The Value of Retelling Your Story

This is especially true for the parts that are painful, triggering, and often get overlooked or avoided.

Retelling your story can be painful but it helps

It can feel like reliving the trauma when scam victims retell their stories because they are revisiting painful memories and emotions associated with the experience. Victims may feel anxious, scared, or overwhelmed as they recount the details of the scam, which can trigger the same fight-or-flight response they experienced during the initial incident.

Despite the potential discomfort, there can be benefits to retelling the story. Firstly, it can help with residual denial, guilt, and shame by providing an opportunity to process the experience and work through any negative feelings that may be lingering. Victims may feel guilty or ashamed for falling for the scam or for not realizing sooner that it was a scam. By telling their story, they can receive validation and support from others who have gone through similar experiences, which can help alleviate those feelings of guilt and shame.

Retelling the story can also help victims gain a sense of control over the situation. Scams can make victims feel powerless and vulnerable, but by speaking out and sharing their stories, victims can reclaim some of that power and take steps toward healing and recovery.

Finally, retelling the story can raise awareness about the scam and help prevent others from falling victim to it. Victims may feel a sense of purpose and accomplishment by sharing their stories and potentially helping others avoid a similar fate.

Retelling Your Story Can Be Difficult

Retelling your story can be a difficult but necessary step toward healing and recovery for scam victims. It provides an opportunity to process emotions, gain a sense of control, and potentially help others.

When scam victims retell the difficult aspects of their stories, it can help them process the trauma or grief in several ways:

• It can help victims make sense of what happened to them. Telling their story allows them to organize their thoughts and emotions surrounding the experience, making it easier to process and understand what they went through.
• It can help victims acknowledge and accept their feelings. By sharing their story, victims can express their emotions in a safe and supportive environment, which can help them process their feelings and come to terms with the impact of the scam on their lives.
• It can help victims develop a sense of control over the situation. When retelling their story, victims can assert their agency and gain a sense of empowerment, which can help them feel less helpless and more in control of their lives.
• It can help victims desensitize to the traumatic memories. Retelling the story repeatedly can help victims become desensitized to the difficult memories and emotions associated with the experience, which can reduce the emotional intensity of the memories over time.
• It can help victims develop a new narrative. Retelling the story can help victims reinterpret the events and develop a new narrative that emphasizes their strength and resilience in the face of adversity.

By retelling their story, scam victims can process traumatic memories and gain a sense of control over the situation. Over time, the memories may become less painful and less controlling, allowing victims to move forward with their lives in a more positive and empowered way.

Lashing Out

It’s normal for traumatized scam victims to feel angry or resentful towards the person or entity asking them to share the details of their traumatic experience.

Victims may feel that they are being forced to relive painful memories or that they are being put in a vulnerable position by discussing their trauma with others.

They may also feel a sense of frustration or hopelessness if they don’t feel that others can truly understand the impact that the scam had on their lives.

In some cases, victims may lash out at the people trying to help them by asking about those painful details. This is because retelling the story can be an emotionally intense and overwhelming experience, and victims may feel triggered or overwhelmed by the process.

It’s also important to note that each victim’s response to retelling their story will be unique, and some may find it more difficult than others. Mental health professionals and victims’ assistance advocates who work with scam victims are trained to provide support and guidance in a compassionate and non-judgmental manner and can help victims work through any negative emotions or reactions that may arise during the retelling process.

Your Traumatic Memories

Facing traumatic memories can help the mind to recover from the original traumatic experience by allowing the person to process the event and integrate it into their life story in a way that is less distressing.

Traumatic memories can be stored in the brain in a fragmented, disorganized way that makes them difficult to process and integrate into existing memory networks. By facing the memories and actively processing them, individuals can begin to make sense of what happened and create a more coherent narrative of the event.

Retelling the story of the traumatic experience can also help to desensitize individuals to the memories, reducing their emotional intensity and making them less distressing over time. This can help to alleviate symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that may be associated with the trauma.

Facing traumatic memories can also help individuals to regain a sense of control over the event. When someone experiences trauma, they may feel helpless or powerless in the face of the overwhelming experience. By actively engaging with the memory and taking steps to process it, individuals can regain a sense of agency and empowerment, which can contribute to a greater sense of resilience and well-being.

It’s important to note that facing traumatic memories can be a difficult and challenging process, and it’s not something that should be undertaken alone.

Our Objective

We are not a mental healthcare provider.

But we know that telling your story – helping you to tell your story is an essential part of your recovery.

When victims are asked to tell their stories, they omit much and usually focus on the parts that are easier to tell. But retelling all of it is important for the above reasons.

Often it is more than just the pain of retelling that is holding a victim back. Those memories are shrouded in shame, guilt, self-blame, denial & uncertainty, and anger. It is often easier to tell when surrounded by your peers than it is with your therapist.

Mental health professionals who specialize in trauma can provide support, guidance, and evidence-based interventions to help individuals navigate the process of facing traumatic memories and recovering from the original traumatic experience.

Each of you should take what you have written and share it with your therapist every week to explore both the deeper meaning behind and specific aspects that may still cause deep pain.

This is the way!