Psychology of a victim

[Igulinka]

Thank you Keira. Those are very good articles you wrote. I am hoping your detailed explanation will help other victims to understand and accept that they were hypnotized, humiliated, put spells on and that was only a reason they did things for the scammers normally would never do. My life got happier when I finally understood that and realized there was nothing I could do us anyone who can be hypnotized can be scammed. That's why I spread the message around. Thank you once again

[keira]

Hi Igulinka, thank you for your reaction and for spreading the message. There are many manipulative techniques which are widely known but there are many which are only „relatively“ widely known, they are very evil and sometimes mentioned as „forbidden“, the aim is to use every possible method to make the victim do what the manipulator wants, including for example worsening somebody´s mental illness while he thinks the manipulator is his friend, or how to hypnotize somebody to commit a crime (in fact romance scammers do this too, it is advised to do in a way that the victim thinks he is helping, or through fear, or paradoxically through faith in God, these are typical examples and scammers do it so it seems they are really educated in these techniques, but there are many other methods). Psychologists who teach these techniques argue that they should be publicly known so if somebody becomes a victim it´s just his fault that he was not informed. This used to be always a repulsive topic for me, I did everything to surround myself with honest people and got rid of manipulators, or if it was a negative group I went away, so when the scammer was manipulating me I thought it´s just internet, what can he do to me, but after my experience with romance scam when I read stories of so many victims with so huge losses and psychological damage it opened my eyes and I realized that the consequences can be really serious!

I would like to stress once more how important is to stop every communication with the scammer, that means not reading, not listening, not looking at, not thinking about, just ignore and go away.

Scammers „re-program“ your unconscious mind so that you do what they want. They are in a very close contact with the victim, it´s because if they want to pull another money from the victim „repetition“ is necessary, they constantly have to „update“ themselves in the victim´s mind. If the victim is already under their influence, only a small impulse is needed to elicit hypnotic phenomena (suggestions) – in other words „do what the scammer wants“. It´s similar as if for example you are hypnotized to relax at a thought of a certain picture or other impulse, the more you repeat it the easier it will be. If there is a long enough pause, the effect will be smaller. That´s why the victim needs to be completely „scammer-free“ .

I have already revealed so much about my scam that I will give away one more thing just to illustrate the power of repetition. On the fourth day after sending the money, after I already reported it to the police and had been playing with them for a few days, I was so calm, I thought everything´s going to be all right, I already knew they are scammers who want only my money (although I didn´t know about Nigerian romance scam yet), I was disgusted with them. I knew they want to send me some link to an internet banking, I was sure whatever it is, I would not open it because I thought it would definitely be some virus that would destroy my computer. The problem was that although I reported it to the police, they didn´t give me any advice and didn´t tell me what is this all about, they just listened to me shortly describe what happened and than said I should write it in detail in email through the weekend (it was Friday). I asked if I should stop communicating with them and they said I shouldn´t! So I continued to read their messages and that was a fatal mistake! I don´t know if at the police they downplayed this because they had no idea about online Nigerian romance scam, but if they knew, then they definitely didn´t know about the power of hypnos i s.

Because although I was completely calm already, I felt absolutely OK, I knew they are just cheaters who want money, so I was sure I don´t have to do anything to save somebody, it´s all about just my money, once the scammer started to threaten and command me to open the link, I did it, knowing I would destroy my computer. That means my feeling that I´m already OK and scammers don´t have power over me doesn´t mean that´s true. I think many victims who promise they will not send another money they mean it seriously in that moment, but they make a mistake that they don´t stop communicating with the scammer and so they are very easily pulled into a hypnotic trance again. I don´t know how long time is needed to free from it, but I think most secure is not to meet the scammer who scammed you, never again. If you want to bait, then other scammers and be very careful and stop in time, or if you are very hypnable, then maybe it´s better not to bait at all.

Although I´m hypnable enough, still not that hypnable, because despite all what I wrote, I didn´t send another money, I didn´t fly or go anywhere they wanted, I didn´t desperately fall in love with the scammer, I didn´t believe anymore that he is innocent (although I gave him a chance to prove it), I relatively easily separated from them, I know for many victims it´s much harder. So if it was so hard for me to resist hypnotic suggestions, I can imagine how hard it is for others who are pulled much more into the scam. Victims deserve sympathy and understanding, not to condemn. It´s great that here is this site with so many helpful people!

[keira]

I still didn´t give up finding out what happened. Writing here quite helps me in organizing my thoughts. I was thinking about what was conscious and what uncounscious, what was voluntary and what was involuntary, and as hypnos is needs cooperation, then when I started to cooperate?

I certainly started to cooperate and I had my own motives, but still there was something so automatic and scary that when it was over it left me in a state of total helplessness and despair, because I already wasn´t sure about anything in me, what horrible thing I would do next, so the best would be if I was deprived of my rights. I didn´t understand how a no-obligation conversation could change in one moment to such a nightmare like if I was sitting in a train without breaks running down the hill and all rational thoughts were just flashing by like trees seen from a window of that train and I couldn´t grab them...

If I think about when was that moment I started to cooperate, I think that a big turning point was when I started to imagine that he is OK. What I thought consciously is that I´m only giving him a chance while still keeping in mind that he is not that OK because he is manipulating and hiding something and there were signs that he is literally bad and who knows who he is. I was thinking all the time that I´m in control of the situation because I know that he is not OK. I just didn´t know about the power of my imagination. And this is a BIG WARNING for me that I should be very careful what I imagine. Because while I was consciously cautious about him, my imagination persuaded my unconscious mind that he is OK.
Now I realized that I´m doing this all the time that even if somebody is despised I´m talking to him as he was OK and that is why he feels good when talking to me, but I couldn´t do this without imagining that he is OK and with looking at the world from his perspective, otherwise he would feel the insincerity. Usually in life people are greatful for this and don´t abuse it, so I never had to think about it that it could be dangerous. People are usually not predators who prey on others this way. So how to do this? Is it even possible to do this without imagination and empathy? Maybe I just should accept the fact that sometimes there can be somebody who plays false game from the beginning preying on my moment of increased suggestibility to exploit me. But next time at least I will know why that happens. There are people who just denounce somebody who they think that he did something bad without giving him another chance, they call themselves „decisive“ and people like me are „undecisive“ for them, but I always thought that this is about tolerance, flexibility and understanding.
I don´t know what will be next, but I think now I´m learning to be aware of when I start to imagine and I know in that moment that I will become biased and suggestible and therefore irrationally do something that is in favor of that person and it can bring me troubles. I had situations when this happened since then and I am already able to be aware of this state of mind, but still I couldn´t manage to be rational in that moment. I´m still learning how to manage it. I think I should have asked somebody for advice, it would be so easy and the rational solution was so easy too after I thinked it through when I already wasn´t under pressure, but in that special moment it just didn´t come to my mind, I wanted to help those people so much in that moment and I didn´t want to prolong their suffering. Fortunately I didn´t cause any trouble or harm, but there was a much safer solution if I was thinking rationally – but those people should wait and in this case I solved the problem immediately and the best I could do in that moment. But it was a warning for me that it was again that state of mind, I did things automatically, and in some other situation it could end badly if somebody was preying on me.
As suggestibility is a mechanism as old as mankind, it definitely must have a big purpose, maybe one of them is to help your fellow while ignoring all the obstacles and seeing only the goal and doing everything to solve the problem being capable of using many times bigger effort that one can imagine. So it is some innate mechanism that cheaters like these exploit.
So there was a moment where I started to cooperate, but later I came to a moment when I couldn´t stop, it was automatic, robot-like, I couldn´t stop that „train“, it was already too late.

[keira]

I was thinking also about my motivation to cooperate, it was definitely much about curiosity, I think that was my biggest motivation, I wanted to know what is behind, because it was not typical for anything I could imagine, I wanted to solve the puzzle. Probably that´s why I fell out of hypnos i s when I realized they are cheaters, my motivation decreased, much of the puzzle was solved. After that there were moments without communication with them when I felt absolutely OK and I thought nothing can bring me back. But still they had a big impact on me, although I knew I shouldn´t be afraid, the communication with them and the pressure brought me back! I felt big anxiety, but I remember that there was also curiosity. It ended only after I found this site, I had no more reason to talk to them because I learned everything from here. This finding gave me some power back, because now I know it was not some unknown power that controlled me, but it was my suggestibility and hypnos i s needs cooperation and motivation for cooperation. And I don´t have motivation anymore to do anything for the scammers because I know it would not bring me anything. All that would be just lies and manipulation, I learned everything about this type of scam (and other types) from serious sites like this. Scammers will never tell you the truth, they just want another money! It is very important to be clear about your motivations.

Another thing I learned is the importance of confusion. Now I know that this works on me very well. In the beginning of this thread I wrote that I would visit a therapist that helped me lot in my life. I didn´t do it yet but I was thinking about how he was doing that and it seems very much that he was using the confusion technique on me. I had been thinking many times about how was that possible that only one sentence that he told me made such a big change in my life. It was something unbelievable. And this happened more times! He knew about the power of my imagination much more than I did. I remember that he always before he got to the point was talking very quickly to me things that were not related to the actual topic and then bang – the suggestion came. That sentence always holded some imagery and I remember that after the session I was imagining it very often. But I remember while I was sitting there with him I was many times angry that he is wasting my time and money and then when he told me that sentence I was angry even more, because I was surprised that this is the point? That´s all? Is he crazy that he thinks that this will help me? But actually it did help me. So it really didn´t matter what I was consciously thinking about it, my unconscious mind did the work automatically. Of course it was not easy, but I suddenly had that power to cure myself while in normal conditions it would be impossible, those were problems I had for many years, practically from my childhood. I was thinking many times about how was that possible, because I knew if somebody else would tell me the same it wouldn´t work. But the point is that he told it in a state of increased suggestibility when my attention was focused on him.

[keira]

I found this on the internet, that these are the vulnerabilities manipulators exploit:

- naïveté - victim finds it too hard to accept the idea that some people are cunning, devious and ruthless or is "in denial" if he or she is being victimized.
- over-conscientiousness - victim is too willing to give manipulator the benefit of the doubt and see their side of things in which they blame the victim.
- low self-confidence - victim is self-doubting, lacking in confidence and assertiveness, likely to go on the defensive too easily.
- over-intellectualization - victim tries too hard to understand and believes the manipulator has some understandable reason to be hurtful.
- emotional dependency - victim has a submissive or dependent personality. The more emotionally dependent the victim is, the more vulnerable he or she is to being exploited and manipulated.

I like this very much, unfortunately everything 100% fits on me. I don´t really know how to change these things in my life, especially when some traits have their bright side to, like self-doubting, seeing my faults, understanding the other person... All those mechanisms appear automatically. I can learn to be more assertive and learn to say no, or now I learned again more about people´s bad sides and I feel that I am not so tempted to believe they are good anymore, but for example I don´t know what to do with that denial, many times it takes time until I admit that I was victimized, but maybe that´s improving gradually so maybe in the future I will be able not to be tempted into denial.

Another thing that I want to mention is that cheaters using hypnotic techniques can operate face to face too and in addition to the techniques I mentioned before in my post (they are telling a story about their ill wife, or 2 or more accomplices are asking you at the same time but every one of them about a different thing while creating confusion in you, like what is the time, how to get somewhere, showing you a map or something else that you would focus on, pretends injury...) they can use touching too! There are another induction techniques that involve touching, I saw varieté hypnotists to do it. And there is a famous handshake technique. So my advice for myself is that when a stranger wants to get into interaction with me, I shouldn´t be focused on him too much, don´t stare in his eyes, but be aware of the real situation, and that is that an untrustworthy person (yes, everybody who I see first in my life is an untrustworthy person! ) is telling me something, and I´m aware of where I am, where are other people, where is my bag etc., and expect money request. I don´t know if I will be able to be so aware of everything and to be so paranoid, but if I would be a victim at least I would know why that happened and this is quite a comfort for me.

[katie.west]

I'm crushed for 10months I was scammed in my gut I had a feeling he was a scammer claimed he was army in Afghanistan needed help with taxes in states or he'd lose his house then he needed my assistants for food ahhh my cousin is marine and I know better at the end he said he needed money to buy his way out of his contract lol that's when I'd had enough I posted his fb profile on scammhaters United 2other women also had the exact scammer saying the same B's to them I'm furious that scammers use pictures of men of Valor to scam women how sick the man in pictures needs his privacy but should also be aware of this who ever he is
.