How do you know if a person has #NPD, #ASPD, or is acting like a Flying Monkey? Red flags and warning signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Anti-Social Personality Disorder are actually pretty easy to spot, figure out, or plainly see. With well over ten percent of the world’s population as of 2015 clinically meeting egocentric criteria for personality disorders, chances are if you don’t know one at work that you may at some time in your life be forced to endure living with one of them at home.
What is the Narcissistic Cycle of Abuse?
Share academic news and information about #CLUSTERB and teach your family, friends, co-workers, and children how to recognize and stop participating in the cycle of #NarcissisticAbuse when and if their spider senses are tingling.
Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Flying Monkeys are most likely to show their true nature in their “natural habitat” — namely, at home while behaving like an emotional terrorist or during situational bouts of abuse that typically happen when no one but the abusive predator and their victim (as prey) are alone or the person victimized knows no one present.
The Narcissistic Cycle of Abuse is a seemingly endless and frustrating hamster wheel. The only way to exit the ride is literally and figuratively speaking make a run for your life. Victims often stay with narcissistic people and spend a lifetime waiting for their abuser to die. Survivors make a leap of faith to step off the dizzying and terrifyingly monotonous ride.
Staying with an abusive partner makes you an Enabler — not virtuous.
Don’t volunteer to martyr yourself. If you make the mistake of role-modeling enabling to your children, it is they and their children and their grandchildren who will most certainly be forced to pay the consequence for the “short-term thinking” based emotional indulgence.
Keep the faith and educate.
Study the behavior of off-putting and dysfunctional relatives rather than actively (or more specifically reflexively) engaging in emotional or serious conversational drama with them. Don’t be confrontational or antagonistic — just make mental note of behavior, try to figure out an easy word or phrase to describe it, and when you are alone and can open an incognito browser start to do some keyword research.
Learn to spot the red flags and warning signs.
Do you have a family member who makes everyone around them for any significant period of time feel like they are going crazy or have been forced of practical necessity to tip-toe around subject matter while feeling like they are walking on eggshells? Every time things seem to be going right, does someone YOU know and love pull the proverbial rug out from under your feet? Do negative relatives of family members routinely try to kick the wind out of your sails every time they notice you are actually starting or trying to succeed?
There are stipulative psychological terms for all of it — and no you are NOT being overly sensitive, too thin-skinned, or hyper-dramatizing anything for simply having an innate awareness that something fundamentally morally wrong or toxic about a person’s behavior might be deeply rooted in the subconscious rather than excused by their superficial analyses and bullish blustering denials or invalidating trivializations.
Share news about red flags and warning signs of people with personality disorders as well as good news about people who live life lovingly and in such ways they inspire or educate humanity. Teach your children empathy in part by playing the role of inner child mentor to yourself.
Love, honor, respect and care for yourself as a sign of compassion and nurturing. Self-care is not the same thing as being selfish. Setting healthy boundaries, in part, necessitates creating time-out time for mental health and spiritual wellness as well as exercise, a need for daily sunlight and fresh air, and regular “watering” (of the beach, bath, pool, spa, sauna, steam room, hot mineral springs, lake, or showering varieties as well as for internal hydration).
Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Flying Monkeys — Oh My!
If you hang around circus monkeys chances are either you are their ring leader or you are simply facilitating their care like hired help at the cosmic zoo. Observe Narcissists, Sociopaths, and their Flying Monkey enablers in their natural habits and environments until you reach a point in time where you feel capable of making your escape or are more functionally able to transition to low or no contact with your primary abuser and any narcissistic peers who are easily duped or willingly encourage and help hide abuse.
Depersonalize abuse by learning how to go “gray rock” and have some fun while you do. One of the best tricks we’ve found is to equate abusive personalities with cartoons or other fictional characters.
Once in a great while some nasty character surprises us with some clever new smear campaign lie or horse puckey story and we launch back into play-by-play analysis narratives using the voices of Star Trek figures, Steve Irwin (R.I.P. The Crocodile Hunter), or Marlin Perkins [as a throwback to the 1970’s show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom].
But seriously, folks… most of the time simply figuring the abuser’s psychological manipulation tactic out is enough to help emotionally create an air-gap space so caustic comments cannot be seriously internalized in any way other than to create memories that are laughable.
It’s our fear of their antics and shenanigans that empower them. Stay safe (in a practical sense) by avoiding physical or “fight or flight” scenarios, but don’t let mean, cruel, or nasty people think that you are in any way, shape, or form responsible for their choices in life to act egocentrically at all times or to abuse.
