Thankyou everyone - especially B&E, there is empathy out there....

Thankyou everyone - especially B&E, there is empathy out there.

I had a bit of  lets say....'emotional time-out' and watched a movie.
I think you are right this place does my head in.  

Sorry I probably didn't help much with everyone else's stress none
of you deserve that. You are all human beings.
I'm very embarrassed.  It's hard to keep things in perspective when
stuff like this happens... to be honest it still doesn't feel like it is happening.
I know it's happened but knowing is very different to dealing with it.
Its shame, guilt, denial, regret, fear... hopes of maybe being able to relax about
money for last 20 years (at least for a short while) and then it being suddenly taken away.

To answer you questions trav, had a few very minor investments of a few hundred to couple of thousand a few years ago sort of to see what it was all about.... oh and comm. bank float which allowed me to just make the deposit on a small house with the first home owners grant and my savings (had a casual job for 9 years).  No I didn't have much of a plan and relied too much on the marketing of the companies to make me feel I was doing a sensible thing. No I didn't do enough research. Way too trusting. No social life or direction in life either so tended to get a bit obsessed with ups and downs and it was a bit of an escape I think. The house I bought before the prices rose but I didn't really use it much as I felt lonely there. Eventually sold it after fixing it up and moved back in with parents. So I had all this money and no life to speak of and no goals and no career and a massive fear of failure and anxiety about most things.
To go from saying $20,000 is the limit of what I'll put into stocks because realistically that was all I could afford if I wanted to have an independent life..... to this .... it still hasn't sunk in. Somehow I lost the ability to
gauge what I was actually risking as I got more comfortable with the stocks and put more in. Had a fair bit of other really crap stuff happen over last 18mths so maybe that had something to do with the perspective thing being skewed as well. I think at some point it all just became numbers to me because I just didn't want to deal with it and still don't, haven't looked at my financial stuff in two years.

I used to be one of those people who thought buying a lottery ticket was irresponsible!...seriously.

Take it from me if you are choosing between going on a holiday and buying into a stock.......
take the &*$%ing holiday!!!!! or buy a car or a nice meal and spend you life with other people.

Again sorry for scaring people, I will try to get some help with things. Sorry if any of my post doesn't make sense it's very very late.... but I felt I needed to explain myself after disrupting the thread.