Toxic Empathy, Scam Victims, and Saviors – PART 1
The Danger of Toxic Empathy in Scam Victim Advocacy: When Zealotry Hurts More Than It Helps
Primary Category: Scam Victim Recovery Psychology & Scam Victim Advocacy
Intended Audience: Scam Victims-Survivors / Family & Friends / General Public / Others
Authors:
• Tim McGuinness, Ph.D. – Anthropologist, Scientist, Director of the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.
About This Article
Toxic empathy in scam victim advocacy is a dangerous form of over-identification with victims that can hinder recovery rather than support it. While empathy is essential for understanding and helping scam victims, toxic empathy leads advocates to absorb victims’ suffering in a way that distorts reality, fosters dependency, and reinforces a cycle of helplessness. When combined with savior syndrome, some victim advocates position themselves as the sole source of truth and guidance, creating an unhealthy reliance where victims feel they cannot recover without them.
This type of advocacy encourages perpetual outrage, unrealistic expectations of justice, and an inability to move on, often discouraging victims from regaining autonomy or seeking balanced professional help. True victim advocacy should empower individuals to reclaim control, trust themselves again, and work toward structured recovery—not keep them trapped in prolonged emotional distress.
Scam victims must be cautious of toxic advocacy, ensuring that those offering support prioritize healing, independence, and practical steps toward rebuilding their lives rather than perpetuating fear, anger, or reliance on a single advocate.
Part 1 – The Danger of Toxic Empathy in Scam Victim Advocacy: When Zealotry Hurts More Than It Helps
Scam victims, in the aftermath of deception, betrayal, and financial loss, often seek comfort and guidance from those who claim to advocate for their recovery. Victim advocates play a crucial role in providing support, education, and resources to help individuals heal from the trauma of being scammed. However, not all advocacy is helpful. In some cases, zealous victim advocates exhibit toxic empathy—a dangerous over-identification with victims that distorts reality, fosters dependency, and ultimately hinders real recovery.
Toxic empathy, when mixed with savior syndrome (or the Messiah complex), can be particularly harmful. While it may appear compassionate on the surface, it often reinforces victimhood, distorts truth, and impedes the ability of scam victims to reclaim control over their lives. This article explores how overzealous, toxic victim advocacy can be dangerous, how it relates to savior syndrome, and why a more balanced, reality-based approach is necessary for true scam victim recovery.
What Is Toxic Empathy?
Toxic empathy is an excessive or unhealthy form of empathy where a person becomes so emotionally enmeshed with another’s suffering that it leads to self-harm, emotional exhaustion, or enables destructive behaviors. Unlike healthy empathy, which allows for compassionate support while maintaining personal boundaries, toxic empathy absorbs the distress of others to the point where it negatively impacts one’s mental health, decision-making, and sense of self.
Toxic empathy often manifests in situations where an individual feels responsible for fixing or alleviating someone else’s pain, even at their own expense. It can lead to chronic stress, burnout, and codependency, especially in relationships involving manipulation or abuse. In some cases, it enables harmful behaviors, such as continually excusing an abuser’s actions, overextending oneself to “save” someone, or staying in a toxic dynamic out of guilt or obligation.
Scammers, manipulators, and abusers frequently exploit toxic empathy, preying on highly empathetic individuals by making them feel guilty, responsible, or emotionally obligated to help. This is common in relationship scams, financial fraud, and abusive partnerships, where the victim is manipulated into prioritizing the scammer’s or abuser’s needs over their own well-being.
Signs of Toxic Empathy:
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- Feeling personally responsible for solving other people’s problems
- Being emotionally drained from taking on others’ pain
- Neglecting your own needs to care for someone else, even at great cost
- Feeling guilty when setting healthy boundaries
- Excusing bad behavior or manipulation because of someone’s struggles
- Feeling an obligation to stay in a harmful relationship to “help” the other person
How to Avoid Toxic Empathy:
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- Set Emotional Boundaries: Recognize that you can care about someone’s pain without absorbing it as your own.
- Practice Detachment with Compassion: Support others without feeling personally responsible for their healing.
- Recognize Manipulation: Be mindful of when someone is using guilt or emotional distress to control your actions.
- Prioritize Self-Care: Your well-being matters just as much as anyone else’s. If helping others is hurting you, reassess your limits.
- Seek Support: Therapy or support groups can help individuals with high empathy learn to balance their compassion with self-protection.
Toxic empathy, if unchecked, can lead to emotional exhaustion, manipulation, and self-destructive behaviors. Learning to empathize in a healthy, boundaried way allows individuals to support others without sacrificing their own mental and emotional well-being.
When Advocacy Becomes Harmful
Toxic empathy occurs when a person becomes so emotionally entangled with someone else’s pain that they absorb it as their own, leading to irrational decision-making, emotional over-involvement, and harmful enmeshment. Unlike healthy empathy, which provides compassionate support while respecting boundaries, toxic empathy feeds on suffering, often prolonging it instead of helping the victim move forward.
In the world of scam victim advocacy, toxic empathy presents itself as:
- Perpetual outrage: Constantly reinforcing anger, resentment, and hatred toward scammers, law enforcement, or institutions, keeping victims stuck in an emotional cycle of blame rather than helping them heal.
- Over-identification: Advocates projecting their own past experiences onto every victim, assuming that what worked for them is the only path to recovery.
- Encouraging helplessness: Telling victims they will “never fully recover” or that the world is against them, discouraging real steps toward healing and independence.
- Encouraging endless pursuit of justice: Pressuring victims to obsess over tracking down scammers, reporting to authorities with unrealistic expectations, or engaging in vigilante-like behaviors that may put them at further risk.
- Demonizing those who move on: Shaming or invalidating victims who choose to focus on recovery rather than dwelling on punishment or retribution.
- Fostering dependency: Creating a cycle where victims become emotionally dependent on the advocate rather than building their own resilience.
At its worst, toxic empathy in advocacy can trap victims in their trauma, making them feel as though they will never be whole again unless someone else—be it the advocate, law enforcement, or society—fixes everything for them.
The Connection Between Toxic Empathy and Savior Syndrome
Toxic empathy often goes hand in hand with savior syndrome (or the Messiah complex), where an advocate sees themselves as the sole hero capable of rescuing victims from their suffering. This mindset is not about genuine victim empowerment but about the advocate’s need to feel important, validated, or even worshipped for their efforts.
A scam victim advocate with savior syndrome often exhibits the following behaviors:
- Treating victims as powerless: Believing that victims are incapable of recovery without their constant guidance.
- Speaking on behalf of victims: Controlling the narrative rather than allowing victims to express their own experiences and solutions.
- Deflecting criticism: Any disagreement with their methods or approach is labeled as an attack on victims themselves.
- Seeking attention or praise: More concerned with being seen as a hero than with actually helping victims heal.
- Controlling access to recovery resources: Gatekeeping support, discouraging victims from seeking help outside of their group or ideology.
- Encouraging dependency: Making victims feel that their only hope is through the advocate, discouraging independent decision-making.
This is especially dangerous because victims, in their vulnerable state, may cling to such figures out of desperation, believing that this advocate is their only hope. But rather than empowering them, toxic victim advocates keep victims in an extended state of reliance, unable to move forward without their guidance.
How Toxic Empathy and Savior Syndrome Harm Scam Victims
When scam victims encounter an advocate driven by toxic empathy or savior syndrome, the road to recovery becomes more difficult, sometimes even impossible. Here’s how these harmful advocacy patterns damage victims’ chances of regaining control over their lives:
Reinforcing Victimhood Instead of Encouraging Recovery
Toxic advocates often keep victims focused on their pain, anger, and resentment rather than guiding them toward healing. While it’s natural to grieve and feel betrayed, staying stuck in a victim mentality prevents personal growth. Victims who continuously hear that they have been irreparably damaged, that justice will never be served, or that recovery is impossible begin to internalize those messages, making it much harder to move forward.
Exhibiting an Obsession With Revenge or Justice
Scam victims often seek justice, but some toxic advocates fuel an unrealistic pursuit of retribution, encouraging victims to spend all their energy on tracking down scammers, demanding action from law enforcement, or engaging in public smear campaigns. While legal avenues exist, the hard truth is that most scammers will never be caught or punished—and staying locked in the desire for revenge keeps victims emotionally shackled to their trauma.
Invalidating Victims Who Choose to Move On
A major red flag of toxic advocacy is dismissing or shaming victims who decide to prioritize healing over justice. If a scam victim decides to move forward rather than continuing to fight for retribution, they may be seen as “weak” or “giving up” by these advocates. This creates unnecessary guilt and pressure, making victims feel as though they must continue suffering to prove they are strong.
Preventing Victims From Trusting Again
One of the biggest emotional wounds of scam victims is the loss of trust—in themselves, in others, and in the world. Toxic advocates often reinforce extreme distrust, telling victims to never trust anyone again, warning that “everyone is out to get you,” or making broad claims that all relationships are dangerous. This deepens isolation and paranoia, rather than helping victims learn to trust wisely and set better boundaries.
Creating a Codependent Relationship Between Victim and Advocate
Instead of guiding scam victims toward independence and self-sufficiency, toxic empathy creates a loop of dependency, where the victim feels they cannot navigate recovery alone. They may begin relying on the advocate’s approval for every decision, rather than developing their own confidence and resilience.
Distorting Reality and Keeping Victims in Emotional Distress
Savior-mentality advocates often exaggerate threats, conspiracies, or systemic failures, keeping victims in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Instead of offering solutions or pathways to rebuild their lives, they may focus solely on external blame, keeping victims emotionally trapped in the scam long after it ended.
What Real Scam Victim Advocacy Should Look Like
True victim advocacy is not about keeping victims in a cycle of pain but about helping them reclaim their power. Healthy advocates acknowledge the trauma and injustice of scams but also encourage active steps toward healing, recovery, and regaining independence.
A healthy scam victim advocate should:
- Empower victims to take control of their recovery, rather than keeping them dependent.
- Encourage emotional resilience rather than fueling endless anger and blame.
- Provide practical tools for healing such as therapy, structured recovery programs, and financial education.
- Encourage critical thinking rather than emotional reactionism.
- Recognize that each victim’s journey is different and respect different paths to healing.
Beware of Toxic Advocacy
Toxic empathy and savior syndrome, when found in scam victim advocacy, do more harm than good. While true advocates work to empower, educate, and support scam victims, those with toxic empathy create cycles of dependency, outrage, and helplessness. Instead of helping victims heal, they trap them in prolonged suffering, convincing them they cannot move forward without constant validation.
Scam victims must be cautious about who they turn to for support. The best advocates guide victims toward self-sufficiency, personal growth, and practical recovery, rather than keeping them locked in their trauma. The goal of true advocacy should always be to help victims reclaim their sense of agency—not to hold them hostage in pain.
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Important Information for New Scam Victims
- Please visit www.ScamVictimsSupport.org – a SCARS Website for New Scam Victims & Sextortion Victims
- SCARS Institute now offers a free recovery program at www.SCARSeducation.org
- Please visit www.ScamPsychology.org – to more fully understand the psychological concepts involved in scams and scam victim recovery
If you are looking for local trauma counselors please visit counseling.AgainstScams.org or join SCARS for our counseling/therapy benefit: membership.AgainstScams.org
If you need to speak with someone now, you can dial 988 or find phone numbers for crisis hotlines all around the world here: www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines
A Question of Trust
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
- Sign up for SCARS professional support & recovery groups, visit support.AgainstScams.org
- Find competent trauma counselors or therapists, visit counseling.AgainstScams.org
- 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:
All articles about psychology and the human brain on this website are for information & education only
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
If you are in crisis, feeling desperate, or in despair please call 988 or your local crisis hotline.
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