How long will it take to get over this scam? What should I do to recover faster?
We hear this all the time, so I guess it's time to say a bit on that subject.
Input wanted! How are YOU recovering? What helps YOU??How victims recover varies from person to person. Many things influence a scam victim's coping skills that affect the time and quality of their recovery.
Age, culture, family upbringing, religious views, prior life experiences, their own feelings of self-worth and mental balance, their own social strength and resiliency, family or friend's support, and other factors all play a role.
Regardless of the factors involved, the only way that a victim recovers is to have desire to recover and put forth their own effort into coping and changing, and making themselves stronger for the efforts. Victims will never forget their experience but they can and do get stronger if they truly try to and do not lie to themselves. You need to be totally honest with yourself.
We have many members who have already talked about "How I got myself into this mess and how I'm fixing things" in our pages. Some are here in this topic, and others are spread around the forum, a few in "Tell Your Story Here."
There you can also read the staff's stories of how and why we got into helping scam victims here at ScamSurvivors.
viewforum.php?f=7I'll just tell you about how a few members here worked at recovery.
These are just a few of the things that others have done in order to put the scam behind them and move forward in a constructive way.
Some members have been interviewed about their scam in order to help other victims, a few in our podcasts and others for newspapers or other media.
We have two staff members who were past scam victims. They started learning about scammers and posting their details for others to be warned, and later working one-on-one with scam victims, both becoming part of the staff eventually. Helping other victims in a direct sense helped both of them recover. This is not a usual way for 99.999% of people, as the time and effort required to learn and perform this crazy job is only for lunatics like the staff.
However, getting yourself educated to the UpsideDown World of lying scammers will help you recover too. Scammers win over you if you believe their lies and their threats about what they will do. Read and learn how they operate, and maybe you can laugh with us at a few of them like we do in our podcasts.
Laughter is the best medicine. Go listen to the podcasts, where you will not only get an education in how scammers work, how victims recover, and what anti-scam people do to fight them, but you get to hear the staff and friends make asses out of ourselves playing silly characters on the phone to scammers.
But they look sillier and stupidier in the end than we do, I hope!
http://scamsurvivors/podcastsA couple other people from our forum help directly in other ways. Some post up scammer emails, profiles, and other details as they come across them. One member cruises the Skype forum and sends blackmailed victims here for help.
Some members educate others of the dangers of scammers after being scammed themselves, and spread the word. They make blogs or websites, post in forums, or tell people face to face.
Some have realized that they have some sort of underlaying issues that may have made the scam easier to fall for the scam such as mental issues or addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling and thrill seeking, cyber-sex addiction) and have sought help for that, as they can hurt recovery and possibly lead to being scammed again if they do not solve that problem.
Some members have found that they were hooked on FB or the online world so much, that they lost touch with the real world outside their pcs. Getting back to doing things other than pushing keys and clicking buttons have helped many get over the scam. It's amazing what a trip to the zoo will do for you. Or getting back to an old hobby or activity you used to like, but somehow lost touch with because you holed yourself up in front of your screen too many hours.
Some members have volunteered in community groups or charities, and given their time to help others in other ways.
Many survivors here take the time to post in this topic or in others to make a recent victim feel less alone, or to suggest a solution that worked for them to put the scam behind them.
What do you do to recover? We would like to hear about it.