once bitten and twice shy I can understand. I think everyone who trades has gotten burned somewhere at some time. not necessarily to the same degree.
The important thing to remember is to control your emotions. Fear and Greed are what drive the stock market. Greed makes it go up, fear makes it go down. Manipulators use tools to affect a reaction in one of those emotions to get the heard to move in one direction or the other.
The first step is to control your emotions and recognize when you are being manipulated. Once you have mastered your own emotions then you can try and recognize the emotions of everyone else (the herd). Do that and you can get ahead of the game.
Invest with your head, not your heart. If you find yourself reacting emotionally (either one) step away from the computer and calm yourself down, and think long and hard. Emotions usually lead to mistakes.