Taking a Leap of Faith
Søren Kierkegaard and the Leap of Faith After Loss: Applying Existential Thought to Scam Victim Recovery
Primary Category: Scam Victim Recovery Philosophy
Intended Audience: Scam Victims-Survivors / Family & Friends
Author:
• Tim McGuinness, Ph.D. – Anthropologist, Scientist, Director of the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.
• An interpretation of the works of Søren Kierkegaard
About This Article
If you have been scammed and are left with grief, shame, confusion, or self-blame, Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy offers something rare: not advice, but companionship. His work speaks directly to the internal collapse that victims often feel—the crisis of identity, the hollowing out of trust, and the sense that something essential has been lost. Kierkegaard believed that despair is not simply a symptom of suffering, but a condition of becoming—a confrontation between who we think we are and who we truly are meant to become. He did not promise easy answers or emotional comfort. Instead, he challenged individuals to take what he called the leap of faith: a decision to continue living authentically even when life feels senseless or unfair.
For scam victims, this leap is not about forgetting or minimizing what happened. It’s about choosing not to abandon yourself in the wake of betrayal. It’s about facing what’s real—however painful—and building a life that is grounded in truth, not illusion. Your worst moment does not define you. What defines you is the choice to move forward with integrity, to rebuild with honesty, and to keep becoming. This is not a one-time act. It is a process, a daily decision. But in that process, Kierkegaard insists, lies the possibility of freedom and selfhood—not as you were, but as you are now, becoming something stronger.
Søren Kierkegaard and the Leap of Faith After Loss: Applying Existential Thought to Scam Victim Recovery
When someone is scammed, the financial damage is often just the beginning. What follows can be a crisis of meaning—grief, shame, disorientation, and deep self-blame. The emotional aftermath is complex and destabilizing. Many victims describe it as a kind of internal collapse, where trust, identity, and confidence all seem to unravel. It is in this emotional freefall that the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s work becomes unexpectedly relevant.
Kierkegaard spent his life examining despair, the individual’s search for authenticity, and what it means to live with faith—not necessarily religious belief, but the decision to move forward despite uncertainty and pain. His exploration of “the sickness unto death” and the “leap of faith” offer a potent framework for those struggling to rebuild after a betrayal they never saw coming.
The Sickness Unto Death: Despair as a Crisis of Identity
In Kierkegaard’s view, despair is not caused by external events alone, but by an internal misalignment—a disconnection between the self and its potential. He described despair as “the misrelation in the relation that relates itself to itself,” a complex way of saying that suffering arises when a person cannot reconcile who they are with who they believe they should be.
For scam victims, this hits hard. Before the scam, many believed they were cautious, competent, or independent. Afterward, they may feel foolish, broken, or duped. The contrast between these two self-images becomes unbearable. Kierkegaard would call this despair: the self, unwilling or unable to be itself, collapses under the weight of what it has become.
This despair is not trivial. It can feel like a slow, spiritual death—a loss of meaning, agency, and dignity. Victims may say things like, “I don’t recognize myself anymore,” or “I don’t know who I am after this.” This is exactly what Kierkegaard meant. He saw this kind of suffering not as madness or weakness, but as a deeply human confrontation with selfhood.
Despair, he wrote, is “a sickness of the spirit, of the self, and therefore can have three forms: not knowing one is in despair, not wanting to be oneself, and wanting to be oneself but unable to.” Scam victims often cycle through all three. At first, they may deny the impact. Then, they may reject the person they’ve become. Finally, they may try to reclaim themselves—but feel lost as to how.
The Leap of Faith: Choosing Life After the Fall
Kierkegaard’s answer was not comfort. He didn’t promise relief or resolution. What he offered instead was a decision—a leap. When a person hits the bottom of their despair, when they confront the void of meaninglessness and still choose to live, they make what Kierkegaard called the leap of faith. This isn’t belief in a higher power, though it can include that. It’s belief in the possibility of becoming whole again.
For a scam victim, the leap is not about denying what happened or rushing to feel better. It’s the choice to engage with the pain honestly, without pretending or numbing out. It’s saying, “I may not know who I am right now, but I will not abandon myself in this.” That act—of facing the darkness and refusing to collapse into it—is the first real step toward healing.
Kierkegaard believed that authenticity is born in the fire of despair. When everything comfortable is stripped away, when all masks fall off, what remains is the raw material of the self. Survival isn’t about getting back to who you were—it’s about becoming someone deeper, wiser, and more aligned with what matters.
This isn’t an easy path. It’s often filled with isolation, especially because scam-related trauma is poorly understood by the public. Victims are often met with disbelief, ridicule, or unsolicited advice. Kierkegaard would see this as the “crowd”—what he called the untruth. In his writings, he warned that the crowd always prefers comfort to truth, noise to silence, and conformity to real integrity. Scam victims must often walk away from the crowd to rediscover their voice.
Lessons for the Victim: How Kierkegaard Can Help You Rebuild
You are not your worst moment
Kierkegaard rejected the idea that identity is static or that it can be reduced to any one experience—especially one rooted in failure or shame. He argued that your true self is something you become over time, through struggle, reflection, and deliberate choice. When you’ve been scammed, it’s easy to collapse your sense of self into that one humiliating event. You may say to yourself, “I’m so stupid,” or “I’ll never trust anyone again.” But Kierkegaard would call this a form of despair—the despair of refusing to be yourself. Being scammed does not define your worth. Instead, your response to that suffering—your willingness to reflect, to change, to endure—is where your true self begins to emerge. Facing the truth about what happened takes more strength than denial. Let that strength tell you who you really are.
The pain is real—but it is not final
Despair, according to Kierkegaard, is not a symptom of weakness. It is the evidence that a person is wrestling with the meaning of their life. He described despair not as an endpoint but as a necessary condition of becoming. For scam victims, the emotional fallout—betrayal, grief, disillusionment—can feel all-consuming. You may believe this pain is permanent, that your trust is gone forever, or that you’ll never recover what you lost. But Kierkegaard believed that pain, while intense, is not your final truth. “The greatest hazard of all: to be oneself,” he said, meaning that suffering often exposes the gap between your false self (the one you tried to present to the world) and your real self (the one that must be chosen). Pain is not a closed door—it is a threshold. If you can endure it without turning away, you will begin to see who you really are—and who you still have the power to become.
Do not rush to meaning
After being scammed, many people want to quickly make sense of the experience. They may search for lessons or frame the trauma in spiritual terms: “Maybe it was meant to happen,” or “At least I learned something.” While that impulse is understandable, Kierkegaard warned against hasty attempts to impose meaning on suffering. He emphasized that genuine meaning must be earned—not fabricated. It cannot be forced. In the early stages of grief, any attempt to explain away your pain risks trivializing it. Kierkegaard called for a deeper form of faith—one that does not rely on certainty or quick resolutions. He believed that to truly live with integrity, you must allow space for unanswered questions, for silence, and even for spiritual darkness. The leap of faith, for Kierkegaard, is not about denying despair—it’s about choosing to live despite it. That’s not something you do all at once. It’s a quiet, ongoing decision, made every day you wake up and try again.
You must choose yourself again
Being victimized by a scam often leads people to retreat—to abandon relationships, goals, or even their own identity. Trust feels dangerous. Vulnerability feels foolish. But Kierkegaard taught that becoming oneself is never passive. It requires deliberate action. You must choose, actively and repeatedly, to reclaim your sense of agency. This doesn’t mean rushing back into the world with blind optimism. It means rebuilding your identity with care and honesty. You choose to trust again—not recklessly, but with discernment. You choose to keep your heart open—not because the world is safe, but because you’ve decided to live fully despite the risk. In Kierkegaard’s language, this is the leap of faith—not into naivety, but into a life that has room for both suffering and hope. Your future does not depend on forgetting what happened. It depends on choosing who you want to be, now that you know what the world—and you—are capable of.
Suffering can be a source of truth
Kierkegaard never glorified pain, but he saw it as one of the few experiences that can force a person into truth. When life is easy, we often drift through it—unexamined, reactive, guided by convenience or appearances. But suffering shatters that illusion. It exposes the disconnect between who you are and who you thought you were. For scam victims, this can feel devastating. You may see how much you wanted to be loved, or how much you feared being alone. You may realize you ignored your instincts, or that your self-worth depended too much on external validation. These realizations hurt—but they also illuminate. In Kierkegaard’s terms, despair reveals the sickness unto death—not a literal death, but a kind of spiritual disconnect from the self. That insight can become a turning point. Scam trauma, if approached with honesty and humility, can help you rediscover your core values, clarify your boundaries, and reconnect with a deeper, truer version of yourself. That is not a punishment. It is a path forward.
Kierkegaard’s View on Survival: Not Just Living, But Becoming
Survival, for Kierkegaard, was never about escape. It was about engagement—choosing to live truthfully in the face of despair. He believed that true freedom emerges only when a person stops running from pain and turns to face it directly. That’s when you begin to move through it. That’s when your suffering becomes the soil for transformation.
He once wrote: “The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self.” In scam recovery, this means learning to relate to yourself differently. Not as someone who failed, but as someone who survived. Not as someone gullible, but as someone brave enough to hope. And not as someone broken, but as someone becoming whole through fire.
Kierkegaard’s View on Experience
Søren Kierkegaard held a deeply critical view of objective experience as the foundation for understanding truth—especially when it came to personal existence, ethics, and faith. While he did not reject objectivity outright, he believed that objective truth—truth based on facts, logic, or empirical verification—was inadequate for addressing the most important questions of life. In Kierkegaard’s view, subjective experience was the only way to truly encounter meaning, make ethical choices, or relate to God.
Here’s how he framed this distinction:
Objective truth is about facts; subjective truth is about personal meaning.
Kierkegaard argued that objective truths deal with external realities—mathematics, science, history, or logic. These truths can be verified or falsified. But for Kierkegaard, the truths that matter most—what to believe, how to live, what to love—cannot be proven objectively. They require a leap of commitment that goes beyond data.
He famously wrote, “Truth is subjectivity.” By this, he meant that truth becomes real only when it is inwardly appropriated—when it becomes part of your lived experience and personal struggle.
Faith is not an objective conclusion—it is a subjective act.
Kierkegaard took particular aim at attempts to prove God’s existence through objective logic (such as the traditional ontological or cosmological arguments). He saw these efforts as misguided. He believed that faith is not the result of certainty, but a choice made in the face of uncertainty—a leap across the gap between what can be known and what must be believed.
This is central to his concept of the leap of faith—a movement of the will and spirit, not the intellect. He said, “Without risk, there is no faith.”
Objective detachment can be a form of avoidance.
Kierkegaard was skeptical of those who claimed to understand life, ethics, or theology purely through objective analysis. He saw this as a way of distancing oneself from responsibility. In his eyes, the person who endlessly studies “the good” but never acts ethically is living in bad faith. For Kierkegaard, to be truly human is to live out truth, not merely observe it.
This is why he criticized the academic theologians and Hegelians of his day—arguing that they reduced Christianity to a system of ideas, rather than a call to existential transformation.
Authentic living demands subjective engagement.
Kierkegaard believed that becoming your true self required entering into life’s paradoxes and uncertainties. He emphasized the individual’s inner world—dread, despair, guilt, passion—as the place where truth is formed. For him, subjective experience is not irrational—it’s where reason meets vulnerability, and where decision becomes meaningful.
As he put it in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “What matters is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
In Kierkegaard’s view:
- Objective truths are important, but limited to external knowledge.
- Subjective truths are essential for personal transformation and ethical action.
- Faith, selfhood, and meaning cannot be arrived at through detached reasoning alone.
- The deepest truths require commitment, risk, and inward passion—not just logic or consensus.
This framework laid the foundation for existentialist thought and continues to challenge anyone who tries to separate belief from personal responsibility. Kierkegaard wasn’t against reason—he just believed that without subjective engagement, reason is hollow.
Conclusion
The journey through scam trauma is lonely, painful, and disorienting. But in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, these moments are also sacred. They are portals into a deeper self—a version of you that is more honest, more grounded, and more capable of love and resilience. If you’ve been scammed and feel hollow or ashamed, Kierkegaard’s work offers this message: you are not lost. You are in the process of becoming.
You do not need to fake strength, or pretend you’re okay, or explain yourself to the crowd. You need only to stay honest, stay present, and choose to move forward. That is the leap. That is faith. And in time, that is how you rise.
Much of what the SCARS Institute employs in the support of scam victims is derived from Kierkegaard’s work.
Reference
Søren Kierkegaard: A Brief Biography
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and writer widely regarded as the father of existentialism. Born in Copenhagen to a wealthy yet melancholic family, Kierkegaard was profoundly shaped by the stern religiosity and introspective nature of his father, Michael Kierkegaard. These early influences gave rise to his lifelong focus on faith, despair, and the struggle for authentic selfhood.
Kierkegaard studied theology and philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, earning a master’s degree but resisting ordination into the Danish Lutheran Church. Instead, he chose a life of independent authorship, publishing under both his own name and a range of pseudonyms. Each pseudonym represented a different perspective or psychological position, allowing him to explore complex issues from multiple angles. His most notable works include Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), and The Sickness Unto Death (1849).
A central concern in Kierkegaard’s work was the individual’s relationship to truth, particularly religious truth. He famously introduced the concept of the leap of faith, arguing that genuine belief is not rooted in logic or evidence but in a passionate, inward commitment to God. He was also deeply critical of institutional religion, which he saw as hollow and complacent, and he often wrote polemically against the Danish Church.
Kierkegaard’s writings dissect the inner life—despair, guilt, dread, and the tension between the finite and infinite. He believed that true selfhood is not given but achieved through personal struggle, ethical responsibility, and faith in the face of uncertainty. His emphasis on subjective experience laid the foundation for later existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as theologians like Karl Barth and Paul Tillich.
Despite his intellectual legacy, Kierkegaard lived a solitary and often embattled life. He never married, famously breaking off an engagement to Regine Olsen—a decision he regretted deeply and reflected upon in his work. He died young, at the age of 42, after a brief illness. Kierkegaard was largely unrecognized in his lifetime but gained significant posthumous influence. Today, he is remembered as a profound thinker who challenged people to confront life’s hardest questions and live with honesty, integrity, and courage.
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At the SCARS Institute, we invite you to do your own research on the topics we speak about and publish, Our team investigates the subject being discussed, especially when it comes to understanding the scam victims-survivors experience. You can do Google searches but in many cases, you will have to wade through scientific papers and studies. However, remember that biases and perspectives matter and influence the outcome. Regardless, we encourage you to explore these topics as thoroughly as you can for your own awareness.
Statement About Victim Blaming
Some of our articles discuss various aspects of victims. This is both about better understanding victims (the science of victimology) and their behaviors and psychology. This helps us to educate victims/survivors about why these crimes happened and to not blame themselves, better develop recovery programs, and to help victims avoid scams in the future. At times this may sound like blaming the victim, but it does not blame scam victims, we are simply explaining the hows and whys of the experience victims have.
These articles, about the Psychology of Scams or Victim Psychology – meaning that all humans have psychological or cognitive characteristics in common that can either be exploited or work against us – help us all to understand the unique challenges victims face before, during, and after scams, fraud, or cybercrimes. These sometimes talk about some of the vulnerabilities the scammers exploit. Victims rarely have control of them or are even aware of them, until something like a scam happens and then they can learn how their mind works and how to overcome these mechanisms.
Articles like these help victims and others understand these processes and how to help prevent them from being exploited again or to help them recover more easily by understanding their post-scam behaviors. Learn more about the Psychology of Scams at www.ScamPsychology.org
SCARS Resources:
- Getting Started: ScamVictimsSupport.org
- FREE enrollment in the SCARS Institute training programs for scam victims SCARSeducation.org
- For New Victims of Relationship Scams newvictim.AgainstScams.org
- Subscribe to SCARS Newsletter newsletter.againstscams.org
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- Become a SCARS Member and get free counseling benefits, visit membership.AgainstScams.org
- Report each and every crime, learn how to at reporting.AgainstScams.org
- Learn more about Scams & Scammers at RomanceScamsNOW.com and ScamsNOW.com
- Learn more about the Psychology of Scams and Scam Victims: ScamPsychology.org
- Self-Help Books for Scam Victims are at shop.AgainstScams.org
- Worldwide Crisis Hotlines: International Suicide Hotlines – OpenCounseling : OpenCounseling
- Campaign To End Scam Victim Blaming – 2024 (scamsnow.com)
Psychology Disclaimer:
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The information provided in this and other SCARS articles are intended for educational and self-help purposes only and should not be construed as a substitute for professional therapy or counseling.
Note about Mindfulness: Mindfulness practices have the potential to create psychological distress for some individuals. Please consult a mental health professional or experienced meditation instructor for guidance should you encounter difficulties.
While any self-help techniques outlined herein may be beneficial for scam victims seeking to recover from their experience and move towards recovery, it is important to consult with a qualified mental health professional before initiating any course of action. Each individual’s experience and needs are unique, and what works for one person may not be suitable for another.
Additionally, any approach may not be appropriate for individuals with certain pre-existing mental health conditions or trauma histories. It is advisable to seek guidance from a licensed therapist or counselor who can provide personalized support, guidance, and treatment tailored to your specific needs.
If you are experiencing significant distress or emotional difficulties related to a scam or other traumatic event, please consult your doctor or mental health provider for appropriate care and support.
Also read our SCARS Institute Statement about Professional Care for Scam Victims – click here
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I can relate with this article. My marriage to a man I trusted with my whole being, whom I entrusted my children to, was the best and biggest scammer ever. My child was raped, my other child indoctrinated into believing him and that stripped me of more than my being. It took me a long time to reconcile with guilt that I carried on his behalf. Today I can say thank you to God for removing me, was there through my healing process and gives me the strength to be me