Have you been the targeted victim of a comprehensive smear campaign conducted by a Cluster B predator and their Flying Monkeys?
Here are a few validating and consoling words offering reader strategies for coping that work.
Smear campaigns are conducted by people prone to social menacing — and Abusers come in all forms. The number one source of abuse enabling comes from the family and loved ones of those prone to doing everyday harm.
For instance, when a parent targets their own child for Narcissistic Abuse, the effects are inevitably life-altering — especially for an adult child.
Long past the years of being under their toxic parent’s wing and care, the pain caused by a parent’s betrayal and lack of validation for child abuse stories (if they existed) is absolutely mind-bogglingly real.
Yep. My mother did this to me …
If you are someone just ‘waking up’ to this and that it is in fact abuse, learn all you can about NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) to start. It can be confusing trying to sort it all out in your head. I had to find a therapist who reassured me that it wasn’t me that was the problem.
It was so bad that I had to break ties not only with my mother but my family of origin as well – both immediate and extended – the poison went that deep!!!
It can feel very overwhelming and gut-wrenching in the beginning, but striving every day to at least take one step forward is progress. I won’t lie – recovery is a long and arduous journey, but so worth it.
Some days will even be a step or two back, some days will be three to four steps forward … however it works, progress is progress. Be patient in your healing, it doesn’t come overnight and through it all, be kind to yourself and make a point of not beating yourself up.
Be a warrior. You can do this!
Dealing with Flying Monkeys — people who overlook, tolerate, and enable abuse then elect to abuse by proxy on behalf of the stronger predator — is the worst.
Not only can you trust your primary Abuser or toxic peer group not to tell the truth and to behave with hate in their heart, but even casual acquaintances, social media contacts, and sometimes even perfect strangers also take up arms and strive to protect and defend the Abuser while directly attacking his or her victim(s).
Listen to your gut instinct.
If someone makes a remark about something they shouldn’t know, listen to it.
I ignored little remarks.
Go NO CONTACT with the narc and any flying monkeys/enablers/other narcs.
In my case, it was about 450 people. I will NEVER see them again.
Tough to let go of friends and family, but I feel a little safer.
It’s still continuing now so I’m careful.
— B. L.
Most often, the biggest wake-up call for a Narcissistic Abuse victim is figuring out that people with Cluster B personality types are not biologically (meaning physically) capable of real love.
While they do have preferred Narcissistic Supply Sources they will occasionally protect and defend against outside attack, they always socially ridicule and situationally abuse those same sources when they are in private.
When a person is born to toxic parents and one or both bio-parents (or primary caretakers) are incapable of perceiving social interaction as beneficial due to collaborative promise, a child raised by them might be told they are loved but the word is taken seriously out of context and misapplied by parents, grandparents, and enabling family supporters directly.
Love never hurts.
Love never competes.
Only people who are Cluster B strive to do things like promote themselves over others (in a parenting role) or strive to inculcate sibling rivalry.
Waking up to the reality that most Cluster B people breed, playing the odds that 1 in four of their children will become abusive just like them, another will be a conforming enabler, the third is likely to be a “runner” (meaning a child who moves away from home and only shows up when and if they want something), and that the last is likely to be emotionally sensitive genetically [and therefore easy to target for abuse as a scapegoat] is a harsh actualization.
Some people break realizing their mother (especially) or father never truly physically bonded with, accepted, or ever loved them.
If this is YOUR story, have no fear. Not only are you not morally unfit to love, but you are also absolutely not alone in this dilemma.
Some mothers in the wild eat their young — not because the offspring are bad but because the parent has a psychological flaw.
In human culture, mothers who act like animals and strive to destroy their offspring are typically those with rare or severe forms of Postpartum depression that incline the bio-mother to commit acts of neglect or violence.
Then there are those who are [fortunate or unfortunate enough to be] born to parents who are narcissistic, shallow, vain, grandiose, and ultimately GREEDY.
The more emotionally sensitive and capable of behaving with empathy such a child is, the more likely they are to be pervasively targeted for abuse instigated by their own toxic parent but conducted by abusers by proxy who are striving to win Flying Monkey pole position status (impressing the competition pot-stirring Mommy Dearest, Daddy Issues provoking champion or any one of their Enabling Henchmen).
Not only do Cluster B parents strive to teach youngsters their own sick values, when and if a child refuses to comply based on a sense of moral outrage, but they are also typically ostracized by family friends and family members who in nearly every severe abuse situation by a mob will claim their preferred scapegoat target is psychologically unstable and/or their perceptions and word are not to be trusted.
Going NO CONTACT with abusive people and toxic peer groups is highly recommended for any victim of toxic parents — even if that means distancing yourself entirely from biological relations.
It is tough to lose your family but in reality you have never really had them. Be careful of the ones that you feel you might be able to talk to as they are not always as they seem either. The more you learn and understand, the more you see the damage that has been done by one single person. I started off on the back foot and never stood a chance just because I look like a family member that was hated by all. Then there is the jealousy by the GC [Golden Child or socially favored first born (depending on the family’s culture of origin)] who learned to hate from such an early age, just hated the fact that I was born and took some of the attention away from her. And it was so easy for her to continue in her hate campaign because I stood up for myself from an early age. they tried to beat it out of me!! I learned that right was right but I never learned to keep my mouth shut. Still don’t!! If I have something to say I tend to say it but it only feeds the problem…….it is only when you know how to be silent that you can break away. You are not what they say you are, never were, never will be.
B. J. M.
Telling an abuse victim they were imagining things, they are crazy, they’re oversensitive, or that they are just plain lying and exaggerating in order to net gain themselves attention are all standard operating procedures for both Abusers and their posse of winged comrades.
Once they launch a smear campaign, understand their goal is to undermine victim credibility so they themselves are never held accountable for criminal, deviant, or abusive acts.
Clearly, since everything they tend to say are pathological lies, manipulations of subtle truth, and rooted in malice, targeted victims typically have no idea what they have actually done wrong to deserve such abuse.
What’s more, since the rumors and stories promoted and shared by narcissistic and anti-social troublemakers are typically based on gaslighting tales and accusations made by liars blame-shifting, there are no subjective experiences to truly validate for an accuser.
Willing to lie to their own friends and family in order to destroy the emotional psychology and reputation of a perceived whistleblower or Narcissistic Rival for community attention, the more extreme the band leader’s personality disorder, the more fundamentally toxic and sinister in nature their smear campaigning allegations against a targeted victim will be.
People who say stupid things like…
“It takes two to tango!” or “It takes two people to make an argument… and everyone has a right to their own opinion!”
… obviously have no idea they are being gaslighted by con artists.
As such, there’s not much point is seeking validation from them or emotional support when and if you are being targeted for social destruction by a person or group of people who are ultimately nothing more than self-serving liars who are short-sighted Machiavellians.
As abusive smear campaigning persists, so the character of the narcissistic and arguably psychopathic nature of the rumor monger’s nature can be noted.
So too can their entire peer group be judged, noting anyone who hears them tell tall tales and is not bright enough to check with the person being gossipped about in order to verify the claims or defend their honor truly is nothing more than a duped or willing co-conspirator, who socially and emotionally sides with an abusive con artist.
Figuring out they are not worth their weight in salt [due to having their own covert, passive-aggressive agendas] makes their Enabler opinion(s) less valuable in the eyes of a targeted mark.
Seriously — with friends and family members like them, who needs enemies? Walking away from drama caused by people who lie and manipulate the truth in order to gaslight friends and family into abusing people who were already targeted for the most psychologically, emotionally, and crippling of physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, mental, or spiritual abuse is truly the right moral as well as spiritual thing to do in order to save yourself from being pervasively victimized by people who spread rumors to abuse.
Don’t try to defend yourself. You are only feeding them. Walk with your head high knowing that you did nothing wrong. Eventually people see them for who they are. They do it so that they can’t be seen for whom they truly are. Go no contact with anyone, ANYONE, who believes them and heal yourself.
— S. N.
