Notes on Minions and Flying Monkeys - Enablers of Narcissists

What Flying Monkeys / Minions -  Do For Narcissists

  “Flying Monkeys” is a term used in psychology to describe the sycophantic hangers-on who usually orbit around narcissists, and support/defend everything they do.

Like the Wicked Witch of the West’s flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, “Flying Monkeys” (henceforth referred to as “FMs”) are the brainwashed minions the narcissist uses to carry out their bidding.

 Below are a few examples of how this can occur, and how to dodge those wily jerks.

How Narcissists Use Flying Monkeys

If you’ve been involved with a narcissist for some time, you know damned well how they can manipulate other people to suit their own whims and needs.

One common instance where FMs are recruited is after a breakup or when a child goes no contact with their Narcissistic parent. The narcissist will  charm a few new people to bolster his or her ego, and these newbies will be told all about how horrible, crazy, and possibly even abusive their ex or child was.

 These Newbie may offer to help however they can, which gives the narcissist a perfect opportunity to keep working their evil magic in your life.

 

These new and previous Flying Monkeys may be manipulated into helping the narcissist or minion of the primary Nariccissist by…

Spying

Let’s say you’re the one who ended the relationship and has gone “no contact” in an attempt to distance yourself and heal from your toxic family.

A narcissist might get one or two FMs to spy on your social media accounts to see what you’re up to, and report back.

Gossip/Smear Campaigns

In Narcistic Families Smear and Gossip is taken to a whole other level and you’re the poor sucker being talked about and targeted.

Sadly, narcissists and their minions engage in this type of bullying behavior all the time.

It’s a pathetic, wicked  thing to do, but if they feel of coure greatly entitled, have always felft superior to others, so if they  in any way slighted, you see their wrath to want to punish you for daring to halt their power trip and control over you, they will start a smear campaign.

They do this by either telling those lies about horrible things you’ve said or done or taking things that you told them in confidence (back when you were naïve enough to trust them) and making them public.

The intent is to punish you for whatever wrongdoings you’ve imagined about them and to make sure that they take the initiative and paint you as the “bad guy" before you have a chance to do the same thing to them.

By getting several or many people saying the same thing, across various social circles… well, there’s got to be truth in that, right?

Sigh.

Quite often, the smear campaign will involve mutual friends and even your own family whom the narcissist will have charmed over the course of your relationship.

This makes it extremely damaging and can lead to the deterioration in multiple important relationships in one go.

 

Group Attacks and Interventions

This tactic involves a group of Flying Monkeys working together in an attempt to convince you that a certain type of behavior is in your best interest.

Only it’s actually in theirs/the narc’s whom they’re representing.

It’s most common in families where the narcissist in question is a parent. Parent can often poison siblings and extended family members against you by telling them how badly you’ve hurt them, how they’ve never done anything wrong, etc.

You might find yourself in a scenario wherein your brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and/or even your other parent are telling you that they know all about the situation and they know how you should behave in order to fix it.

In fact, walking away is ultimately the best technique you can possibly have to remove both the narcissist and their monkey minions from your life, permanently.

It can be incredibly difficult and painful to do this, especially if the Flying Monkeys are family members or woven closely into your social life, but you have to take care of yourself by whatever means are necessary. You must survive.

If that means changing your name, packing your stuff, and moving across the country to start an entirely new life with a blank slate, far away from your abuser(s), goes for it.

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ANOTHER ARTICLE I RECENTLY FOUND ON THE NET – WELL WRITTEN

 

FLYING MONKEYS

ARE ENABLERS who act on behalf of narcissists. They are friends, family members or colleagues at work   who serve as surrogates, emissaries, fixers and drones in the Power narcissist’s network. Moreover, they make it possible for these malignant narcissists to carry out their campaigns of abuse by proxy.

A person may rationalize playing the flying monkey / the Evil One’s minion role for a variety of reasons. Here are some examples:

·         Necessity – They may feel beholden to the narcissist because they are a relative or friend, job security.  

·         Acceptance – They may long for attention and validation from the narcissist.

·         Avarice – They may benefit from enabling the narcissist.

·         Schadenfreude – Some people genuinely enjoy inflicting pain (sadist) and suffering on others.

·         Manipulation – They may be empathic people with poor boundaries who buy into the narcissist’s schemes, manipulation and lies.

Flying monkeys and the cycle of narcissistic abuse

Flying monkeys are usually active in every stage of the cycle of narcissistic abuse:

1.     Idealization

2.     Devaluation

3.     Discard

4.     Hoover

 

In the idealization or love bombing phase, flying monkeys / brown- nosers may be used to provide social proof for the narcissist. At this stage, it’s their job to convince the abuse target that the narcissist’s false phoney self is actually real which of course it is not.

Flying monkeys help the narcissist accomplish this by vouching for them and helping them appear to be believable, trustworthy and stable. Flying monkeys also provide false verification to construct the scapegoat narrative /smear campaigns the narcissist has crafted to discredit their targeted victims.

During the devaluation phase of narcissistic abuse, the behavior of flying monkeys is similar to canned laughter on a sit-com. In other words, the flying monkeys encourage and echo the abuser’s negative sentiments about the person the narcissist is denigrating. An Echo chamber is created by all those involved in the smear campaign of the selected target of abuse and violence.

They also cover for the narcissist while they are grooming a new source of attention and adulation for themselves and the Power Narcissist i.e. more. narcissistic supply.

In the discard phase flying monkeys enable the narcissist to control the narrative and escape accountability. Once again, this is done by providing the narcissist with social proof of their scapegoat now smeared reputation and status denegation.

Flying monkeys provide a narcissist with an alibi for whatever narrative they invent about themselves or the people they target.

They enable the narcissist to use gaslighting tactics like DARVO against the target. DARVO is an acronym for:

·         Deny the abuse took place.

·         Attack the individual confronting the abuse.

·         Reverse the roles of

·         Victim and

·         Offender

The final stage of the cycle of narcissistic abuse is the hoover manoeuvre. In this stage, the flying monkeys enable the narcissist to hook the target and reel them back into the relationship so the cycle of narcissistic abuse can begin again.

This may be done by carrying messages from the narcissist to the target. For example, flying monkeys often surface when the recipient of abuse has ended contact with the narcissist. The flying monkey may befriend the target to extract information about them for the narcissist.

Alternatively, malevolent flying monkeys may well continue to slander, harass, stalk and assassinate the character of the target long after the assassinated  target has been eliminated.  

Types of flying monkeys

Narcissists assign different kinds of flying monkey roles to people depending on the individual’s motives.

There are two main subgroups of flying monkeys: benevolent and malevolent.

Benevolent Flying Monkeys

Benevolent Flying Monkeys have four main characteristics.

·         The harm they inflict is largely unintentional.

·         They are susceptible to manipulation.

·         They have poor boundaries.

·         They are people pleasers.

 

As people pleasers, it is easy for narcissists and psychopaths to manipulate benevolent flying monkeys into doing their bidding. All they have to do is appeal to their empathy and/or fear.

The benevolent flying monkey turns a blind eye to the narcissist’s history of abusive behavior. They justify this action with self-deception, self- delusions and put their trust in platitudes spoon feed to them to all say lines like everyone makes mistakes, everyone deserves a second chance, they’ll grow out of it someday, and they will get over it.

Benevolent flying monkeys are likely to be triangulated because they have a desire to be seen as heroic. They are blind to the true nature of their role as a flying monkey. Instead, they view themselves as the peacemaker, the rescuer or saviour.

The Meddler is usually someone seeking the thrill of the rescuer role. They are usually reacting to the theatrics of a narcissist. To cast someone in the role of Meddler, a narcissist may go to them and claim that their target has abused them. Because Meddlers lack boundaries, narcissists can easily overwhelm them by pouring out a never-ending litany of woe peppered with threats of self-destruction.

Meddlers are often in awe of narcissists and find their endless drama titillating. However, sometimes exhausted Meddlers interfere in an attempt to stop the narcissist’s Whining

The Empath can also be triangulated by a narcissist. An unseasoned empath is easily be seduced by the narcissist’s manipulation tactics, especially pity plays and love bombing

Highly empathic people often have a blind spot for the scheming nature of a narcissist as they are unable to conceive that anyone would deliberately conjure up the mischief and mayhem that narcissists revel in.

Narcissists corrupt empathic people by mirroring their good-natured persona back at them. Thus, empathic people identify and bond with narcissist’s false persona. Seeing their reflection in the narcissist, the unseasoned empath extends trust but fails to verify the facts. In other words, they do not do their due diligence and dismiss the other person’s side of the story.

When a narcissist is mirroring an empathic person, their empathy can be weaponized. The Empath believes, “this person is similar to me, therefore I will treat them the way I would like to be treated, I will give them the kind of support I would like to have if I were in their shoes.”

To live a life free from manipulation and enabling toxic people, Dr Paul Bloom’s proposes rational compassion as opposed to unbridled empathy.

Empathy is a disaster in this complicated and interesting world. It has several problems. It is biased. We feel more empathy toward people who look like us, who share our skin color or our ethnicity; who are attractive rather than ugly; who are close rather than far. It’s innumerate. We feel empathy for the one but not for the hundred. Thirdly it can be weaponized.

Paul Bloom, Yale University.

Dr. Bloom points out that empathy can be biased whereas compassion is just.

The Coward is recruited to do the narcissists bidding because they feel intimidated and afraid of the narcissist, simply no backbone what so ever. The Coward may feel that they stand to lose some advantage by failing to keep the narcissist happy. Their self-interest readily overrides their conscience.

In many instances, the coward relies on the narcissist in some way i.e. they may be employed by the narcissist or they may wish to access privilege through their connection to the narcissist.

Malevolent/ violent psychopathic flying monkeys

Malevolent flying monkeys share several common characteristics.

·         The harm they inflict is completely conscious and intentional.

·         They take genuine pleasure in destroying other people.

·         They have are amoral.

·         They are highly anti-social.

 

Malevolent flying monkeys are divided into three common classes: the Scandalmonger (Sadist), the Narcissist, and the Psychopath.

The Scandalmonger is always up for the sadistic power trip of destroying another person. They are recruited into the narcissist’s triangulation efforts because they relish the thrill and brutality of scapegoating.

Scandalmongering is antisocial behavior and it is done without conscience. This type is callously treacherous. Often they make a pretence of sympathy and solidarity with the target in the aftermath of the devaluation or discard stage of narcissistic abuse.

They aim to weaponize the trust of the target. Anything the target confides in them will immediately be conveyed to the narcissist and used to inflict greater harm and pain to the target.

If the scandalmonger believes that the narcissist has a high enough status, they don’t bother pretences and go straight for the target’s jugular by gleefully participating in the narcissist’s smear campaign and assassinating the target’s character.

In both instances, scandalmongers are uninterested in the target’s point of view because their goal is to silence them. Scandalmongers don’t care about what is right or what is fair. They are happy to shoot first and ask questions later – if at all.

Scandalmongers experience a profound Schadenfreude (sadistic pleasure) at being able to participate in the destruction of another person.

The Narcissist often finds themselves in the role of flying monkey because they are part of a narcissistic collective or hierarchy and thus barters their loyalty in exchange similar favours from their brethren.

A narcissistic collective is elitist and operates under the belief that its members are superior to others. Examples of how this plays out on the can be seen in tribalism, racial superiority, sexism, gangs, sororities, fraternities, cliques, etc.

Narcissists participate in drama triangles because they wish to be in the good graces of a narcissist overlord and/or they are buying insurance for the day they may need social proof from the narcissist collective when they wage a smear campaign of their own.

Furthermore, narcissists may be triangulated if the target has special traits or status triggers a narcissistic injury. Narcissists delight in the destruction of people for no other reason than the fact that they have qualities or a position that the narcissist covets. Ganging up on such a target with another narcissist allows them to feel superior to the target. Thus, they are able to resolve the envy that triggered the narcissistic injury in the first place.

The Narcissist often finds themselves in the role of flying monkey because they are part of a narcissistic collective or hierarchy and thus barters their loyalty in exchange similar favors from their brethren.