How do you avoid getting 'shaken out' in the short term?
By not panic if I see the price is down, try to analyze more to find if the price will go down for more or go up after a few minutes or hours later. We need to have control over ourselves to stay calm and not panic because that will help us analyze more and see if there is a good time to buy more bitcoin or just wait for a while.
What do you recommend in this case?
I recommend you stay calm, and not panic as I said before, so you can see if those drops are a correction or a downtrend. If you can stay calm, I am sure you will know what you need to do, and if the price still goes down, you will see the best time to buy more at a low price. You should look at the chart to find a good time to buy or sell, but you don't need to watch the chart every minute because that will make you panic if the price is down.
I'm also thinking, if I had a read that the price was going to fall short term before the long, then I could get a better entry, but it almost always takes me by surprise. Is it whales that are swinging their whale dicks, that do that (and thus why I don't see it lining up that way), or is it just me?
If you can analyze better, you will see what is going on the market, and you will not worry about what happened to the market because you already analyze that the situations will not go bad. But if the market is still going down out from your analysis, you will not panic because you have another strategy based on the current market movements.