My first big lesson: The danger of 'getting back to even'

Been trading equities and forex for about five years now, primarily discretionary long/short on a daily timeframe. One of the toughest lessons early on wasn't about strategy, but psychology: the insidious trap of trying to "get back to even" after a significant loss. I remember a particularly rough week where I took a few hits on $SPX puts, nothing catastrophic individually, but they compounded. Instead of stepping back and reviewing, I started pushing trades with larger size and less conviction, essentially just trying to erase the red on my P&L. I forced a couple of longs that weren't there, doubled down, and ultimately dug myself into a much deeper hole than if I had just accepted the initial drawdown. It’s a classic revenge trading scenario, but at the time, it felt like a rational attempt to recover. Now, a hard rule is to walk away after hitting a daily or weekly loss limit, no matter how small or large the prior losses were.