layers of problems are peeled off, deeper issues that have clouded the individual’s functioning and ability to experience success and happiness often emerge. Wall Street professionals are typically very capable individuals, able to mask their true emotions in their obsessive pursuit of money and success. Therefore, it is no wonder that depression often goes undiagnosed; fueled by denial, but still impacting the emotional health of many FPs. In fact, successful Wall Street professionals are less likely to report depression and seek treatment than those in the mainstream. Considering the number of Americans suffering from depression, this fact becomes that much more disconcerting. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. This includes major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder.”9 People suffering from depression are four times as likely to develop a heart attack as those who are not. Following a heart attack, sufferers of depression are at a significantly increased risk of death or a second heart attack.10 When studying these data, bear in mind that they reflect only major depression, and do not include significant information regarding dysthymic disorder and bipolar disorder, as well as myriad anxiety and personality disorders, phobias, post-trauma stress disorder (PTSD), and other emotional illnesses. Money-Body Problems: The Greater Depression In 1999, in the results of a landmark study, “Casualties of Wall Street: An Assessment of the Walking Wounded,” researchers from Nova Southeastern University revealed a world of suffering in the financial services industry.11 An astonishing 61 percent of FPs who participated 9

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). 1998. “The Numbers Count: Mental Illness in America,” Science on Our Minds Fact Sheet Series. 10 National Institute of Mental Health, 1998. 11 Cass A. M., J. Lewis, and Ed Simco. 2000. “Casualties of Wall Street: An Assessment of the Walking Wounded,” The Center for Psychological Studies at Nova Southeastern



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in the study exhibited various symptoms of clinical depression. Even more shocking, this statistic was obtained during the pre-bubble 1999 business cycle. Of this number, 23 percent were diagnosed as having clinical levels of major depression, and 38 percent had mild to moderate levels of depression. What is disturbing here is that a portion of the 23 percent of stockbrokers who were studied were controlling huge assets and great wealth while struggling with overwhelming mental distress. Indeed, these were astounding findings. A majority of the sample experienced significant levels of anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. Furthermore, stockbrokers reported abusing alcohol and other substances, such as cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, and Ecstasy; they also reported promiscuity, undertaken to cope with their unrelenting stress. The research also found that successful FPs were the most mentally (i.e., emotionally) disturbed. They were the most depressed, the most burned-out, the most exhausted. Shockingly, the highest earners used the most drugs of abuse and experienced the most depersonalization (feeling himself at an emotional distance from both his world and from his own identity and physicality). The study further revealed a generation of young FPs trading money and affluence for mental health, a sign that does not bode well for the healthy future—their own or the profession’s. Thus, as the researchers discovered, the highest earners, the most successful FPs, may be the most troubled. But they are making money, right? So, what is the big deal? They have great futures ahead of them, don’t they? Well, perhaps not for long. In an eight-month follow-up survey, nearly 25 percent of the FPs who made the most money were no longer employed by their original firms. Money-Body Problems: High Rates of Recovery When discussing depression, one case in particular stands out in my mind for several reasons, including the severity of the depression the client suffered, the length of time she endured the suffering before seeking treatment, and the remarkable results of her treatment. University in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

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She was genetically predisposed to suffering depression—her grandmother suffered from debilitating depression throughout her life. She suffered from episodes of undiagnosed depression throughout her childhood, and as she grew into an adult, her depression grew much worse. Her illness progressed to the point where she could no longer experience joy or pleasure, and started having suicidal fantasies. She showed no response to medications, then progressed to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), in which electric currents are passed through the brain in order to affect a brief seizure. The intent is to prompt chemical changes in the brain that can alleviate or reverse symptoms of mental illness, especially depression. Unlike such therapy from years ago, which involved high doses of electricity without anesthesia, ECT techniques today are much safer and controlled, though there are some side effects. This client was amazingly responsive to the ECT treatment, and now leads a highly functional life, in which she controls her illness. It no longer controls her. Side effects, financial considerations, short-term improvement, and fear of addiction lead nearly 50 percent of clients treated for depression to abandon medication regimens.12 Most therapies and techniques take time to work. Sometimes, as in the case of the client described above, more involved, more seemingly radical treatments are required. However, when it comes to depression, there is hope for those who get help. Up to 80 percent of those treated for depression demonstrate signs of improvement “within four to six weeks of beginning medication, psychotherapy, attending support groups or a combination of these treatments.”13 The unfortunate reality is that while there is a relatively high rate of success in treatment, nearly two out of three people suffering with depression do not actively seek or receive professional help.14 You or those near you who suffer from depression can get help, and the help received actually works most of the time. But you need to take that first step.

12

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, 1996. National Institutes of Health, 1998. 14 The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, 1996. 13



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Hiding Behind the Mask There is no easy cure for depression and chronic disconsolation. All too frequently, many FPs feel like there is only the constant battle to cope and survive. In order to cope, many FPs disguise their depression. This is quite common on Wall Street. There is little room for sympathy and FPs are conditioned to hide weakness, to mask pain. Of course, hiding a condition as devastating as depression only makes it worse, often leading to other serious problems. The sad reality is that, in spite of the fact that depression is such a severe malady, it also happens to be a highly treatable condition. Left untreated, though, it will deepen and produce long-term damage to the individual, his or her family, marriage, career. It will compromise everything in his or her life. Going to Great Lengths to Hide Unhappiness Many of the Wall Street professionals I treat, and who are afflicted by depression, will more often than not go to great lengths to mask their condition. For instance, I treated a wealthy man, and ironically, he saw his greatest asset was his charm and charisma, especially with women. He was married; had multiple affairs, yet beneath the surface, he was besieged by devastating feelings of emptiness and inadequacy that brought on severe bouts of depression. The nucleus of his condition derived from narcissistic personality disorder; he was obsessed with image, materialism, and the trappings of the good life. He was a product of his environment, from his upbringing in a prominent family, raised amid a steadily unhealthy obsession with money. He had access to billionaires, and nothing was ever enough to compensate for the emptiness he suffered. He was incapable of feeling genuine selfsatisfaction, ever spiraling down ward into depression at a pace exacerbated by the push to disguise and hide his condition. And yet, this unhappiness was a secret he kept from everyone in his life. It was yet another source of inadequacy. For someone in a position of power, to be unable to control your emotions sometimes feels like a failing. You know you should be happy with what you have accomplished, yet you are not. In treatment, my client needed to go through the laborious process of developing a new emotional value system. He needed to better understand the psychological constructs of authenticity and genuineness. He

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basically built a functional gyroscope, wherein he now had the internal processes to better evaluate his sense of self-worth. He could be more introspective and find value in incremental improvements across many areas of his life, not just his position on Wall Street. Emotionally, he could feel more secure because he better understood his own emotions and psychological responses, and he could fortify himself against temptation. For the first time in his life, he experienced emotional intimacy with his wife, who had always adored him. Unhappiness that Drives Us to Dangerous Behavior For most of us, depression becomes exacerbated via inactivity, as we sink deeper into a dangerous malaise. The less we interact with others, the harder it becomes to seek out the companionship that is necessary and the sense of purpose that is required to lighten the burden of depression. For someone who works 80-hour weeks and is constantly thrust into high-pressure situations, it is difficult to retreat inwardly; yet that certainly does not mean that those depressive feelings are gone. Whereas some embrace dark moods, others flee from depression by plunging themselves into a state of manic—aggressive, excessive—even dangerous behavior. They view the dark thoughts of depression as a state of mind that must be exorcised by supplanting it with extreme sensations and experiences. For example, I know of a successful multimillion-dollar producer for a major Wall Street firm. There is nothing on the surface that would betray the massive depression she desperately fends off daily through frequent immersion in bizarre, excessive behavior. Much of her depression stems from her childhood, feeling ugly duckling in her family. Despite having long shed that persona, to the point where she is now very attractive by any standard, her self-image is very much rooted in her emotional state from those formative years. Her entire value system is skewed, and regardless of how much she achieves, she can never reach the summit in her mind. She always falls short, which results in debilitating depression. To compensate, she splurges, going on grotesquely excessive shopping sprees, which only offer temporary relief from the burdens of her anguish. More ominously, she relies on sexual promiscuity for reinforcement of



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her value, which includes emotionless sex with multiple partners, of both sexes, often at the same time. Ironically, despite the frequency of sex, she is unable to achieve orgasm. She is blocked. She cannot surrender control to her partner, even if that control promises to bring her pleasure. The harder she runs from depression, the more potent it becomes when the brief euphoria of her extreme behavior has evaporated. She is left lonely and inconsolable. Unfortunately, some embrace the concept of a gyroscope more easily than do others.

CHAPTER 4

Your Autopsy: What Would We Find? As a psychologist, I have been a witness to great pain and suffering, and did everything in my power to support and guide those who came to me for help, applying evidence-based practices to help pull them out of the problems my clients faced. I have seen the depths of the dark side of human nature; the agony of disturbing tragedies of the mind; wasted, unfilled lives. Far too many times, I have been powerless to save all the lost souls in my care. Some are beyond saving or salvation.

Fighting Multiple Fires Simultaneously There is a clinical term, comorbidity, which is used in medical psychology parlance. This word comes from co “along with” + morbidity “diseased condition” and means a disease one has at the same time as having another. Generally, when an individual enters the care of a medical doctor, the focus is on treating a single ailment. There may be underlying conditions to take into consideration, but illnesses of the body are usually not nearly as intertwined as maladies of the mind. When someone enters my care, almost always I am faced with the challenge of treating and assessing multiple mental and physical issues. An injured mind is afflicted by many different things. Hence, knowing when to defer—and refer—to other specialists is very important. In writing this book, I am surprised to find that there are cases from my practice that I have repressed because they were so disturbing to witness, as they slowly, painfully slid from my grasp. This is serious business. Treatment is never easy; not for the client, or for the doctor. A

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therapeutic treatment alliance is essential for success. Both parties must be fully engaged.

Triggers that Produce Multiple Wounds One case I recall with great sadness involved a successful woman. She was very organized, to the point of being obsessive, and exceptionally competent. She was also in a loving marriage and had a secure family life. As many successful Wall Street professionals, she experienced some minor mood, anxiety, and control issues, yet none of them were remark able; they were all quite treatable. Unfortunately, this client’s gradual descent into personal hell and grief hinged on a single, traumatic event. It was the tragic, accidental death of her 3-year-old nephew who drowned in her neighbor’s pool while in her care. I know all too well that there are some disturbances from which the mind never recovers. For my client, there was no consolation. She was haunted by severe nightmares. Extensive sleep deprivation drove her to develop a dangerous addiction to barbiturates. Sleep therapy never produced meaningful results. As time wore on, she slid deeper and deeper into a depressive state, from which there was no return. This was not a chemically or genetically induced condition. It was a profound sadness, a despair she could not escape. The anguish ultimately produced hypertension. She developed respiratory illnesses. Her drug addiction worsened, fueled by increasingly frequent alcohol binges. In the end, she was found unconscious one night, following a binge that included excessive amounts of alcohol and barbiturates. There was no note, so there was no way to determine whether it was a suicide; it is a definite possibility. I share this painful episode not to disturb my readers, but to warn them. Within a relatively short span of time, this vibrant, healthy, successful woman, who was seemingly not predisposed to psychological illness, had destroyed herself. She died two years later, and her body was ravaged by many mental and physical diseases, many self-inflicted. It is likely she may not have survived much longer anyway. I know I was powerless to help her, though I did try, in every way. I made the appropriate referrals; I worked with her and her husband. I even organized an intervention. All to no avail.



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I tell this cautionary tale to inspire those readers wrestling with their own demons to find the strength to drag themselves back from the edge of the abyss. The longer you delay, the worse you become, as ailments multiply and develop a profound power all their own. Sometimes, the mind is not strong enough to fight off the darkness. Sometimes, the human spirit withers and dies, and all that is left is the shell of despair lingering on, day after painful day. Sometimes, we do die from sadness.

Turn Back Now Before it Is Too Late The mirror will lie to you. Your friends will not tell you the truth. Denial will ultimately kill you. When it comes to the very real consequences of dangerous behaviors, no one is special. No one escapes. Outwardly, you may appear to be in good health. But that is only your mind deceiving you. Beneath the surface, the damage you are doing to yourself will eventually produce devastating consequences. The human body and mind are machines—highly complex, resilient, delicate, and temperamental, but equipment nonetheless. Substance abuse, sleep deprivation, constant stress, anxiety, guilt, depression, and other high-risk states take a long time to coalesce into medical conditions, especially in some, but they always accomplish their mission. Frequently, they take no prisoners. Once they do manifest in awful physical consequences, the client is often too immersed in denial, too addicted, too weak, too depressed, and too frightened to significantly modify behavior so as to make much of a difference. Yet your life does not have to be a foregone conclusion. You do not have to be another sad statistic.

Fear Is a Powerful Motivator One effective technique for slowing, even reversing the devastating consequences of unhealthy behavior, is to focus on the physiological damage that will be done if you neglect yourself. It would seem counterintuitive that a psychologist is counseling fear as a remedy for maladies of the mind. Yet, for those unable to break the cycle of addiction or dangerous behavior, fear is a power motivator. When we do

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not have the evidence before us, it is much easier to cloak our minds in denial. You must have the courage to confront the biochemical and emotional demons within you. One of the first orders of business for many of my clients is a referral for a comprehensive medical examination, with a full battery of blood tests. These tests do not lie. They will usually show the results for those who have participated in dangerous, unhealthy activities for extended periods of time—regardless of how they look in the mirror. From there, it is important to envision the progression of these illnesses. In other words, to visualize your own autopsy; to take a fearless inventory of yourself and your body going into your future; to be courageous, and willing to change. An autopsy—also known as a postmortem examination, necropsy (particularly in animals), and autopsia cadaverum—is a medical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse in order to determine the cause and manner of death and evaluate any disease or injury that may have been present or occurred. It is usually performed by a specialist known as a pathologist. The principal aim of an autopsy is to determine the cause of death, the state of health of the person before he or she died, and whether any medical diagnosis and treatment before death was appropriate.

You Need More than a Blood Test Once a Year After the initial shock of the blood test wears off, too many people are willing to shrug off the fear that motivated them to quit smoking, stop drinking, or take up yoga to relieve stress. That is why I counsel my clients to, more thoroughly, explore the consequences of their actions. Breaking cycles of addiction and dangerous behavior is extremely difficult, even under optimal circumstances. When you more fully understand exactly what it is that you are doing to your body and your mind, you will have more powerful psychological incentives to make the changes that are necessary for survival. Yet even for behavior that is less dramatic than substance abuse (i.e., lack of exercise, unchecked stress, smoking) you need to look further down the road. You also need to not only envision yourself limiting the



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damage, but also facilitating wellness and growth. You have no idea how impressive the new you can be. The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope must be a fine-tuned self-human-mind-body machine capable of building muscle mass, creating more cerebral neurons, breathing, eating and digesting more efficiently, feeling safe, sound and whole, and so forth. At the end of this chapter there are some high-risk behaviors listed out with an itemization of the expected autopsy findings. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words!” The skeletal reproduction dramatizes the extent of the problem and the probable damage that will result if the problem is not corrected.

References American Psychiatric Association. 1994. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Philadelphia, PA: American Psychiatric Association. Cass, A.M., J. Lewis, and E. Simco. 2000. “Casualties of Wall Street: An Assessment of the Walking Wounded.” Center for Psychological Studies. Fort Lauderdale, FL: Nova Southeastern University. Coates, J.M., and J. Herbert. 2008. Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor. Retrieved June, 2016, https://www.pnas.org/ content/105/16/6167. Fishman, S. June 6, 2010. “Bernie Madoff, Free at Last,” New York Magazine. Gladwell, M. 2009. Wall Street’s Gambling Soul Wounded by Malcolm Gladwell. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/07/wall_streets_gambling_soul_wou .html#ixzz0eQmE5Kqc Goldberg., S.T. August, 2001. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. Houston, R. September 1, 2002. “Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs,” Lifestyle Publications. Ibáñez, A., C. Blanco, I.P. de Castro, J. Fernandez-Piqueras, and J. Sáiz-Ruiz. March 2003. “Genetics of Pathological Gambling.” Journal of Gambling Studies 19, no. 1, pp. 11–22. DOI: 10.1023/A:1021271029163. Jacobs, A. July 27, 2010. “China Pushes to End Public Shaming.” New York Times. Kessler R.C., P.A. Berglund, O. Demler, R. Jin, and E.E. Walters. June, 2005. “Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).” Archives of General Psychiatry 62 no. 6, pp.593–602. Kessler R.C., W.T. Chiu, O. Demler, and E.E. Walters. June 2005. “Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of twelve-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication” (NCS-R), Archives of General Psychiatry 62, no. 6, pp. 617–27. National Endowment for Financial Education and National Council on Problem Gambling. 2001. Problem Gamblers and Their Finances: A Guide for Treatment Professionals. National Institute of Mental Health. 1998. “The Numbers Count: Mental Illness in America,” Science on Our Minds Fact Sheet Series. www.nimh.nih.gov/ publicat/numbers.cfm.

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Petry N.M., F.S. Stinson, and B.F. Grant. 2005. “Comorbidity of DSM-IV pathological gambling and other psychiatric disorders: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions.” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 66, no. 5, pp. 564–74. Sapieriza, P., L. Zingales, and D. Maestripieri. 2009. Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone. Retrieved June, 2016, https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268. Selye, H. 1956. The Stress of Life. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. The National Sleep Foundation. 2008. Sleep in America Poll: Summary of Findings. Washington, DC: National Sleep Foundation. https://sleepfoundation .org/sites/default/files/2008%20POLL%20SOF.PDF The National Sleep Foundation’s website: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/ article/sleep-related-problems/insomnia-and-sleep. The Truth about Deception. 2020. “Articles and Advice on Lying, Infidelity, and Cheating Spouses.” TheTruth about Deception. http://www.truthaboutdeception .com. The World Health Organization. 2008. “The global burden of disease: 2004 update, Table A2: Burden of disease in DALYs by cause, sex, and income group in WHO regions, estimates for 2004.” Geneva, Switzerland. Van Dongen H.P., G. Maislin, J.M. Mullington, and D.F. Dinges. 2003. “The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation.” Sleep 26 no. 2, pp. 117–126.

A PEEK AT VOLUME IV

The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope Human beings form the sum of many parts, both of the mind and of the body. Likewise, treatment involves many facets. The approach to treating psychological disorders is unlike that of addressing physiological maladies, but just as a doctor takes a series of vitals when treating an abrasion, when a client enters my care, I focus on the totality of the individual’s psychological health.

Rarely do individuals appreciate the vast and varied tapestry that composes the psyche. As a client arrives in my office, s/he is typically devastated by depression or debilitated by feelings of helplessness or a sense of insecurity to such an extent that it drove him or her to seek treatment—almost always a measure of last resort.

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The road to true recovery through treatment is long and hard. Sometimes, full recovery may not be possible. Some of my relationships with clients span years, even decades. I will not delude you by telling you that this is a road that might never end for some. And yet, the journey need not be so arduous all the time.

Treating the Impatient Patient So, how do you treat the impatient client when recovery is not a magic pill nor the latest and greatest in mind-bending, psycho-therapeutic mental gymnastics? For those who are suffering, struggling, or just genuinely seeking self-improvement, overcoming the psychological shackles that bind them involves identifying and addressing all of the issues affecting their psyche. I developed The Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope because I needed a series of techniques for helping financial professionals. Think of my recommendations as a collection of best practices. In fact, I rarely even use the term, “Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope” in treatment. As you will see, in Volume IV, I provide a large number of exercises and strategies. This is not a step-by-step methodology. I have not had anyone fully master all of these components. Some are simply starting points. You can dive in wherever you like, hence their alphabetical organization. The one common denominator is that they all facilitate incremental change. They are the psychological steps that lead to greater strides, the small battles to help you win the war with your psyche. Some people will find specific exercises more useful than others. Certain readers may find some ideas here pedestrian, while some recommendations may seem to involve too much effort on the part of the practitioner. Some may seem like common sense, while others will run contrary to collective wisdom. At the end of the day, though, every exercise in this improvement matrix will set you up for incremental improvements in your life. Collectively, they provide a portfolio of options to set you out on the path to psychological wellness. The length of the strides you make on that path is something you decide.



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A Strategy Finserv Folks Can Grasp Financial services professionals form a class of client unlike any other. Due to the nature of their jobs, they are driven by the tangible. They need a project plan, a series of metrics, something concrete to help them envision a path to recovery. That is where the gyroscope comes in. The journey will be hard, but starting out on it need not be too much so; having an action matrix provides a detailed, measured plan of improvement that reinforces the “what” of the end goal with the “how” of the process. Simply put, the gyroscope is a metaphorical methodology using which the individual can storyboard a strategy to achieve true, lasting personal and professional satisfaction. Think of the tactics and techniques on the following pages as elements of your Project Plan to execute, based on the research previously provided in this book. Specifically, the first section of this book raises awareness about the Cause of many psychological maladies afflicting financial professionals. I then lead my readers through the Effect, as in the psychological and physiological consequences of the inherent stress of their jobs, and the impact of negative behavior and poor choices. Along that trajectory, we now arrive at the Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope, to provide the guidance necessary to address the various issues we explored previously. Remember, treatment of the body and the mind constitutes the sum of many parts.

Healing and Preventive Measures for the Mind-Body Connection Any professional active in financial services should find something within the following pages that will be synonymous with their feelings and needs. My intention is not only to enable my readers and clients to address significant issues that have arisen in their lives and in the office, but also to better equip them to avoid crises and calamities down the road. In previous sections, we established, on the basis of research and observation, the critical mind-body link—a highly complex relationship we are only now beginning to comprehend with any depth. Let us focus on that link and the ways in which it influences you.

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While researchers are always making meaningful breakthroughs that are helping us to better define this connection, we can never fully know the extent of the consequences of risky behavior on either side of the mind-body relationship. In my 30-plus years as a psychologist treating Wall Street professionals, I have witnessed the devastating ramifications of this link. Because of the nature of a financial professional’s job description, and the associated lifestyle, psychological stressors have multiple definite, adverse physiological effects. Moreover, many of my clients, consumed by greed and obsessed with power, have often disregarded common sense and caution, engaging in high-risk behavior with consequences for their health. Many who were not active substance abusers still did not lead healthy lifestyles, unless life events (hypertension, heart attack, OCD behaviors, spousal ultimatums, severe debt and overspending) conspired to make them face their pain and anguish. The purpose of Volume 4 is to provide guidance for living a more health-conscious life. My recommendations are intended to be practical, as advice that is not reasonable and does not take into account the pressures of the day-to-day is not very good advice at all. This guidance includes various stress-mastery techniques, as well as active and passive relaxation techniques, visualization and imaging techniques, as well as compartmentalization techniques. I also do not just tell you to get more sleep, but give you advice on coping with sleep deprivation. Taking care of your mind and your body properly is as important as addressing any immediate psychological issues, as well as an absolutely crucial part of developing and maintaining a sound gyroscope.

About the Author Dr. Christopher Bayer is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Manhattan Psychological Association, the New York State Psychological Association, the Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral Program at New York University (NYU), and the Inventors’ Association of Manhattan. In addition, he has practiced as a professional, New York City (NYC)-based, psychologist and psychoanalyst since the early 1980s and has specialized in the treatment of executives (in the banking and securities industries) and their families. He is Board-Certified and a diplomate fellow of the International College of Prescribing Psychologists (1997), certified in the treatment of alcohol and other psychoactive substance-use disorders, and a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)certified substance abuse treatment provider and evaluator. Dr. Bayer is the creator of a highly lauded financial-literacy program for high school students, MoneyMind101, launched at the Dalton School, which has since been taught at several NYC schools and institutes, including The Birch Wathen Lenox School, The Chapin School, The New York Health Education and Awareness Drive, and the New York Life Money Management & Investment Seminar. He has appeared on numerous American and Canadian television and radio programs, including “After the Bell” on Fox Business News, Minnesota Public Radio with noted financial writer William Cohan, the Gary Null Progressive Commentary Radio Hour with noted film documentarian Joel Bakan, and CJAD’s “On Call with Dr. Sydney Miller,” sharing his psychological analysis of financial topics. Dr. Bayer has also been a forensic sex abuse consultant on major cases in elite NYC private schools (Poly Prep Country Day School, Brooklyn, and Horace Mann School, Riverdale). His contributions to the field of psychology, and to topics related to finance and psychology, have been significant. His early training took place at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts—the first graduate school in the United States, and the only American university where ­Sigmund Freud lectured (Freud and Carl Jung Lectures 1909). After

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receiving the Vineberg Research Prize in 1970, Dr. Bayer completed an intensive externship at the Marshfield Clinic (modeled after the Mayo Clinic) the following year and graduated with a master’s degree in experimental psychology (1971) and a doctorate in clinical psychology (1975) from the University of Manitoba’s APA-approved program. In 1982, Dr. Bayer earned a Certificate of Specialization in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis from NYU’s Postdoctoral Psychology Program and held multiple lectureships at various schools throughout the City of New York. Namely, he was an adjunct lecturer at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine for 8 years, taught Dream Analysis at the Long Island Institute of Mental Health for 4 years, and lectured at the School of Social Work at Adelphi University, Molloy College, and the Henry George School of Social Science. Since 1976, Dr. Bayer has had a clinical practice based in Syosset and Manhattan, New York, as part of which he has treated hundreds of clients, most of whom are FPs. His service to the profession spans several decades, beyond the grounds of his clinical practice, and into the universities and the financial and social services arena. For more than a decade, he served as the psychological consultant at the Highland Preparatory School. Dr. Bayer has been a clinical supervisor in Yeshiva University’s Psychology Doctoral Program and has trained interns and residents in Hillside Hospital’s Psychology Internship Program. Dr. Bayer has worked in a variety of settings: psychiatric hospitals (state and private), correctional facilities, drug and alcohol rehabilitation units, correctional institutions, community mental health centers, and various court systems (family, supreme, and federal). Recently, Dr. Bayer became a board member of the Psychoanalytic Society at NYU’s Postdoctoral Psychology Program. He has chaired multiple fora at professional conventions. For example, he has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and, jointly, Director of Research at the Helping End Eating Disorders (HEED) Foundation; as a guest lecturer at Adelphi University; on the faculty of the Long Island Institute of Mental Health and on that of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and has held the post of Supervisor at the Yeshiva University Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program from 1996 to 2006, in addition to having held posts as consulting or staff psychologist at multiple hospitals, medical centers, and other



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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organizations throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Most recently, Dr. Bayer has served as a forensic evaluator for the Nassau County Supreme Court, as well as a psychological testing evaluator and expert witness in multiple court cases. Dr. Bayer has authored dozens of articles and presentations and has made significant contributions to topics in psychology, particularly in the area of financial psychology and money intelligence. He has been the driving force behind theshareholderactivist.com, known as “The Social Network for Investor Empowerment” listed on Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Additionally, Dr. Bayer is the founder of forensicpsychologystrategiesny.com, where, as an expert consultant to lawyers and accountants, he builds models of behavior for use in criminal cases and IRS offer-in-compromise cases geared to tax penalty abatement.

Index ADD. See Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) ADHD. See Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Addictions, 4, 6, 15, 74, 80, 81, 82 gambling, 3, 18–27 sex, 3, 11–12 Affective disorders, 63 Alcohol, 4–6 and illegal substances, 59 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 20 Anxiety, 4, 13, 24, 25, 29, 31, 39, 50, 51, 58, 69, 71, 72, 73, 80, 81 APA. See American Psychiatric Association (APA) AshleyMadison.com, 15 Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), 51 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), 51 Big Swinging Dick (BSD), 46 Bipolar disorder, 64–67 Blood test, 82–83 Body and mind, unbreakable bond, 37–42 Cacioppo, John T., 62 Call girls, 10 Cheaters.com, 15 Chemical imbalances, 24–25 Chronic stress, 49, 50 workplace, 50 Comorbidity, 79 Compulsive gambling, , 18, 23–24, 25 Constant struggle, 4 Crowded room, alone in, 60–63 Depression disorder, 64–67, 72–74

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), 18, 25 Drugs and psychotherapy, 67 DSM-IV. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) ECT. See Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 74 Faulkner, William, 41 Fear, power motivator, 81–82 Financial clients, 1 crime, 33 decisions and long-term career choices, 44 disasters, 1 FPs, 1, 2, 8, 13, 15, 17, 25, 29, 37–40, 51, 54–55, 59 industry, 1 psychopath, 33–35 risk aversion, 44 -services industry, 6, 10, 12, 33, 50, 67, 72 Finance, 16, 19, 30, 70 Firm, 8, 39, 41, 47, 73 FPs. See Financial professionals (FPs) Freudian theory, 54 Functional gyroscope, 32 GA. See Gamblers Anonymous (GA) Gamblers Anonymous (GA), 19, 22, 23, 26 Gambling addictions, 3, 18–27 General Adaptation Syndrome, 68 Gyroscope, 6 Happy ending, 11 Harmony and moderation, 43–46 Hayes, Edward W., 10

96 INDEX

HFAs. See High-Functioning Alcoholics/High-Functioning Addicts (HFAs) High-Functioning Alcoholics/HighFunctioning Addicts (HFAs), 2–5 Houston adds, 17 Houston asserts, 17 Human behavior, 43 sexuality, 15 Hypochondriac, 49 Immune system, 54, 62 effects on, 46, 49–51 Indecent proposals, 9–10 Inevitable versus avoidable, 58–59 Infidelity, ideal incubator for, 14–15 Kama Sutra-style sex, 47 Low-density lipoprotein (LDL), 58 Magical thinking syndrome, 22 Mania disorder, 64–67 Mask, hiding behind the, 75–77 Masturbation, 13–14 Materialism, 2, 75 Meditation, 70 Mind-body connection, 43, 45 Mirror, 81 Money problems body, effects on harmony and moderation, 43–46 immune system, effects on, 49–51 mind-body connection, 43 and mind, unbreakable bond, 37–42 omnipotent impotence, 46–48 sleep deprivation and insomnia, 52–55 warning signs, 42–43 heart, effects on bipolar disorder, 64–67 crowded room, alone in, 60–63 depression disorder, 64–67, 72–74

inviting the inevitable versus avoiding the avoidable, 58–59 mania disorder, 64–67 mask, hiding behind the, 75–77 mood disorders, 63–64 stress, 59–60, 67–71 mind, effects on alcohol, 4–6 equation, money is only part of, 2 gambling addictions, 18–27 high-functioning addicts, 2–4 sexual misbehavior and promiscuity, 6–18 successful deception, consequences of, 27–35 Mood disorders, 63–64 National Institute of Mental Health, 72 National Sleep Foundation, 52 Negative physical consequences, 45 Omnipotent impotence, 46–48 Page Six Magazine, 11 Pathological gambling (PG), 24 Patrick, William, 62 The Perp Walk, 32, 33 Personal stress, 50 PG. See Pathological gambling (PG) Physical consequences, 53 development and exercise, 43 Poor emotional health, 46 Psychology, 16, 79 win/loss ratio, 38 Psychological disorder, 23–24 pressure, 46–47 Psychosomatic disorders, 37 Rich & famous, extreme lifestyles of, 12–13 Sex, 8–9, 11–12 Sexual indiscrimination, 17–18

INDEX 97

Sexual misbehavior and promiscuity, 6–18 Sleep deprivation and insomnia, 52–55, 65 Social activities/relationships, 42–43 Stress, 50–51, 67–71 warning signs of, 59–60 Substance abuse, 2–3, 5, 6, 43, 82 Suburbialand, 71 Success fueling insatiable excess, 16–17 Successful deception, consequences of, 27–35 Testosterone, 44 Toxic maelstrom, 47

Wall Street, 1, 2, 4, 9–12, 18, 19–22, 31, 33, 46, 46, 49, 52, 66, 69, 72, 75, 76 culture, 37 firm, 4, 19, 21, 39, 76 professionals, 2, 5, 6, 17, 22, 37, 49, 50, 57, 59–63, 69, 72, 75, 80 sex scandals, 7–8 storms, 2 Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope, 30, 31, 37, 42, 48, 59, 63, 70, 83 Warning signs, 42–43 Winkler, Mary Jane, 10 Work spouse, 16–17 Workplace stress, 49

OTHER TITLES IN OUR ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY COLLECTION Jeffrey Edwards, North Carolina A&T State University, Editor • Understanding the Indian Economy from the Post-Reforms of 1991, Volume II: Anatomy of the Indian Economy by Shrawan Kumar Singh • Understanding the Indian Economy from the Post-Reforms of 1991, Volume I: History, Evolution, and Growth by Shrawan Kumar Singh • Business Liability and Economic Damages, Second Edition by Scott D. Gilbert • The Economics of Online Gaming: A Player’s Introduction to Economic Thinking by Andrew Wagner • Global Sustainable Capitalism by Marcus Goncalves, Mario Svigir and Harry Xia • Political Dimensions of the American Macroeconomy by Gerald T. Fox • The Options Trading Primer: Using Rules-Based Option Trades to Earn a Steady Income by Russell A. Stultz • A Guide to International Economics by Shahruz Mohtadi • Foreign Direct Investment: The Indian Experience by Leena Ajit Kaushal • Urban Development 2120 by Peter Nelson • Disaster Risk Management in Agriculture: Case Studies in South Asian Countries by Huong Ha, Lalitha S. Fernando and Sanjeev Kumar Mahajan • The Option Strategy Desk Reference: An Essential Reference for Option Traders by Russell A. Stultz • Disaster Risk Management: Case Studies in South Asian Countries by Huong Ha, Lalitha S. Fernando and Sanjeev Kumar Mahajan • Economic Renaissance In the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Apek Mulay

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Mastering the Moneyed Mind Volume III

Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems Dr. Christopher Bayer

Body and Mind—The Effects of Money Problems is the third book in a series about the psychology of money by Dr. Christopher Bayer, the Wall Street Psychologist. This volume advances readers into an examination of the effect of money problems on the body and mind. It presents research that supports solutions offered throughout the series to fix maladjustments of the mind and highlights the importance of developing a sound grasp of the mind-body connection to ­ensure there is an unbreakable bond at all levels. Strategies for developing stress-free solutions for avoiding depression, in addition to detailed data that point to high recovery rates from depression, offer readers practical, tangible tools for managing real-life, money problems. Pointers on how to avoid The Triggers That Produce Multiple Wounds play a critical role in helping readers to equip their gyroscope (internal compass) to cope with stress. Moneystrewn professions, such as finance, are littered with those who want it all—many of them high-­ functioning addicts to stress, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and the accumulation of money in its pure state. This book offers plenty of stories of excess and closes with a meaningful invitation to the reader: Envision Your Own Eden and the Good Life—words of encouragement to help them consider how much money is enough. Dr. Christopher Bayer is a licensed and certified clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of contributions to the field of psychology. He earned a Certificate of Specialization in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis from New York University's Post-Doctoral Psychology Program in 1982. He is a diplomate fellow of the International College of Prescribing Psychologists (1997), and member of the American Psychological Association, New York State Psychological Association, and Manhattan Psychological Association. His contributions to the field of psychology have been significant, and in addition to his service as a clinical psychologist, he is owner and curator of The Wall Street Psychologist (www.thewallstreetpsychologist.com), Money-Mind 101 (www.money-mind101.com), The Shareholder Activist (www.theshareholderactivist.com), and Forensic Psychology Strategies (www.forensicpsychologystrategiesny.com). Economics and Public Policy Jeffrey Edwards, Editor