In the bear market as a whole, the value dropped from $1180 to below $200.  $1180 to $200 is a reduction of roughly 83%, so you would be losing more than four fifths of your coins' value if you held throughout that period.  In some BTC bear markets it's been even worse.

The trick is putting your coins (the ones that you're not using regularly) in cold storage somewhere that it would take a while to access them, so it takes a lot of thought to dump them and it's not subject to short-term emotions from price movements. 

If you have enough savings that you can still live comfortably if you lose all the coins, HODLing shouldn't be too difficult.