Hell is Other People – Jean-Paul Sartre Analysis of Judgment

About This Article

Scam survivors often experience a second layer of trauma through social judgment, objectification, and loss of agency after the crime ends. Drawing on existential philosophy, this dynamic reflects the psychological harm that occurs when individuals are defined solely through the perceptions of others rather than their full identity. Family members, institutions, and even peer spaces may unintentionally reinforce shame by reducing survivors to stereotypes of incompetence or failure. Over time, external judgment can become internalized, creating cycles of self-blame and fear. Recovery requires recognizing these dynamics, reclaiming personal narrative, and engaging with supportive environments that emphasize understanding over evaluation. Restoring self-compassion and agency allows survivors to move beyond imposed identities and rebuild a stable sense of self.

Note: This article is intended for informational purposes and does not replace professional medical advice. If you are experiencing distress, please consult a qualified mental health professional.

Hell Is Other People: A Scam Survivor’s Guide to the Judgment of the World

Hell is other people – a unique concept by Jean-Paul Sartre

When the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his famous line, “Hell is other people,” he was not talking about the annoyance of a neighbor’s loud music or the frustration of a rude cashier. He was describing something far more profound, a specific and terrifying form of psychological torment. For Sartre, hell is the unrelenting, objectifying, and judgmental gaze of others. It is the moment you are forced to see yourself not through your own eyes, but through the eyes of someone else, freezing your fluid, free consciousness into a fixed, often cruel, object.

As a survivor of a relationship scam, you know this hell intimately. You have lived it. You are living it. While Sartre’s characters were trapped in a single room, your own version of this existential nightmare can feel just as inescapable, playing out in the minds of your family, your friends, your colleagues, and even strangers on the internet. Your journey through recovery is not just about healing from the actions of the scammer; it is about learning to navigate this new, hostile world where you feel perpetually exposed, judged, and defined by the single most traumatic event of your life. To understand Sartre’s idea is to understand the unique battlefield of your recovery, and to find a way out of a prison that has been built around you, brick by painful brick.

This may seem like a bleak view of your experience, but continue reading, as there is a way out of this hell.

Sartre’s Philosophy

To begin, we must understand the core of Sartre’s philosophy as presented in his play No Exit. In the play, three deceased characters find themselves in a windowless room from which there is no escape. They quickly realize there are no physical tortures, no fire and brimstone. Their punishment is simply to be together, forever. Their torment comes from the fact that they cannot escape each other’s constant, judgmental presence. Each character has a story they tell about themselves, a hero, a desirable woman, a passionate lover, but the others refuse to see them that way. They pick apart their lies, expose their weaknesses, and define them by their worst moments. They are trapped, not by locks, but by their desperate need for the others to see them as they want to be seen. They are each other’s jailers.

Your Own Experience

Now, think about your own experience. When you first realized you were scammed, you were not just dealing with the financial devastation and the grief of a lost love. You were immediately faced with the terrifying prospect of being seen by others – this is one of the sources of your trauma. You had to tell your story. And in telling it, you had to step into the gaze of everyone you told. This is where your personal hell began.

The first and most powerful gaze you likely encountered was from your family and closest friends. These are the people whose opinions matter most, whose judgment can feel like a life-or-death verdict. In your moment of greatest vulnerability, you needed their support, their comfort, and their understanding. But what you may have received, layered in with genuine concern, was their judgment. It was not always malicious. It was often born of fear and ignorance. But it was judgment nonetheless.

You could see it in their eyes. The subtle shift from empathy to a flicker of disbelief, or worse, pity, or even contempt. The unspoken question hanging in the air: “How could you have been so foolish?” They tried to be supportive, but their support came with conditions. They wanted to help you “fix” the problem, which often meant they wanted to manage you. They started checking your bank statements, questioning your online interactions, and warning you against being “too trusting.” In their attempt to protect you, they stripped you of your agency. They no longer saw you as a capable, intelligent adult who had been the victim of a crime. They saw you as a child who had made a terrible mistake and needed to be supervised. You were no longer you; you were an object to be managed, a cautionary tale. You became, in their eyes, “the one who got scammed.” This label, this objectification, is the first layer of your hell. You are trapped in their perception of your incompetence, and every attempt you make to assert your own wisdom is met with their gentle, condescending reassurance that they “just want what’s best for you.”

Beyond Your Inner Circle

This judgment is not confined to your inner circle. It extends to the professional world you turn to for help. When you report the crime to law enforcement, you are often met with a bureaucratic, skeptical gaze. You are a case file, a statistic. The officer taking your report may be kind, but their job is to collect facts, not to heal your soul. You are reduced to the details of your story: the amount of money lost, the methods used by the scammer, and the evidence you can provide. Your profound emotional devastation, the shattering of your reality, is an irrelevant aside. You are an object of procedure, and their inability to truly help can feel like a profound judgment on the validity of your suffering.

Then there is the financial world. The bank employees, the credit card companies, and the debt counselors. Each one looks at you through the lens of risk and liability. They see your apparent naivete as a failure of fiscal responsibility. Their questions are not designed to understand your emotional state but to assign blame. “Why did you wire the money?” “Did you not read the warnings?” “What were you thinking?” Each question is a tiny hammer blow against your self-worth, reinforcing the narrative that you are fundamentally flawed. You are no longer a person; you are a series of poor financial decisions.

In Survivor Communities

Perhaps the most insidious gaze of all comes from within survivor communities themselves – especially the hate and exposure groups. You turn to online support groups seeking a safe harbor, a place where people will understand. And for the most part, you find some of it. But even here, in this supposed sanctuary, the judgment can be fierce. You see other survivors post their stories, and you feel a competitive need to have been scammed in a “smarter” or more “sophisticated” way. You compare your losses, your methods of manipulation, your duration of deception. You judge others for not seeing the red flags sooner, and you feel their judgment on you. A new hierarchy emerges, and you are desperate not to be at the bottom. You want to be seen as a savvy victim who was outsmarted by a master criminal, not a “fool” who fell for an obvious ploy. Even here, you are performing for an audience, trying to control the narrative of your own victimhood. You are trapped in a room with other prisoners, all of you desperately trying to define yourselves as something other than what you are: targeted victims.

This is the Crux of Sartre’s Hell as It Applies to You

This is the crux of Sartre’s hell as it applies to you. The gaze of others has frozen you into an object you do not recognize. You are no longer the kind person, the successful professional, the loving parent, the reliable friend. You are “the scam victim.” This new identity feels like a brand seared onto your skin, into your forehead for all to see. It dictates how people interact with you, how they speak to you, and what they expect from you. And the most terrifying part of this hell is that, like Sartre’s characters, you begin to participate in your own imprisonment. You start to believe their judgment.

You internalize the voices of your family, the bank, the police, and even other survivors. Their judgment becomes your own. You look in the mirror and you no longer see yourself; you see the “fool” they see. You replay the conversations with the scammer, not just to grieve, but to punish yourself, to find the exact moment where you proved them right. You become your own most ruthless jailer, policing your own thoughts and actions, terrified of making another “mistake” that will confirm their verdict, and when you make the inevitable mistakes, it only confirms it in your own mind. You stop trusting your own instincts because you have been told, repeatedly, that your instincts are faulty. You are trapped in a feedback loop of shame, where the judgment of others has become the engine of your own self-loathing.

How Do You Escape?

So how do you escape this hell? How do you get out of the room when the doors are not locked with physical bolts but with the far stronger chains of perception and self-blame? Sartre offers a clue, but the path for you, the survivor, requires a conscious and radical act of existential rebellion.

The first step is to recognize the gaze for what it is. You must intellectually understand that when someone looks at you with pity or condescension, they are not seeing you. They are seeing a reflection of their own fears. Your family is afraid of being vulnerable, so they judge your vulnerability. Your friends are terrified of being scammed themselves, so they create distance by blaming your “naivete.” The bank employee is afraid of financial chaos, so they judge your lack of fiscal foresight. Their judgment is about them, not you. It is a defense mechanism. By seeing their judgment as a product of their own anxiety, you can begin to detach it from your own sense of self. It is not a verdict on your worth; it is a symptom of their own fear.

The second, and more difficult step, is to reclaim your own narrative. This is where you must become the author of your own story again. You cannot control how others see you, but you can control how you see yourself. This means moving beyond the single chapter of your life defined by the scam. You must consciously and deliberately reconnect with all the other chapters that make up who you are. You are not just a victim. You are a person who has a history of kindness, of competence, of love, of success, of failure, of joy, and of sorrow. The scam was something that happened to you; it is not who you are.

Start small. Make a list of ten things you like about yourself that have nothing to do with the scam. Are you a good cook? Are you a loyal friend? Do you have a great sense of humor? Are you resilient? Write these things down. Look at them every day. This is not an exercise in vanity; it is an act of defiance, of self-definition. You are defying the world’s attempt to define you by one event. You are reminding yourself that you are a complex, multifaceted human being, not a flat, one-dimensional object.

The third step is to find a new gaze, one that is healing and affirming. This is the most crucial part of your escape from hell. You need to find people who can see you, truly see you, without judgment. This might be a therapist who specializes in trauma and who understands the dynamics of manipulation. It might be a trusted friend who listens without offering unsolicited advice. It might be a small, carefully curated support group where vulnerability is met with empathy, not comparison. You need to find a mirror that reflects your true self back to you, your strength, your courage, your worth. This healing gaze acts as an antidote to the poison of the judgmental gazes you have endured. It reminds you that the version of you that others see is not the only version, and certainly not the true one.

We see you for who you are, not as a fool or naive, but as a real person who was targeted by professional criminals. We are here to help – no judgment, just truth. Come and join our survivors’ community and learn to recover. Visit www.SCARScommunity.org/register

Finally, you must learn to turn your own gaze inward with compassion. You have been the harshest judge of yourself, and that must end. You must learn to treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a friend who came to you with this story. You would never tell a friend they were stupid or foolish. You would wrap them in love and tell them that they were the victim of a terrible crime. You must learn to do that for yourself. This is the ultimate act of breaking free. When you can look at yourself with compassion, when you can forgive yourself for your humanity, you dismantle the prison from the inside out. You are no longer waiting for others to validate your worth; you are providing it for yourself.

Sartre Was Right

Sartre was right. Hell can be other people. It can be the crushing weight of their judgment, their objectification, and their inability to see past your pain. But his philosophy also contains the seed of your liberation. He believed in radical freedom and the responsibility to create one’s own essence. Your hell is the version of you created by others. Your freedom is the version of you created by you. The journey of recovery is the slow, painful, and magnificent process of walking out of their room and into your own. It is about realizing that while you may have to live in a world with other people, you do not have to live in their hell. You can build your own heaven, one of self-acceptance, compassion, and unshakable worth, and you can invite others in, but only on your own terms.

Will you do it?

Conclusion

Recovery from a relationship scam is not only about understanding manipulation or repairing financial damage. It is also about surviving the social aftermath, where judgment, objectification, and misunderstanding can feel as painful as the crime itself. When others reduce a survivor to a single event, they unintentionally recreate the conditions of psychological confinement that deepen shame and self-doubt. Escaping that confinement requires recognizing judgment as fear-based, reclaiming personal identity beyond victimization, and choosing spaces where understanding replaces evaluation. Healing accelerates when survivors stop performing for the gaze of others and begin relating to themselves with compassion and clarity. The most durable form of freedom comes when worth is no longer negotiated through external approval, but grounded internally through truth, dignity, and informed support.

Glossary

• Agency Loss — Agency loss refers to the experience of feeling stripped of personal control after a scam, often intensified by others taking over decisions “for protection,” which deepens trauma and dependency.
• Attachment Injury — Attachment injury describes the emotional damage caused when trust and connection are exploited, leaving survivors fearful of relationships and uncertain of their own judgment.
• Bureaucratic Objectification — Bureaucratic objectification occurs when institutions treat victims as case numbers or procedures, dismissing emotional harm and reinforcing feelings of invisibility and invalidation.
• Comparative Victimhood — Comparative victimhood is the tendency within survivor spaces to rank experiences by loss size or sophistication, which increases shame and discourages honest healing.
• Compassionate Self-Gaze — Compassionate self-gaze is the practice of viewing oneself with understanding and kindness rather than judgment, essential for breaking cycles of internalized shame.
• Condescension — Condescension refers to subtle patronizing attitudes from others that imply intellectual or moral superiority, often framed as concern but experienced as demeaning.
• Control Substitution — Control substitution occurs when family or institutions replace a victim’s autonomy with monitoring behaviors, reinforcing helplessness rather than restoring confidence.
• Defense Projection — Defense projection happens when others manage their fear of vulnerability by blaming or judging victims, redirecting anxiety outward instead of confronting their own risk.
• Emotional Exposure — Emotional exposure is the heightened vulnerability victims feel when forced to disclose traumatic experiences to skeptical or judgmental audiences.
• Existential Objectification — Existential objectification is the reduction of a person’s identity to a single defining event, erasing complexity and personal history.
• Existential Rebellion — Existential rebellion involves reclaiming self-definition and meaning despite external judgment, refusing to accept imposed identities.
• External Gaze — External gaze describes the experience of seeing oneself primarily through others’ judgments rather than internal values or lived truth.
• Fear-Based Judgment — Fear-based judgment arises when others criticize victims to reassure themselves that they are immune to similar harm.
• Financial Shaming — Financial shaming involves moral judgment tied to monetary loss, framing victimization as irresponsibility rather than criminal exploitation.
• Frozen Identity — Frozen identity refers to the psychological state where a survivor feels permanently defined by the scam, unable to integrate other aspects of self.
• Gaslighting by Omission — Gaslighting by omission occurs when institutions ignore emotional harm, implicitly suggesting the trauma is exaggerated or irrelevant.
• Hierarchical Suffering — Hierarchical suffering describes the ranking of trauma severity within groups, which invalidates individual pain and distorts recovery.
• Identity Collapse — Identity collapse is the disruption of self-concept following betrayal, where victims struggle to reconcile who they were with what happened.
• Internalized Judgment — Internalized judgment occurs when external criticism becomes self-directed, fueling shame, self-blame, and loss of self-trust.
• Isolation Amplification — Isolation amplification happens when judgment discourages disclosure, increasing vulnerability and prolonging recovery.
• Judgmental Gaze — Judgmental gaze is the experience of being evaluated, reduced, and fixed by others’ perceptions rather than seen as evolving and whole.
• Label Entrapment — Label entrapment refers to being permanently categorized as “the scam victim,” which shapes how others interact and limits autonomy.
• Loss of Narrative Control — Loss of narrative control occurs when others dominate the interpretation of a survivor’s experience, overriding personal meaning.
• Moral Contamination — Moral contamination is the belief that being scammed reflects character failure rather than victimization, often reinforced socially.
• Objectification Trauma — Objectification trauma arises when survivors are treated as problems to manage instead of people to understand.
• Performative Recovery — Performative recovery is the pressure to appear healed or resilient to satisfy observers rather than honoring genuine emotional needs.
• Projection of Incompetence — Projection of incompetence happens when others assume victims lack intelligence or judgment, ignoring contextual manipulation.
• Protective Infantilization — Protective infantilization describes well-intended behaviors that strip adult autonomy under the guise of safety.
• Psychological Confinement — Psychological confinement refers to feeling trapped by others’ perceptions, unable to redefine oneself freely.
• Reality Invalidation — Reality invalidation occurs when emotional pain is dismissed because it lacks visible or procedural acknowledgment.
• Relational Surveillance — Relational surveillance involves monitoring a survivor’s actions excessively, increasing anxiety rather than rebuilding trust.
• Secondary Victimization — Secondary victimization is harm inflicted by responses to the crime, including disbelief, blame, or minimization.
• Self-Authorship — Self-authorship is the deliberate act of defining one’s identity beyond trauma, reclaiming narrative authority.
• Self-Blame Loop — Self-blame loop describes repetitive internal punishment that reinforces shame and erodes confidence after victimization.
• Shame Internalization — Shame internalization occurs when social judgment becomes self-directed, leading to chronic self-criticism.
• Social Freezing — Social freezing is withdrawal from relationships due to fear of judgment, increasing isolation, and distress.
• Survivor Hierarchy — Survivor hierarchy forms when communities implicitly rank credibility or worth based on perceived intelligence or loss severity.
• Trauma Gaze — Trauma gaze refers to the lens through which others view survivors only as damaged or broken, obscuring strengths.
• Validation Dependency — Validation dependency is reliance on external approval to counter shame, increasing vulnerability to judgment.
• Victim Identity Overload — Victim identity overload occurs when recovery stalls because the survivor is unable to integrate experiences into a broader self.
• Witness Without Repair — Witness without repair describes being heard factually but not emotionally, leaving trauma unresolved.
• Worth Reconstruction — Worth reconstruction is the gradual rebuilding of self-respect and confidence independent of others’ opinions.

Author Biographies

-/ 30 /-

What do you think about this?
Please share your thoughts in a comment below!