I have been presenting a series of workshops, to various groups in town, on the risks and dangers of scams and frauds from phone calls, texts, and email.
I have been covering grief scams, a variation on romance scams, as part of the workshop. Very often I am asked if people really do fall for these scams, and I have to say that they do. Grief and romance scams have been around for a long time. There have been many who prey on the vulnerable, certainly over all of recorded time. As a Certified Grieving Widower, I have even been telling the workshop participants why it is that people fall for these types of scams.
However, recently it occurred to me that I'm uniquely qualified, and can also tell people how to *protect* others against these frauds and scams.
Romance scams prey upon the lonely. The recent structure of our society, with the rise in isolation and alienation, and breakdown of normal familial and social connections, leaves more and more people prey to loneliness itself, and therefore prey to romance scams. Grief scams are a slight variation: the bereaved, and mourners, are very desperately lonely, and thus are far more vulnerable targets to the scammers. (This is primarily because we are a grief-illiterate society, and talking about death is forbidden.) I know from my own experience that the first female who says a kind word to me is in grave danger of me making an absolute fool of myself, and deluding myself that I might possibly be an object of romantic interest.
(I am not only lonely, and depressed, and grieving, but I am also suicidal. You want to talk about suicide? Of course you don't. Not only is it about death, but it's stigmatized death. I am always rather bitterly amused when groups that I am a part of start discussing suicide, beginning, of course, with, "Why would anyone do that?" Well, I can tell you why anyone would do that: they're lonely. No one is talking to them. At least not about anything that's important to them. There could be other reasons: it's not a necessary, but certainly a sufficient, condition.)
Do you know someone who is lonely? Do you want to know anyone who is grieving? Of course you do. There are a great many lonely people in our society, and a great many bereaved in our society.
What are you doing about them?
How do we protect these lonely people? Well, make sure they aren't lonely.
Easy to say, and not so easy to do. In societal terms, there are various attempts to address this issue. Most of them are not terribly successful, because most of them are fairly formulaic. Making sure that somebody is not lonely tends to be fairly individualistic, and idiosyncratic. You have to actually talk to people.
Actually, it's not so much talk to people, as listen to them. This is not easy. We are not good at listening. Ninety percent of us think we are better than average at listening. The math does not work out. In actual fact, most of us are really, really terrible at listening. We only listen until we find something to which we can respond, with our accumulated wisdom, and store of cliches, and then we launch into our part of the conversation. The thing is, the grievers, mourners, and bereaved that you are talking to have pretty much the same store of accumulated wisdom, and have probably heard all the cliches before. They don't need you to repeat them. They need you to listen. Very often that means that all you have to do, is just shut up.
However, that is not always what is needed in listening. Just simply sitting there, and not saying anything, is not necessarily listening. People who teach about listening talk about active listening. Active listening does involve responding to the person, the griever, the mourner, the bereaved person. But it only involves confirming, to the person you are supporting or counseling, that you have heard, and understand, their problems. Very often you *won't* actually understand their problems. They are going to be pathetically unable to analyze their own feelings, and put them, accurately, into words. So, before you think that you have understood what their problems are (and that you have the solution), you need to ask. Restate, very briefly, what you think they said. Let them respond, and either confirm what you think you understood, or correct your misapprehension. And remember, if they say you got it wrong, you got it wrong. Even if they cannot concisely, and accurately, and briefly, outline what their actual problem is. You have to still be listening. You cannot lose patience, just because of their inability. Remember, the person in front of you is the one who is damaged. You are the adult. That means it is your responsibility to understand.
Do you call them? When you call them, if they are grieving, do you allow them to talk about death? Death is the last taboo in our society. We can talk about rock and roll, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about sex, we can even talk about perversions, but death is taboo. We don't speak about death, and we don't allow anybody else to speak about death, either. I have had some very interesting conversations and experiences in this regard.
Let the person speak. And, definitely, listen. That is the greatest gift you can give them. And I mean listening, not simply sitting there in silence, although that's a good start. But listen to this lonely person. Find out how they feel. Find out what they, themselves, have tried to do to address this loneliness, and/or grief. Talk to them frequently. It's not just in the first week, or even the first month, after the death that grieving happens. And, of course, loneliness is probably life long. So this is a long-term project.
You don't, of course, have to take all of it on all by yourself. Convince other people to listen to their lonely and grieving friends. Get them to read this piece, and pass it around. If you convince two other people to take on the project, and each of them convinces two people to take on the project, and each of them ... Well, you get the idea.
Did I mention that the bereaved are desperately lonely? That they are likely to cling to *anyone* who is willing to pay attention to them?
Well, what are you doing to help the bereaved? To ensure that they *aren't* desperate enough to fall for the scam?
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