The Emotional Impact of Fraud and Scams

Now, let’s talk about how this is impacting you.

Scams come in many forms. we have heard of scams related to finding a job, romance (especially online relationships), people posing as IRS agents, calls about your home computer, and many more. Scammers are getting more and more creative, they take advantage of major world events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and it leaves all of us skeptical and on our guard. The people that do these scams are also very good at what they do, and sometimes very smart people are fooled.

Fraud and scams affect people emotionally and mentally, we hope this information here helps you you find ways to help yourself if you’ve been victimized, or what you can do to help a friend or family member who has been victimized.

First of all, these emotional effects are very common:

• anxiety
• shame
• embarrassment
• guilt
• anger
• depression
• fear
• loss of trust in others
• loss of a sense of security
• grief

If you yourself have been scammed, it will be helpful for you to find ways to take care of yourself – such as leaning on your support system of caring family and friends, taking time for self care activities, and not getting caught in negative or distorted thought patterns associated with the fraud/scam.  Here are some suggestions:

Accept the emotions.  Take another look at that list above.  Those are some ugly feelings, right?  When something like this happens, people often suffer through these type of emotions for a long time.  This is normal.  And it also doesn’t last forever – or it shouldn’t.  Many people find that once they stop trying to avoid feeling these things, stop trying to avoid feeling anything at all, and allow the emotions to happen…those emotions start to lose their power over you.  They will lose their intensity.

Find your best supportive family members and friends.  As you continue reading through this page, you’ll find that further down are a few suggestions we make for family members and friends and how to be supportive.  Look for your own people who do these things.  If you find yourself consistently feeling worse after spending time with someone but you can’t pinpoint why, please trust your gut with this and spend less time with that person.  Notice what happens with your thoughts and emotions after talking about this with certain people, and gravitate towards the ones who are helping you feel better, not worse.

Self care.  Self care takes many forms.  I think of self care as three types of things.  One of them is things I can do in a moment to relieve negative thoughts or emotions such as deep breathing, consciously relaxing my shoulders, or stepping out of a situation for a few moments. A second thing is engaging in regular activities that you enjoy.  I think of this as building resilience to be able to handle the stresses of life as they come.  A third thing is having good boundaries.  This means knowing your limits in what you do and say, as well as letting others know how you want to be treated.  You can read a lot more about self care in our handout here on this site by clicking here: Self Care Strategies.

Monitor and change your thinking.  How you are thinking is going to do at least two things:  it will influence your emotional state; and it will motivate some form of behavior.  If you are ruminating about what happened, and focused on negative self-talk, you are going to feel terrible.  Switch your thinking to the things you CAN do.

Right here in this section, I used to have a phrase about forgiving yourself because we all make mistakes.  My perspective on this has changed quite a bit in recent years.  You may very well feel that you need to forgive yourself and that you made a mistake. Actually, you are the victim of a crime.  Having someone steal from you, is not a mistake you have made, which is implied if you feel the need to forgive yourself.  If this does come up for you, try to shift this to working on accepting that this happened, instead of self-forgiveness.

Ask for help when you need it.  You may be telling yourself that you *should* be able to handle this, or that you are making more out of it than you should.  But in reality, we all need help sometimes.  Ask a trusted family member or friend for help.  And if you can’t get your thoughts or emotions back under control, find a counselor to talk to.

Do You Want to Support Someone Who Has Been Scammed?

The following five ideas are about how family and friends can help a person who has been scammed.  These can be helpful to both family and friends AND a person who has been the victim of fraud or a scam.  If you are someone who has been scammed, think about who in your support system can do this.  Know that you need these things.  And, know that you can do these things for yourself, too.

An even better way to support a person you care about is to attend one of my workshops designed for exactly this purpose.  I have created one for family and friends, another for advocacy roles, and another for mental health professionals.  Please check them out!  Here’s a link: Workshops for Supporters of Someone Who Has Been Scammed.

Listen and empathize without judgment.   Offering a shoulder to cry on is a no-brainer. But it’s important to listen and empathize without judging this person. He is probably already judging himself and beating himself up worse than you ever could, and it is a priceless gift to have someone to talk to who will not judge you for a mistake. People who have been scammed could always use someone to listen without judgment while they process what has happened and figure out how they go forward.

Don’t say…

“What were you thinking?”

“How could you be fooled by that?”

“I would never have fallen for that.”

“Everybody knows about that scam.”

Scammers play on people’s emotions, needs and fears. Sometimes we can be more easily fooled when the scammer presents an easy way to get something we want very badly, or a way to avoid something we are very afraid of. The way our brains tend to work in these situations makes it easier for a scammer to get what they want out of us. These statements only bring on even more embarrassment, shame and self-doubt.   This isn’t helpful!

Remind them this does not mean they are stupid. Scammers are extremely good at what they do. This is worth repeating!  Scammers are EXTREMELY good at what they do!  They use tactics based in human psychology to get people to miss important clues that something is not as it seems. One way they do this is to spend a lot of time talking with the person they want to scam to gain credibility, such as in romance or “sweetheart scams.” Another is to emphasize that the person must act quickly to avoid a problem (like the IRS scams) or to gain something (such as a job). Scammers often sound very friendly and concerned about the person they are trying to scam.

These are just a few examples of the skills scammers use to their advantage and it is important to encourage the person you care about to look at the situation realistically and determine what made her vulnerable, instead of concluding that she “must be stupid” if she fell for a scam.

Focus on what can be done. It is very common for someone who is in (or has been in) a very difficult situation to think endlessly about all the things he wishes he would have done differently. People get emotionally “stuck” in this sometimes, and for many reasons can’t get out of this unhelpful thought pattern.

Encourage him to focus his energy on the things he can control, not the things he can’t.   One thing that tends to help a person get “unstuck” is to take some kind of action to make things better, no matter how small it is. For instance, if the person you care about feels better by:

• Getting educated on scams or psychological tactics scammers use to prevent getting scammed again, or
• Getting involved with an organization that supports people who have been scammed, or
• Reporting the crime

…then encourage him to do it. These are positive actions that help people heal. They are also focused on the future instead of the past, which can help shift a person’s attitude to see the situation as a lesson learned and a mistake instead of feeling like a complete failure in life.

Talk about self-forgiveness. I mentioned above that I used to think that a person needs to forgive themselves, and after all the years of working with people that this has happened to, I have shifted to helping them accept what has happened, and focus on what is in her control to start the healing process. This is one of the hardest areas of healing for someone who experienced a scam.  There is such a strong sense of shame, and so much victim-blaming in our society, that most people in this situation feel they made a mistake and need to forgive themselves. But. Scamming is a crime.  If a person is assaulted and robbed when they leave a grocery store in the middle of the day, we do not say the person made a mistake and needs to forgive themselves.  Scamming is as much a crime as that and she did not choose to have this happen to her.   The person who was scammed may feel like a complete failure in life after they realize what has happened. She loses sight of the fact that although the consequences may be harsh, it is not a statement about who she is as a person, or how smart she is or isn’t. Encourage her to accept the situation and move towards healing and this can hopefully help her to find peace of mind again.

You may consider checking out this extremely helpful website for additional information and resources: https://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/victims/support.htm

If this information has been helpful, we would love to hear from you.  We also want to hear about ways we can improve this page, too.

If you get the book, Cathy would love feedback on it, and a review on Amazon would be appreciated very much.

Do you think that working with a counselor would help you?  We haven’t yet come across any mental health professionals that specialize in how scams affect people.  However, if you decide to try this to help yourself, look for someone who has experience working with crime victims and trauma.  A good way to find these therapists are through victim advocates at your local law enforcement or county prosecuting attorney offices.

Disclosure: My primary business is providing counseling services. Please know that I may receive a small compensation on some links on our site, including the one to purchase the book above.  As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I encourage you to base any purchases on what you feel will be of benefit to you.