Psychology of a victim

[keira]

Here is his answer, he still thought he can manipulate me, but – between us – if he was a gentleman, he wouldn´t make excuses for not paying me back my money, every gentleman interested in me would take the responsibility, because he was the one who pulled me into this situation and I already showed a way more sacrifice to him then he showed to me:

My dear,
I have raid all you wrote, But i want you to understand that it is better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some decency, than fade and wither dismally (James Joyce), All is unceasing and vigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost and the most legitimate in nature without doubt (his philosophy probably... - from Marquis de Sade), if you can remember we had an agreeable storyline,one between us. (sure )

I wanted to feel your passion, I want to feel your pain. I wanted to weep at the sound of your voice. (Joey Lauren Adams - Alive)
But i seems that all human actions have one or more of these seven causes, at frist; chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, doubt, desire. (Aristotle)

 I begged you to assist me with true and clear conscience, but thi,gs later went they way i didn't expect, Jason is a smart hacker, where you away that most of my conversations and yours was hacked, even to the extent of mailing you as my barrister, because he noticed what is going in time, he manipulated me, he played game with my intelligence because i confided in him not to let any other person know about the step i wanted to take.

However in regards to pay your 2750 dollars  I am not the person position to refund you, Jason is an accreedited banker with standtard chartard, They bank managment is away of this illgal act, and the are working on our refund, I will urge you to please relax, meanwhile forward me the payment information of the 2750 dollars you paid for more refference.

Regards.

Then he tried to manipulate me yet, he played as he was totally innocent and still interested in me, I asked him who he is... Then I found romancescam.com and I was advised to stop all the communication and that´s what I did. That is very important, for the healing process but also for legal reasons. I was very surprised, that this is such a big organized crime, I had no idea, even after the police told me they are Africans, I still thought this is something personal and the man on the pictures has something to do with it. Here I learnt that his pictures have been used by scammers for many years, it seems they are very successful with them, all that was very well planned, of course they have been trained this for so many years! This was all new to me, and this was also one of the reasons why even while sending the money I didn´t suspect that this is crime, because I couldn´t imagine that he could so quickly think through and arrange everything. I was very surprised that they cheat with the videochat and that the phone numbers were also redirected.

[ladibyrd]

I think I read most of the posts about the psychology of being a victim. I want to add that you are certainly not alone.
I actually thought I was some sort of split personality. One side saying 'no you won't send money' and the other side was getting in the car and going to WU to send money. I feel like I am losing my mind. It is something deep down, that when I am told to do something I guess I just do it. Many years ago, I was the victim of physical abuse..and suffered many beatings from a husband that was 130 lbs heavier and bigger than I. I think that victim mentality has stayed with me for 50 years. I have been to therapy in the past and think that I need to return. I am still currently in touch with the scammer. It is part of the uncontrollable part of me. Everyday I tell myself, 'Don't answer the texts" and still as soon as I receive a text - I reply. Something just makes me.
I have actually figured out another scam that 'he' is probably participating in. He asked me for ITunes and Vanilla Visa cards. I went on Google and learned that they collect them , then go on Ebay and sell them...so it is just another source of revenue for them.
I have not confided to my family that I have sent money to a scammer and I think that is another reason that I feel so bad. I am very honest with my family, but know that this is something I have to go through alone. This group has really helped me. I come here often to remind myself of the scammer and who he really is. I have been in touch with Sweet K

[Pinky]

First let me say that I am not going to be kind, which is usually my first priority. I speak for myself, and not for the rest of romancescam.com.

I am thoroughly annoyed and angered by your posts. I get that you hope you're helping others. I get that you don't realize you're selfishly trying to help only yourself. But this is a site established on the principles of helping others, empowering victims and stopping criminals.

Get a clue woman. It's lucky for you that I no longer moderate on this site because I'd boot your pathetic, "I'm sorry I'm still a victim," lack of self control, butt.

By continuing to habituate in your scammed persona and worst of all knowingly continuing to communicate with scammers, you are not only insulting, discouraging and thwarting the recovery of other victims, you are EDUCATING and ENABLING criminals to perfect their special skill sets, learn better techniques, discover new resources and worst of all encouraging them to continue hurting others.

If you truly are an obedient good little girl who always follows instructions, try these: BLOCK YOUR EMAIL AND PHONE FROM ANY AND ALL CONTACT WITH SCAMMERS. Then get with a therapist and find out why being a victim all your life is such a great reward for you.

I apologize to staff here for losing my temper. They know I do this when I feel that the work we do here is disrespected and abused.

[keira]

Hi ladibyrd, I understand that feeling of split personality, but please consider also what Pinky says, by supporting these criminals you do harm to other victims. I´d like to share what I´ve found in literature, maybe that helps you understand HOW BAD IS STAYING IN CONTACT WITH THE SCAMMER, and understand yourself. I have read many interesting things about psychopaths recently, in fact I study this topic the last months very intensively.

Psychopaths are people who don´t feel compassion, don´t have conscience, they are emotionally cold, they are capable of perfect hypocrisy, they are charming, they have aggressive predatory (or at least parasitic) tendencies, and other characteristics. According to the stories here, how ruthless the scammers are, how they destroyed so many lives, what else are romance scammers than psychopaths? They are especially those antisocial ones, because psychopatic traits can also have people who are not antisocial, like surgeons, bankers, soldiers, pilots etc., professions that require cool head, determinedness and courage.

These are the professions with most psychopaths: general manager, lawyer, workers in media, sellers, surgeons, journalists, policeman, priest, director, official, and the least psychopaths: people working in health care, craftsman, cosmetician, charity worker, teacher, artist, accountant.

I will write now about those antisocial psychopaths. They are not controlled by their emotions, so they are capable of rational thinking even in situations where most of us fail, they are able to mask their emotional expressions and recognize them in other people. Their only aim is to win over others ! ! ! They make their happiness only at the expense of others. They do only what is good for them, never mind how they damage others. They consider agression as power and politeness as weakness.

[keira]

Empathy is the ability of seeing yourself in somebody else´s shoes, to understand somebody´s frame of mind, to show compassion, understanding. Empathy can be cognitive, motoric or emotional. Probably the emotional part is the most damaged in psychopaths. But psychopaths can still have high emotional intelligence ! ! ! , in the part of recognizing emotions in other people and controlling of the demonstration of his own emotions ! ! ! . Psychopaths with high emotional intelligence are able to FAKE emotions! That´s why they are masters in lying and manipulation! Psychopaths don´t feel deep feelings much or long time, it protects them from depression and anxiety, they don´t suffer from doubts about themselves.

We can distinguish „hot and cold empathy“, normal people feel hot empathy, but psychopats are masters in cold empathy. Psychopaths are good at reading, analysing, assessing and utilizing in their favour what people think, what are their desires, what they are afraid of, but nothing of that touches them emotionally, this is called cold empathy.

There was an experiment, where there were 5 people and one of them was given 100 pounds. The group of normals and a group of psychopaths were asked to guess which of the 5 people has the money. If nobody guessed right, the person would keep the money, but if somebody guessed right, he would lose the money. The group of normals guessed right only in a few percentage, little more than if they would guess blind. But a very high percentage of psychopaths guessed right! They have this instinct to choose the weakest victim.

There is also an article, where they write that when a good and naive child´s psyche is abused and derailed, even if he realizes this as an adult, he learned this role of a victim who always suffers, who always takes the responsibility, even if this responsibility is foisted on him. For this person is difficult to react healthily, and in situations where others would defend themselves, this person feels guilty. With a person like this everybody does what they want, it´s very likely to become abused all his life and unconsciously everywhere be in the role of a victim. Very often they find a partner who plays with him the „game“ he played as a child.

Another interesting article said that psychopaths have something like an empathy „on and off button“. They see others as if a normal person looks at chessmen ! ! ! , but their brain can react on MRI when they intentionally want to empathize with people on the screen. That is the reason why many people consider a psychopath a charming and nice person ! ! !

[keira]

When psychopaths see emotions in other people, the activity of their amygdala in brain is lower than in normal people, but the activity in regions connected with perception and recognition is higher! That´s why they are better in recognizing emotions in others than normal people! They recognize them, but they don´t FEEL them. That´s why they can be very convincing and manipulative. The amygdala is a part of brain which is called the centre of emotional memories, it is responsible for the unconscious processing of emotionally important information.

[keira]

Psychopathy is not treatable. There was somebody who wanted to re-educate psychopaths, but after some 30 years it was found that those patients repeated their crimes much more than psychopaths usually do without treatment. They found out that the effort to change psychopaths contributes to improve their destructive skills!

[keira]

You can meet psychopaths in real life too, there was a very interesting article about this, and there were many common signs with the internet scam. There are psychopaths who come out of the blue to your life, very quickly intrudes into every field of your life, they create false closeness, they pretend that they tell you their „biggest secrets“ so that you tell them yours, they create a relationship by mirroring your speach, facial expressions, body movements. Then they start to ask for favour, it can be moving into your house or money. The article suggests to ask yourself if a person who asks you for bigger and bigger favours is a true friend, although he didn´t do for you anything? Doesn´t he has any other friends? Are they happy if they ruin your friendships in favour of themselves? The article suggests not to take part in their good friends game, not to tell private information to them.

Does it remind you of something? You are just a toy in the hands of the scammers!!!

[keira]

One of the articles suggests that their game ends usually when the victim reveals their true character and intentions and DISAPPEARS FROM THEIR VIEW ! ! ! , or some outer force stops them or deprives them of power. Then they feel very sorry – for themselves!

Professionals have only one advice when meeting a psychopath: R U N A W A Y ! I agree with this, because I learned now, that although I have an instinctive bad feeling when meeting a psychopath, this bad feeling disappears after a certain time. These information about psychopaths are not completely new to me, but probably I wanted to see people better than they are in reality, I knew there are ruthless people, but I still kept thinking that they have some limits they don´t cross, because I couldn´t imagine that somebody has no conscience at all. Please read the victims´s stories, there are many horrible ones, you have to realize how dangerous they are, what are they capable! If I recall some people I met in my life or when I read the stories of victims here, this explains everything. And it´s interesting that there is fMRI evidence that psychopaths´ brain function differently than normal people´s. This also explains why I can´t resist scammers, they just simply gain my emotions by playing weak, vulnerable, they made me to sympathize with them, and than it´s impossible for me to decline help when they need. But after internet romance scam I learned that the damage is not only about losing money and psychological discomfort, but one can become even a perpetrator of crime unconsciously ! ! ! ! And this is a really horrible finding for me! So the only solution is RUNNING AWAY WHEN MEETING A PSYCHOPATH and NEVER GET INTO DEEPER DISCUSSION WITH HIM, and most of all NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT with him!

[keira]

There was an article about relationships with psychopaths. That was interesting too, very similar to internet romance scam. First of all the psychopath „reads“ you very quickly and pulls the right strings, he tells you on the first date how beautiful you are, unbelievably intelligent, funny etc., he surprises you with a trip to a romantic place, buys you presents, he wins your heart very quickly! Then he convinces you that you are soul mates! He mirrors you, he likes the same things as you, he has similar life experiences etc. He gains your sympathy, they love when you feel sorry for them, so they make up sad stories like cancer, car accident, or when they talk about their ex-girlfriends, they cheated on them, were crazy or hurt them some other way, but they say it because they want to make the illusion that they are the good ones and others hurt them! They lie and manipulate to amaze you, they lie about their profession, connections, charity activities. But after a certain time the phase of devaluation comes and nothing is good what you do for them, this makes you think that he is the good one and you feel inferior. The only way how to free yourself from a psychopath is to STOP ALL CONTACT WITH HIM ! ! ! Don´t meet him, don´t pick up phone calls from him, don´t answer to messages and email!

[ladibyrd]

I apologize to anyone that thought I was intentionally harming another person on this site. I thank you for the swift kick in the butt. I need it. Thanks to everyone that replied to my remarks. I was only trying to share, not to lead anyone on the wrong path.

[Pinky]

I sent this privately, but I think it might help here as well:

Got it. Apology accepted and appreciated.

I may have been harsh but I wanted to drive a point home. Keira has written several posts about scammers as sociopaths. All that she writes is true. I hope it makes sense to you. Scammers are the closest things to pure evil on this earth and it makes me crazy when anyone does anything that isn't tormenting them and making their life the hell it should be for what they do.

They exist to hurt people. They thrive on it. When they continue on with you they are looking for new ways to hurt you. They celebrate that you are in their power and control. As long as you even read their messages, they are happy. When victims disappear without even hinting what the scammer did that gave them away, it angers and frustrated them but best of all, they lose power and control. They hate that. Even worst punishment for them is to find their lucky charm profiles exposed here for other victims to become aware of. They lose money, power and control.

I totally enjoy getting the frequent death threats from scammers. It means the good guys won another battle.

Please drop your scammer like a hot rock. Disappear to him. Change your phone number. Close your email. Start a new life. Take back your power.

[JulieNP]

Hi - Pinky is absolutely correct (not that she needs me to tell her that ). It is one of the things I enjoy most about baiting - the art of wasting their time, the thrill of knowing they are counting their $$ before they get it, the chase when they keep trying to call me and I ignore their calls and texts because they believe there is a big payday coming and finally knowing that when they realize there is no payday that their day is ruined and hopefully some other lucky gal is being given enough time to do her homework before she gets sucked into their scam.

I find it interesting that when I am not in the mood to play with them that I will get an email telling me they have to break it off because they can't be with a woman who isn't who she says she is! Oh you mean obedient and dedicated to your bull?!?

ladybird this too shall pass and I concur you need to stop contact immediately as I don't believe you have enough internal strength to play with your scammer and there is certainly enough documentation on this site alone to support that SweetK is a POS and deserves to rot in hell.

Julie

[ladibyrd]

This is Day Two of no communication with the scammer... thank you everyone for your support

[Avalon1]

Ladibyrd, this is good. It will take its time, that you can get over it. Take your time and be strong, don't fall back, resist their temptations and be aware, that they will try to come back on you and pull you again into another scam.
Find your own way to heal. Write down your story in a diary or read other vic's stories, go to the baiter section and see there is a way we can disturb and fight them.
Some of the baiter stories made my laugh tears, try to laugh again. It will help you to recover.