Flying monkeys are horrible. I know that many of you have experienced them, or may experience them as part of your narcissistic abuse experience in the future, and this is why I passionately wanted to bring to you this article – 6 ways to defend yourself against flying monkeys.
This piece is an essential part of narcissistic abuse recovery! If you haven’t yet heard this expression, “flying monkeys” are the narcissist’s minions. The people who do the narcissist’s bidding.
As if it isn’t bad enough to be torn apart by the narcissist’s malicious, heartbreaking and cruel behaviour, it adds insult to injury to be attacked by other people who the narcissist is using to additionally hurt you.
Over the last ten plus years, I have heard your heartbreaking stories many times – how your best friends get sucked into the narcissist’s camp. How your social groups or workplaces, or entire communities have turned on you, attacking you on social media or even face to face – and oh my goodness in some cases even your family members have sided with the narcissist in legal cases against you!
I promise you that I went through this too – horrifically. Friends, including my best friend, family members, work colleagues, authorities and even my own family accountant were turned against me.
People I thought I could trust and believe fell 100% for the narcissist’s narrative, and my life was turned into a living hell. Not only was I traumatised beyond despair by him, I also lost all faith in knowing whom I could or couldn’t trust.
People I went to for help, turned on me.
People I wanted to believe in were attempting to gather evidence on me. Students were leaving my courses. Authorities were grilling me.
I was painted as someone who had played up on him, taken his money and destroyed his life – as well as having affairs with my male students. This is usual. This is what narcissists do – they say that you did what they did to you. They smear you and defame you in such passionate and emotionally charged ways, and play the absolute victim so convincingly, that people fall for it.
As is the case with all people set upon by flying monkeys – the injustice is Soul-destroying. You KNOW you didn’t do these things. You KNOW you are not the bad guy – and you firmly know WHO is … but the flying monkeys are rabid, foaming at the mouth and REFUSE to see the truth.
They are hell bent on their own righteousness. Understandably, I became a shattered paranoid wreck … not knowing where to turn.
But the great news is I got out of the trauma. Not only did I survive the insidious, creepy, gut wrenching and immobilising attacks from flying monkeys, I was able to reinstate my power, reputation and ability to be in the world freely as myself, COMPLETELY trauma free of all of this, and with ABSOLUTELY no fear of it ever happening to me in the future.
It is my greatest wish that I can help you do the same.
Okay, let’s get started by diving into the 6 ways to defend yourself against flying monkeys.
Number 1 – Detachment
The first step regarding succeeding against a narcissist is to detach.
Now let me explain why the starting point is detachment, and why it is so essential …
The battle you are in with the narcissist and their flying monkeys is a psychological war. What is the narcissist trying to achieve? He or she is trying to mentally and emotionally cripple you, so that you are no longer an adversary. So that you don’t have the ability to get on with your life, survive then Thrive and prosper, completely invalidating the narcissist’s devaluing and discarding of you.
Be very clear – regardless of who walked away, he or she has to devalue and discard you in order to save face – so as to convince their egoic False Self that you are rubbish, worthless and no good to have in their life. Such a narrative allows the narcissist to not have to look at any accountability regarding themselves.
You are the scapegoat. You are to blame. It was all your fault. You need to be punished.
What does the narcissist REALLY want? For you to be severely affected by their attacks. For you to try to fight back and only dig yourself in deeper. For you to be paralysed and crippled by the psychological assaults that the narcissist is launching at you personally and via other people.
When you are hooked up in the assaults from the flying monkeys, you can’t get on with your life, you are caught up in a vile, sticky web that derails you, disarms you and allows the narcissist to punish you mercilessly.
The first step regarding succeeding against a narcissist and the flying monkeys is to detach. Of course you want to right the wrongs by fighting back and defending yourself. Of course you will feel incensed, humiliated, devastated and attacked … But in this ridiculously intense psychological war – literally a battle for your Soul – detachment is your most powerful asset.
Detachment, isn’t the full answer in itself, but it is the necessary set up for the steps that come after this.
It means … don’t bite. Don’t fight back.
Be open to look at this in a DIFFERENT way than you would normally … stay with me and I will show you how.
It’s important and in my humble opinion this is the only way to get out of this.
Now … Let’s move on …
Number 2 – Looking Deeply At Your Disbelief
I know the disbelief is crippling. HOW do these people believe this rubbish? WHY are they wanting to attack me?
These are powerful emotions.
Detachment is not just physical, detachment most of all is emotional.
Let’s switch to a much bigger wider view of what is really going on here. It will help you …
Narcissists are cunning and brilliant actors. They have the ability to look someone directly in the eye and come out with things that most people would think, “Why would a grown adult tell me something so shocking about someone unless it was the truth?”
Additionally, narcissists know how to pepper their fiction with just the right amount of “care”, “decency” and “integrity” so that people believe them.
It’s stuff like, “Melanie was having constant affairs behind my back. I tried to help her heal her sex addiction, and our marriage. I really did (eyes watering on the verge of tears). At times she wanted help, but them she’d lie and do it again. It broke my heart, but eventually I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Narcissists go into minute details to back their stories … EXPLICIT and SPECIFIC details. It’s a full performance complete with a compelling award-winning script.
This is BELIEVABLE, shocking and makes people think that YOU are the person who was deceiving THEM, as well as this person, all along.
All whilst the narcissist makes out that THEY are the great, caring, long-suffering, angelic person who cares about everyone, humanity and the world in general.
Now I want you to be really honest with yourself … who did the narcissist give you their sob story about during your relationship with them?
Who did you think was a disgusting person who had done SHOCKING things to the narcissist?
Did you “stick up” for the narcissist against any of these people? Absolutely I did. An ex-girlfriend who was terrorised by him, tried to warn me about him. Yes, she was “manic” … but now I totally understand why. I set upon her with an intervention order. As it turned out, she was being absolutely truthful.
I stood up to his family for his benefit. Acting upon his information on them.
The list goes on. Does this help take some of the sting out of this for you?
The flying monkeys have been “had”. Just as you were.
Number 3 – The Higher Perspective Of Resentment And Injustice
Other strong emotional hooks that make it really hard to detach are the resentment and injustice of this.
You may be receiving messages, emails, horrible glaring looks, even terrible words as you run into people in the streets.
Maybe it has even escalated further than this. It could be harassment. Threats even.
I want you to know with all of my heart, narcissistic abuse is an energetic phenomenon. The greatest battle to win is ENERGETIC … it’s about what is going on for you, INSIDE of you. This also applies to everything and everyone around the narcissist which is hurting you.
The negative dark energy of narcissism needs “food” – your fear and pain – to be powered up and continue. Such as sharks getting in a frenzy over blood. When the waters go still and there is no longer any bleeding, the sharks swim off to create carnage elsewhere.
I promise you it is the same regarding flying monkeys.
Let’s now take the red-hot feelings out of what you are feeling regarding the resentment and the injustice.
People who are flying monkeys, are often “good” Souls with lots of their own unhealed wounds. This is why narcissists enlist them. The narcissist can butter them up, compliment them for their good deeds and care for others, or hook them as closer supply trying to get the narcissist’s approval, and then get them to do their bidding.
Good people with unresolved inner stuff make the perfect foot soldiers for any person or movement wanting righteous people with deep unresolved hurts (anger) to unleash on good people and causes that pose a threat to the narcissistic person or group.
These people THINK they are doing the right thing. They think their cause is RIGHTEOUS.
It’s the narcissist’s / sociopath’s Play Book – personally and collectively.
Now, lets just take a deep breath and realise something pretty profound together. I’ll lead the way … When I was believing the narcissist’s lies and pitting myself against people that he had defamed to me, I was desperately trying to win his approval. I wanted his love. I was not whole and healed within myself. I was stuck in my own righteous indignation regarding how people treated others, thinking that this made me “compassionate” and “goodly”.
Rather it was a way of projecting the hurt and anger that I had never dealt with inside myself.
This is the plight of all the flying monkeys now attacking you.
And just like YOU, when THEY have outworn the narcissist’s usefulness, or start to challenge the narcissist in any way – they too will be thrown under the bus. The flying monkeys have their own Soul lessons to learn – just as we, in narcissistic abuse recovery, deeply have our own. Nothing is out of place here.
I can’t tell you how many times the flying monkeys, and their prey have got together with love, understanding and healing – organically – once you heal your own Inner Being. (I will get to that later in this article.)
You really are all in this together.
I made up with many of my flying monkeys … and yes they became the victims to new flying monkeys. The cycle continued.
Number 4 – Releasing Traumas Of Persecution
The terror of persecution is big when you are being pursued by a lynch mob of “flying monkeys”, and authorities knocking on your door with accusations of terrible things that you never did.
This brings to the surface so many inner persecution programs, that are deep survival fears of, “If people think badly of me, I could be punished severely.”
It’s a feeling of powerlessness and even panic that everything that is dear to you is under threat. It could literally be so white hot that you feel like you are going to die.
That is how bad it was for me, and I know from working with so many of you, that it is for many of you too.
When triggered into the horrible emotions of persecution terrors you may try to fight back, or be so crippled in anxiety that you can barely function. Neither response will work for you.
I discovered a powerful truth whilst under fire from the flying monkeys. I had always been terrified about what people could do to me.
At this stage of being battered by flying monkeys, I had started my Thriver Recovery journey. I was working hard at healing myself from the inside out, knowing that I was fighting for my Soul.
My mission was to become solid and whole in my own body, regardless of what the narcissist or the flying monkeys were trying to do.
I had pulled back – I wasn’t fighting back. I wasn’t justifying or explaining. I blocked and deleted all the people attacking me, and worked on healing my inner traumas of persecution, and came to a solid understanding that I was safe in my body connected to Source (my Higher Power) no matter what others tried to do to me.
The panic and terrible trauma of, “I have to change these people’s minds about me otherwise I can’t be safe” was gone. Finally, I breathed a sigh of relief.
My paranoia had dropped. I wasn’t hearing noises in the middle of the night anymore. I wasn’t dreading text messages or emails or phone calls.
Not long after this, I saw one of the flying monkeys in a shopping centre. Usually, I would hide around a corner until they went away. This time I just walked past with my head high. She said something nasty, but I didn’t get the usual while hot feeling of panic. I walked on, and so did she.
That was all that happened.
Something had shifted. I knew it was because I had shifted.
What a graduation I experienced that day!
Number 5 – Releasing What People Think Of You
A massive realisation that the flying monkeys brought up for me was that I had been attached to what people think of me.
In fact, I used to be horrified if people thought badly of me.
This was one of the ways that the narcissist had kept me trauma-bonded to him, accusing me of things that absolutely I never would have considered doing, let alone have the ability to be able to carry out.
It incensed me. It was a really big hook. Rather than be able to pull away with the inner solid knowing of “I know who I am, and your opinion of me doesn’t affect that at all” I was firmly stuck in the horrific feelings that I needed to change his mind about me so that he could love me and approve of me.
I was able to realise later, the real truth WAS, I wasn’t yet loving and approving of myself.
Regarding the flying monkeys, this attachment to what other people thought about me amplified to an obscene level. It shook the very foundations of not just my world but also my Inner Identity.
Again I turned inwards to heal this within myself. Those parts of me that felt not good enough, or unacceptable or worthy of love. When I healed these up between me and myself with Quanta Freedom Healing (in NARP), I came home to a warmth and solidness within that I had never previously known.
Now I felt love and approval for myself, regardless of what anybody else did or didn’t think of me.
This was when the greatest shift of all happened with the flying monkeys.
Certain people who were smearing me and ganging up against me, came forward. They told me that the narcissist had showed his true colours. They apologised for thinking shocking things about me, and realised that he had been lying.
This sudden reversal had nothing to do with me presenting evidence, or trying to get them to change their mind. This was the unmistakable miracle of Quantum Law – so within, so without. When I had solidified the true version of me between myself and Source and my own Inner Being, that’s when outside of me shifted to match who I was Being on the inside.
In the past no amount of my doing, trying to create change from the outside in – trying to convince other people about the truth of me, so that I could feel at peace the truth of me – had worked.
This was, one of the most spectacular confirmation realisations I had about the Quantum Inner Work and how powerful it is.
Another powerful shift that arose from this was that the people who didn’t come forward to apologise, started to melt away anyway. The attacks stopped.
Even the police came to me and said they had caught him out and now knew the truth. One officer said to me that never before had he fallen for such convincing lies.
Everything started falling into place for me.
Yet the most powerful reintegration had been within me. For the first time ever I knew, “It’s not important what other people think of me, it’s important what I think of me.”
Number 6 – There Is Nothing To Defend
Okay, so here we are at the end of this article all about the six ways to defend yourself against the narcissist’s flying monkeys, and then I drop on you that the best way to defend yourself, is to know that there is nothing to defend!
It’s true. The more that you feed into the energy of the narcissist’s attempts to abuse you, and set flying monkeys upon you, the more you get enmeshed in it, and the more you feed it.
Mind you ignoring it and hiding out in your house, hoping it will blow over doesn’t work either.
This is no way to live.
Everything that I’ve written above is to help you understand how to win the psychological battle in a way that works. How to take your Life Force and power and sanity back in a way that will not only stop you granting any fuel to the fire, but also liberate you in so many areas of your life where other people have had the power to affect you.
Part of knowing that there is nothing to defend, means firstly shifting out the horrible feelings that you’re feeling inside of yourself. Then you can go free regardless of who other people are being.
Then if people don’t stop, absolutely stand up and take out an intervention order from a place of personal emotional power. You may even have to stand up to a court case against ridiculous allegations.
But, my highest suggestion to you is to always let go of the traumas that you are feeling so that you can show up calmly and clearly, with your head held high so that you are able to factually deliver. I promise this is the most incredibly powerful way to be able to disarm a narcissist and the flying monkeys when needed to.
This will not work from a place of resentment, hatred and retaliation. Rather, it’s done from a place of strength, authenticity and your right to live as a free person, in your own body, enjoying your life.
This is a place of Powerful Light. That’s what extinguishes the darkness.
In Conclusion
I hope that this article today has given you some clarity and sanity regarding how to deal with flying monkeys.
If you are feeling the intense and terrible feelings that the flying monkey experiences bring, I would love to show you even more deeply how you can get to the place that I have with all of this.
Please join my 3 Keys Free Webinar to help you emotionally detach, heal and take your power back. I want nothing more than that for all of us!
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