This is a very tough thing to fix, and I don't think anyone can give you a concrete answer.
My advise to you would be to:

Take a short break (3 days or so)
Relax, do something fun every day
Watch videos for a couple of days after that and try to learn something.
Think about the things you learned and think about appyling them, and how you're going to succeed.

Then start playing then and go into fuck you mode.
Often times when you lose confidence, you let players run over you, and wait until you can cooler them.
Switch it around and be aggressive, let them do something about it, and not the other way around.
Sit in your chair with broad shoulders and tell everyone to come and get it, while breaking down spots as if you were you teaching them to someone else.

There's many ways you can regain your confidence, but none will work if you don't take a break from poker, as Chael mentioned. 

You could get back in contact with an old friend, or visit your family, go workout, sight seeing, etc.

Personally, whenever I'm passing through a rough patch, I take a break, get a haircut, go to the gym, and order some pizza with some friends. The haircut and the gym help me regain confidence in myself (just looking better), and my friends help me forget about poker for a while.

When you get back to poker, think more about having fun/playing well than winning. Pat yourself on the back when you make a good fold, etc.

Last thing: Taking a break from poker can also mean taking a break from all things poker: RIO, training videos, or even checking the lobbies. It's different for everyone. The break is meant to help you clear your mind, so looking at the games that are running and that you're missing can be terrible for you. Remember, there's always another table, there's always another hand.

Hi Daz,

It sounds like you have become overly concerned/obsessed with winning. Which is something that happens to all of us especially after a very long period of NOT winning.

I myself experienced a multi-month downswing that lasted several months back in 2010. I was just taking shots at 400NL and then got doomswitched. Had to move down to 200NL. Then down to 100NL. Then down to 50NL, and still couldn't beat it.

I ended up quitting poker for the next few years because of it. But finally, I realized that I wasn't addressing the root cause.

The root cause was my mental expectation of thinking I should be winning.

All we can do is play each hand our best. Even if we do this, there is no way we can expect to win $X in a day. We might play our best and still lose, but the whole premise of poker is that in the long run we will win by continually playing our best.

Like you, I sometimes find myself chasing losses especially after starting a session down a couple BI immediately. But we need to remind ourselves that poker is just one long game. One really really long game. And even if you take a break for 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, the game will always be there when you get back.

I'm not sure if you're a pro or not, but it can be very frustrating when poker is your only source of income. I tried to be a pro in 2008 and I didn't even make it past 2 months before I got fed up and started looking for a real job. But this was mainly due to my mental game weaknesses. As many have said, poker is the best secondary job, but the worst primary job.

As the others have said, some time off can make a world of a difference.

Hey Daz,

I happen to agree with what the rest are saying back to you. I think a break from the game is definitely in need. Think of it as a much needed vacation from poker, and plan on doing some things that aren't poker related at all, to get you're mind off of all of this. Take a long enough vacation so that when you come back to the tables, you're inspired and motivated to play because you haven't in a little bit. I'm kinda going through the same thing at the moment, but not as bad as you because I don't rely on poker for my main source of income. For me, it's a second source of income along with my real job which is my first. 2013 has been an up and down year for me, and it looks like I'm gonna be ending it in the red unfortunately. Even when I do everything right, something goes wrong. I consider myself a good player overall, and I just happen to be getting a lot of bad beats and just not connecting with the board at all. But you know something, that's poker. It has the beauty of winning you a lot of money at times making you feel unstoppable, or it has the ugliness of loosing you a lot of money at times making you feel miserable and depressed. If you think about it, poker is similar to life. There's times when everything is going great and you feel happy, and then there's those unfortunate times when you might happen to lose someone important in your life, have rough times at work, or even have a relationship end, which makes you feel like absolute shit. Life throws tests at all of us. If life wasn't hard at times, I think it would actually be kinda boring and uninteresting. It all about how we prepare for the tests ahead of us and how we embrace it which makes life itself unique, just as unique as poker is. Now, with all of this said, you have options granted to you. You can either: A) Take a vacation from poker and focus on other things for the time being until you're fully inspired and motivated to play and study once again, (not saying you aren't inspired and motivated in the first place, but a rekindle of inspiration is always a plus.) Or B) Keep on grinding it out hoping to embark on an upswing since you're more than capable of doing so, but while grinding, just remember to stay positive and optimistic. I guess my best piece of advice to give you is to wrap this year up and throw it in the fire. Start playing again in 2014. Think of it as a new beginning, where the past is in the past and all you gotta think about is the current time frame. You'll work it out Daz. Like I said earlier, if life wasn't hard at times, it'd be uninteresting. 

Best of luck to you man on and off of the felt and enjoy the new year ahead.         

Hey

Been thinking about your problem, you being a winning professional player for long, and now facing prolong tilt and mental issues 

Everyone here is trying to give you various advice, and im sure you take in consideration advice given, but appareently none helped you yet

My suggestion is that we try all to find core of your problem, by simplly naming various whatever things that come to mind, maybe we get lucky and finally discover whats been bothering you. To me, it does look like some psychological problem, but since im no psychologist at all nor have any connection with the field, ill just try by suggesting you probable things

!1 that came to my mind , and 1 i remembered i had at 1 point, is fear that we will never be succesful and we will remain loser in the game. Everyone is working on their game putting effort but not all succeed, and no matter how confident we are, it still remains little question in back of the mind - what if i never make it!!!??

My suggestion is that, among other things you find peace with the answer to this, it is NOT end of the world if u actually never make it as poker player, new things do not come by to do and work every dayu, but im firm believer there is some big plan for each of us and good things await , whatever future have planned for us, there is never 1 and only exit and way . 

By this, by no means i suggest you turn to other things, just to face teh fear of failure, and accept it as not end of the world, that fear may causing you mental blockage

Of course, you sit and do your best then, but with no fear of failure

Failure is for all human beings, and its on us to stand up and try over and over again till we get there

If you keep the fear in your subconcious, it will deminish your progress and winning capabilities by far

~ this was 1 thing that came to my mind, you keep posting and we think of various solutions, hopefuilly we hit jackpot soon and find that core of your problem,  that really looks psychological

You know this already, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded:

Redefine the meaning of "winning" so that it applies to things you can control. This is a winning poker work day for me:

- Sleep well, breakfast & shower
- Study/warm-up session
- Play 
- Work out, have lunch
- Play
- Put poker down, dinner, relax

When I stay on schedule, I'm productive. When I stray from schedule, not so much. I know this because history tells me so. So I make it a goal to stay on schedule. A day like that goes in the win column, and I feel I have accomplished something. 

Now, when you lose for long periods, stick with your routine as if your life depended on it. When it's your turn to take a downswing, you might as well lose with grace and on schedule. This means that when you're done losing for the day you're done. As long as you've lost on schedule and you've lost by playing well, you have done your job perfectly, and you've won.

Nobody deserves to win dollars. We like to think effort always gets rewarded in poker, but it doesn't. Some people end up as statistical outliers, losing over extended periods of time. When that happens, you can a) make it smooth, or b) make it worse. Most people choose b) because we don't accept losing $ when we play our best, because the brain is not a computer, and it isn't designed to understand randomness.

So we try harder, which won't help at all if you were already playing your best. Then we get frustrated, and we try even harder, and we might change the way we play because we feel like we need to be doing something. But sometimes you just lose, and you're supposed to lose sometimes, because mathematics dictates it. So instead of falling into the must-change-something trap, try to do things the same way every day, as long as it's strategy you know to be correct.

Since you'll always have feelings connected with results, don't try to squash them, because that won't work. Change which results the feelings are connected to (things you can control), and then you can make yourself feel better by doing these things well.

Great post Zen.

I have a schedule setup that includes everything above. My schedule MUST be maintained and will be one of my main goals for 2014. 

I will be taking a break over Christmas till New Year, in the meanwhile i'm playing fewer tables and just playing for the enjoyment and seeing what i feel are my stronger areas and what i need to work on for next year. 

Interestingly, my red line is now horizontal for the first time in a year. i've been doing some things differently - "fuck you" mentality, getting back to being more of a bully at the tables - controlled methodical aggression, not random spaz bets/bluffs. Just trying to take every opportunity in the small pots and putting that big raise in when i feel villain is weak. Sometimes i don't want to raise cos i feel i'm not telling a good story but this is the lower limits and as long as i realize this it might be okay. 

i might have been trying TOO HARD as ZenFish mentioned, instead of letting my subconscious do the work for me at the table. i was expending too much mental energy. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has spared the time to write to me and help me with things, i truly appreciate it and am very grateful for this wonderful, caring community

Daz, I feel your pain. I would really recommend you read or listen to Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living while you are having your downtime. It's helped me a lot with all sorts of (non-poker) issues. In summary - life's not fair, shitty things happen to good people, don't worry about things we can't control, accept the worst that can happen and then make a plan to get a better outcome. Even though I gave you the summary, I'd still get the book - it's calming, constructive and full of practical tips if a bit old fashioned.

Wish you all the best.

there is tons of good advice on here, but the most simple thing I can suggest is:

- make +EV decisions in a vacuum.

As humans it is nearly impossible for us to analyze situations without taking into account environmental effects and macro trends.  Long losing stretches, poor sleep, tragic personal events, all of these things can change the way you analyze and execute a tough decision.  The most important thing is to not plan on winning OR don't try to win.  Don't have a goal for how you're going to win or how much or by when.  Just plan on playing, playing your best, and making the most profitable decision that is in front of you.  Always we need to focus on the decision at hand.  Use past information to give us data to help guide decisions, but don't use it as an excuse to make a -EV decision.

In the middle of a very very bad losing stretch myself I realized that personal goals for profit, hands/hours played, had changed the way I was playing the game.  Instead of sitting down with the plan to play poker and make profitable decisions, I was sitting down with the plan of playing X number of hands over Y number of hours with a goal of making a certain amount of money at the end of the month.  However, as I hit a normal stretch of run bad I TRIED to adjust my play to reach my goals.  I thought the losing was due to poor strategy and I adjusted my strategy and attempted to create +EV situations in order to get back on track.  This process resulted in finding myself in thinner more difficult spots, just as my confidence was deteriorating.  Instead of falling back on basic profitable plays that I understood would work I was attempting to implement new and difficult strategies not because I knew they were profitable but because I was chasing a goal.  I allowed the macro trends of my game (a long losing stretch caused in part by running bad, bad play, etc) to impact my micro decisions.  To the point that my effort to create winning situations was actually making my game worse and worse.

In the end I reached a point of mental rock bottom and it caused me to reconsider how I had been playing.  I realized that I needed to just make the game as easy as possible, and try to play for fun and not to reach some crazy goal of hours/hands or profit.  So I tightened up a lot in a lot of spots.  And I'm sure I'm not playing GTO and observant opponents are probably making some adjustments and maybe I'm losing a little profit in some spots  But conversely I started getting the money in good, and occasionally winning again.  Also the success of correctly analyzing some situations helped to retrain my brain how to think about poker.  How to filter out the noise and focus and make solid evaluations based on available information in the moment.  And that calmed my mind and allowed me to focus on the next hand, and the next decision.  It allowed me to ignore the recent past, and stop stressing about the distant future.

play the game in the present.

your list of things to review in warmups seem very long.  i feel like a better approach is to pick the top 3-4 things you need to improve and give them all your focus for a few weeks or until you feel like you have really mastered(overpracticed) them and then you can remove them from your list and add others.

also work off the felt on your top 3 - use MGOP like analysis on them, do some database review on them, do some math/CREV type work on them, post some HHs in the forums on them.  by attaching each problem from all angles with intense focus is more likely to yield better results than by scattering your focus on 10+ items

stop worrying about your poker and go have a bunch of eggnog or Irish coffee :)

Binge-reading Chatter/Mental Game due to doomswitch. This was one of the greatest reads -> Bump!