Straight talk about Flying Monkeys: stop listening to generic self-help advice from Narcissistic Abuse Enablers and Predators if you are being or have ever been abused. The material was not written in any way, shape, or form to help you. It is helpful for people who are going through challenging times personally and professionally, meaning they are struggling to find their heart’s calling and purpose.
No self-help promoting author is going to advise you to go to a sit down with a criminal who walked up in an alley and mugged you. In order to heal from Narcissistic Abuse, survivors must learn how to stop listening to generic, bad advice from flying monkeys and predators who are out to harm or “sell” something to you.
Many therapists, healthcare providers, lawyers, court officials, politicians, and people in positions of authority in general have their own Overt and Covert Narcissism issues. Actually, a large percentage of people with Cluster B personalities at their core are hired on as school teachers, school faculty members, elected to public office, take jobs in the military or with the government, or work for corporate structures that are known to be dysfunctional and abusive.
Acting like Flying Monkeys, they dish out abuse by proxy. Do not be fooled, tricked, deceived about their nature, or allow them to tell you the advice they are offering up is being shared for any reason other than to socially and emotionally toy with you.
Policemen are some of the worst offenders when it comes to domestic violence issues in their personal lives. There is a pervasive sense of entitlement among healthcare providers, too.
If you are being abused socially, emotionally, psychologically, or physically by a predatory person, that’s like taking an antacid to help with a limb amputation. Is your tummy likely to be upset by the sight or thought of a severed limb?
Sure. but honestly, how quickly do you think a medical care provider would be criticized or sued for bringing you an anti-acid instead of a tourniquet when and if they were the first person to arrive on the scene to help save, rescue, or alleviate further pain, damage, and injury?
If they bring you a tablet instead of a device that will prevent you from bleeding out, they have no business being allowed to minister to or advise you.
Understand the advice given by courts and most psychologists is the exact WRONG advice to listen to when trying to recover from a relationship with a narcissist. It’s even more dangerous — literally, physically, psychologically, and emotionally DANGEROUS — to listen to if you are still for some reason choosing to or are forced to deal with them.
Advice offered to normal people is to share your feelings openly. You are supposed to keep children in the dark about adult issues.
Popular advice is to try to see both sides of a story — and respect both person’s version of their experience.
The problem is, when one partner has a Cluster B personality disorder (or narcissistic addictions issues that make them prone to erratic and self-centered behaviors), there simply are not two sides to every story. There are facts, coupled with one person who pathologically lies to distort issues for their own personal gain and another person being victimized by a crazy-making abuser who gets themselves off by messing with people’s minds to torture.
If a person tells you that your personality simply does not mix with an abusive person’s, understand what they are really doing is revealing their own covertly abusive nature. They have — willingly or unknowingly — already been recruited as a Flying Monkey. The fact they would give an abusive person any credibility whatsoever shows they have been lied to, conned, or manipulated by the Abuser themselves… or worse.
Some Flying Monkeys actually know victims are being abused and still — for their own moral failing reasons — choose to enable. Enablers do more damage, arguably, to a victim’s self-confidence, health, and self-esteem than many abusers.
Why?
Because when a Covert Narcissist gets wind that a person they know is going through a tough time or is having an emotional crisis, they recognize it as a time the victim is at their psychological, emotional, and even physical weakest.
This is where their mobbing behaviors start to emerge as well as more active covert bullying by gossiping, breaking promises, sharing secrets or private things shared in confidence, and actively strive to engage in slow, methodical, legally and publicly deniable, blameless, covertly narcissistic, entitlement-thinking based harming.
[Religious Narcissists are famous for swooping in with paternalistic intent, as well. Note, they are flying monkeys with a more selfish albeit clueless yet deliberately persistent intent.]
That’s when they will show up to give all the most condescending, amoral, and bad advice to victims — when people are at their lowest points. That is when they will sit listening attentively to you while you openly emote.
That is when they put on the mask of a good friend, loving relative, or great protector. Just note, what they are REALLY doing during these times is making a mental note and inventory of what your trigger points are so they can use them against you to hurt you later.
The Flying Monkey, as an “abuser by proxy” actually helps the Narcissist keep you worn down and in the assumed position. [Think bent.] They are the people who laugh at America’s Funniest Home Videos when someone gets hurt. They watch Wipeout. They cannot stop laughing when and if they see an episode of Jackass no matter what their age is, in the chronological sense.
Why, again?
Because narcissistic people and people with Cluster B personality types are narcissistic — meaning they resemble Narcissists. Narcissists are people who meet diagnostic criteria for behavior and thought patterns characteristic of those classified as having NPD, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
For that reason, predicting patterns of Flying Monkey abusers is painfully easy. Like Narcissists, they can all be counted on to do/feel/act like or say things that reflect their true natures, described in part by the following:
- egocentric (perpetually thinking of themselves first in all circumstances rather than thinking of how their behaviors ultimately will affect themselves AND others)
- self-entitled
- self-promoting
- self-aggrandizing
- suffer from grandiose delusions of grandeur
- sadists (who vary from mild to extreme in temperament)
- pathological liars
- con artists
- scammers
- schemers
- haters
- self-absorbed to the point of failing to notice or care about the human rights, civil rights, or needs of others
- socially and emotionally immature
- clever (not rational or smart, simply able to concoct schemes as in premeditating and enact then lie to cover up criminal or manipulative behaviors)
- greedy
- will cut off their own nose to spite their face if they think it will hurt someone other than themselves more
- vindictive
- shallow
- petty
- superficial
- grandstanders
- vacuous
- mean-spirited
- dominating (not truly dominant but dominating in the same way a screaming baby keeps everyone’s attention when selfish parents bring one to a movie theater or restaurant)
- users
- covert manipulators
Learning how to forgive yourself for not knowing at that time all the things you do about a toxic person now — with “then” being any ambiguous or specific time you voluntarily or willingly stayed in an abusive situation or somehow chose to enable and/or show public and private support for them — is tough but not impossible. Users use people — that keeps them aligned in form and function; people-pleasers do the same.
