Flying monkey - anyone aware of the term?

VioletSky, cutting people off can mean that you are often left in a lonely place if the flying monkeys were your friends and relatives, how did you manage? did you have to start building up a new support network?

Golddustwoman

VioletSky, cutting people off can mean that you are often left in a lonely place if the flying monkeys were your friends and relatives, how did you manage? did you have to start building up a new support network?

I already had one thankfully

I put up with almost 4 decades of abuse until my mother engineered a situation that led to me having a nervous breakdown and asking for serious help from a therapist.

My Dad is a good father and I have my own family, some wonderful work colleagues and friends who had been telling me for years that her behaviour was wrong but I couldn't get myself past thinking I was worthless and deserved it.

What really did it for me was my children telling me ways she had hurt them... I was so unwell I couldn't hide what was going on from them and they were too smart to not see the source. That was that, no one gets to abuse my children.

I love all the answers on this thread, theres so much wisdom here. I hope everyone who has experienced flying monkeys is OK.

'not my monkeys, not my circus' is of Polish origin.

I like that FarNorth
or, I want to speak to the organ grinder not the monkey, is a phrase that an old lady told me once a long time ago.

oh yes that's a well-known one too, about the organ grinder, though less heard nowadays.
but its usage is in different milieu than the OP.
strange that monkeys seem to figure so often.

The damage a flyimg monkey can do is actually huge. Especially if they do manage to send you back to an abuser because the flying monkey was someone you previously trusted.

I've never seen (abuser) act that way

I don't think (abuser) would ever say/do that

Are you sure you remember that right?

(Abuser) tells a very different story

That's just your perception, no one else would be upset by that

There are two sides to every story

(Abuser) loves you they wouldn't hurt you on purpose

You will regret this one day

One day (abuser) will be gone and then how will you feel

Etc etc etc

Not heard it but heard of ‘not caring a flying fxxx’ or fig if preferred but where tha comes from no idea and can I be bothered to look it up ???

BlueBelle just read the thread

We havn't mentioned the pathological lying either. If they are good at it you will begin to doubt your own sanity as their version of a distressing event is so different to what actually was said. Whatever you do, don't point the discrepancy out to them as you will just raise your blood pressure even higher when the narcissistic rage begins. !!

Yes, and very occasionally used someone as one.

I've found in my line of work, management have only a few people they're influenced by. Twice, I've known something was going on at work, and have known it'd be discounted if I reported it. So I've used one of the in crowd as a flying monkey to pass the message on. Both times, successfully.

Smudgie

We havn't mentioned the pathological lying either. If they are good at it you will begin to doubt your own sanity as their version of a distressing event is so different to what actually was said. Whatever you do, don't point the discrepancy out to them as you will just raise your blood pressure even higher when the narcissistic rage begins. !!

Gosh yes, pointing out their own bad behaviour only gets you a lot of gaslighting and a grudge that they never forget.

They never let a potential victim go and will try to love bomb, then hound and pound you back into being their emotional punchbag

I'm on the receiving end. My DH's side of the family all hate me and used to harass us because of things my mil used to tell them. They never heard my side of things and never wanted to. Never asked. They pretty much ignore our existence now.

Golddustwoman

Doodledog thats interesting, I agree, people tend to believe the story and will naturally want to help. Would you say that people who use flying monkeys are often good at persuading people? Thats what I have found. Some people are better at persuading than others and I dont know why and how they learn this art.

I think there's an element of that yes. But it's more complex than that. They are very manipulative, and will tell the first parts of the tale to everyone, and up the ante when they see who sympathises, so it's a bit of an elimination round until they have their victim(s). Meanwhile, they are 'love bombing', which may be sexual, but can also be close friendship, or 'mum is your best friend', or in work situations can be persuading you to help them because 'you are the only one I can trust', or any one of a million other things. They are experts at knowing which buttons to press though, and tailor their tactics to the personality of their victim.

It goes way beyond persuasion. That can be learnt, but I think that NPD behaviour is innate, or absorbed at a very young age. Psychologists (I am not one) believe that narcissists are formed by either distant or over-protective parents, and their brains are subtly altered by the way they are treated so that they never learn empathy or how to be annoyed with someone but recognise that they also love them - they are black and white. They are manipulative and passive aggressive, and specialise in wrong-footing their victims, tricking them into saying things, or denying events that definitely happened - basically making them wrong whatever they do. The really scary thing is that they all seem to do the same things, in their different ways - it's uncanny.

Being a victim of one of these people is very damaging, and can make you do things you previously thought were out of character. I hope I never meet another, or that if I do I will spot the red flags and run for the hills.

And hello, GSM!! Good to see you back.

Thanks Doodledog. You’re so right and it’s incredibly painful.

Thank you Doodledog for explaining this so well, especially your second paragraph.
It has been very helpful to now understand these traits I see in others around me and the the way it might have developed.

You only have to look at our soon to be departed PM to see Narcissism in full flow. The superficial charm, the inability to look you in the eye without smirking, the lies, the obfuscation, the cowardice when confronted. He is a psychologists dream!!

I dont agree FMs are also victims

In my experience, they were noisy people who refused to listen to me and respect my request to drop it.
My relationship with them was just fine till they decided to pick a side and convince me I was wrong

They claimed to want to help and mend the relationship and when they realized they were not going to succeed in their endeavors, became agitated and verbally abusive too

They earned their own co too

Oh yes Mother had them everywhere.

Is "loading the bullets for someone else to fire"another term?
It is one I have been familiar with in a couple of situations,and the term was used then.

I read this thread in fear. Having just finished a five year 'relationship' with a NPD and as it is my home, I had to get him out, which he didn't want to do, so police and social services were involved.

This was my second NPD relationship - I ignored the red lights, hoped I was wrong, after all he was so loving to me. Both relationships followed a distinct pattern described here and elsewhere - Love bombing, ghosting, gas lighting with the odd sprinkling of aggression, abuse and character assassination thrown in for good measure. My computer was hacked into, all conversations were recorded and photographed on his phone 'for future reference'. My friends were alienated by him. It was all my fault, how could anyone, let alone me, the woman 'he loved most' discard him? poor, poor him.

I now await the flying monkey treatment. He's moved round the corner, with 'a mate', it's a small town, everyone seems to know and like him, 'what a lovely bloke he is, weren't I lucky'. No one really knows him, not even himself, he's a chameleon.

It's too easy if you're lonely, yearning companionship, maybe even love, to get reeled in by these insidious people (there are women NP's too, but it's rarer). Fortunately we're now more aware of the traits of the charlatans, so if you feel somewhere inside when meeting someone 'that's too good to be true', listen to that inner voice, because he probably is, he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'truth' please, just run away.

The flying monkeys my mother used are mainly family members, they still believe everything my mother told them.
I have been shunned by people I was once close to, the lies must have been very damming as they can barely look at me.

I even had someone say to me they were sorry I had been estranged from my mother at the time her of her death, I corrected them only to be told well, “your mother was never allowed in your house despite you moving back 8 years ago”
My mother came most Sundays for lunch, stayed when she was poorly once, had every Christmas, Easter and lots of family get togethers in our home.

So she is dead but her legacy lives on.

I'm sorry to hear that people on here have fallen foul of this treatment. It is devastating when it happens, as it's not an obvious enemy doing it - they really make you feel that you are close to them in whatever way, until they don't.

In a classic pattern, after the love bombing, the next stage is devaluation, when they realise that you are not perfect (as nobody is). You might not even know what you've done, but as they don't have object constancy (the ability to both care about and be irritated by someone at the same time) they can be really vicious and it is bewildering. Things go back and forth between love bombing and devaluation, so you don't know where you are, and finally they find someone else to fill the role you had (trusted colleague, favourite child, close friend, lover, whatever) and you are discarded. By this time, they have briefed the flying monkeys who believe them, just as you believed them at the start. A favourite technique is to say that you are unbalanced in some way, so that when they leave it is your fault, and anything you say will be seen through the lens of you being unreliable.

I don't fully understand why all the people with NPD behave in the same way, but they do. There is a lot of information about it on Quora, and many victims all describe the same patterns of behaviour. Elinor Greenberg is a psychologist on there who writes very well. (As ever, there is a lot of nonsense on there, though, so you have to be selective.) She has written book too, if you prefer not to sift through a lot of nonsense.

Doodledog you're so right - having two NPD relationships in a row (with 8 years between) the two Narcissists worked in exactly the same order. Also like you, I don't understand how they do it. I find Quora very helpful and also watching Sam Vaknin on f/b is an eyeopener.

Very interesting informative discussion here. It led me to realise I’d been used as a flying monkey in a difficult work situation. It didn’t go well for me but I never let myself be manipulated in that way again
Good to see you German shepherd’s mum. Sorry to hear you’ve been having tough times
You’ve been missed