32. Unmasking 'Flying Monkeys': The allies, advocates and enablers of abusers.

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me on another episode of the Post-Separation Abuse podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about high conflict advocates, allies and enablers, better known as flying monkeys. You may or may not be familiar with the term flying monkeys. I'll unpack that a little bit more as we go on with today's episode. Hey, I'm Danielle Black and I'm the coach you need if you're dealing with post-separation abuse. I help you make sense of ongoing abusive behaviour after separation and help you take back your power and control. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Abusive people controlling people can be very skilled at recruiting enablers, allies and advocates, friends, family and also those in the broader community who will allow them to minimise, deny or excuse their choice to use controlling and abusive behaviours, and to also minimise the effects of the abuse on partners, former partners and children. Enablers, allies and advocates of high conflict, people of controlling and abusive people are perpetrators of what can be called abuse by proxy. When they do the bidding of the controlling, abuser, enablers, allies and advocates of high conflict, controlling and abusive people often collude with the victim narrative of the abuser. They might be recruited to spy on you, to spread gossip that paints your abusive ex-partner as the true victim, and even to try to convince you to give your high conflict abusive ex another chance or to convince you that you're doing something unfair. This is particularly common when there are safety and wellbeing concerns about children in the care of controlling and abusive people and when the protective parent has been insisting on something like supervised time or no overnight time. It's not uncommon for family members of the abuser or friends of the abuser to make contact with the protective parent and to minimise her concerns, to dismiss her concerns and to really advocate for the abuser and to advocate for the abuser's narrative, the narrative that this situation is just so unfair on them. High conflict advocates, enablers and allies are also referred to as flying monkeys, as in the flying monkey henchmen in the Wizard of Oz. Now, this term flying monkeys is specifically used when we're talking about narcissistic abuse and refers to the way in which people with narcissistic personality disorder, or those people who have personality traits consistent with one or more personality disorders, will recruit other people to act on their behalf. As I've said in other podcast episodes and for all of my clients who are listening to this, they'll know this about me already I avoid using terms such as narcissistic abuse because, honestly, this is just abuse by another name, and using the term narcissistic can really just serve to perpetuate the problematic narrative that people are only abusive because they're narcissists or because they have a personality disorder, which is incorrect. The vast majority of controlling and abusive people do not have a personality disorder.

Speaker 1: 3:57

A person who sides with the abuser and denies the reality and the experience of the victim is an enabler of abuse and an ally to the abuser. This is also called abuse by proxy. This includes people who believe and support a narrative that an abusive person was overwhelmed, pushed into it, didn't know what else to do, was left with no choice, lost control or any other excuse or minimisation Anything really that the controlling abuser uses to paint themselves as being unfairly done by and as being the true victim. An advocate goes one step further and openly supports and defends the narrative of the abuser by minimising or denying the experience of the victims, repeating the false abuser as victim narrative to others, and might even confront the victim. I actually had this happen to me, being confronted by people who were advocates of my high conflict ex and were running with the narrative that he had. It was very confronting and at the time it was upsetting Now, when I think about it honestly, I feel sorry for them. I feel pity that they were taken in with whatever that narrative was. Advocates will also give character references, for the abuser will join in this mere campaign against the victim and ultimately facilitate further abuse.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Enablers, allies and advocates can be your own friends, family and co-workers, or the friends, family or co-workers of your ex partner. This is really important to keep in mind. It's easy to assume that it's going to be the family members of your ex that are going to be most likely to support your ex and to support your ex's narrative, but you also need to be aware that there might be family members of yours that might become an enabler, an ally or an advocate, perhaps without even realising it. I've had a number of clients tell me about the fact that their ex partner reached out and made contact with family members of theirs to try and rope them in, so making contact with my clients, parents or siblings. It's also really common for controlling abusers to try and rope in mutual friends. They can sometimes try to get in first with their narrative. They can be reaching out to friends perhaps that are more so your friends than theirs, maybe even people that they haven't ever had a personal conversation with before, might not have had a conversation with for months or years, and yet a controlling, abusive, high conflict person can be blowing up that person's phone with phone calls or text messages, wanting to get their narrative out there first, usually about how they're had done by and they are the victim.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Using people close to you helps an abusive person to continue to control and manipulate you. In fact, they've likely been grooming your friends and family members from the moment they first met them. In the beginning, a controlling, abusive person is testing out those people and your relationship with them to assess how strong that bond is and to determine whether or not they'll be able to manipulate this friend or family member. If they come to the conclusion that they can't easily manipulate the person maybe because the person has seen behind the charming mask and isn't falling for it the controlling abuser will attempt to remove that person from your life or create some kind of distance in the relationship. Simply, they want to isolate you from anyone who can make it harder for them to control you, and this can include children from a previous relationship. Over time, controlling abusers will start to discredit you to these people. They may start in small ways, ways that are undetectable to most, but this is them planting the seeds even in the relationship, so that if and when you ever need to turn to these people and confide in them about your abusive ex-partner's behaviour, they may not believe you. Without realising it, you've been effectively isolated from unconditional support, and again this could have been started whilst you were still in the relationship.

Speaker 1: 8:27

As upsetting as all of this can be, the best thing to do is to disengage and disconnect as much as possible from anyone who supports the narrative of your abusive, controlling ex-partner. It can be really challenging and distressing to disconnect from someone. If that person is or was a mutual friend, if they're a family member of yours or a family member of your ex that you were close to, it can be really tempting to try and be the bigger person and to give the advocate, enabler or ally the benefit of the doubt To maintain a connection, perhaps for the sake of the kids. Don't, please don't. Oftentimes, advocates, allies and enablers can also be high conflict people, or they may simply thrive on the drama and the misfortune of others. Please do not make the mistake of assuming good intentions on their behalf. Set healthy boundaries If we're talking about the family members of your ex-partner and if you suspect that your ex-partner has one or more personality disorders, it's so important that you keep in mind that personality disorders have a genetic component. It's important for you to realise and recognise that at least one of their parents may also have many high conflict personality traits. Please do not give these people the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 1: 9:49

You also need to assume that anyone you know who is still in any way connected with your ex is potentially feeding your ex information, either deliberately or inadvertently, without realising it. If you make the decision to maintain your social media, you really need to be keeping that private. Cull the list of people who can see what you post, or simply stop posting anything remotely personal, and always remember never to post anything about your ex. If there is someone that you have limited choice in communicating with, such as a co-worker, or you're reluctant to cut off all contact with a particular family member, please be mindful to have strong boundaries around what you share with that person. Avoid discussing your ex-partner in any context and don't share anything personal about yourself, your kids, your own plans or your life in general that you don't want potentially to get back to your ex.

Speaker 1: 10:46

When my clients tell me that they've been accused of something by a flying monkey connected with their ex, my advice is most often to disengage from that person and to avoid going down the rabbit hole of justifying your actions, justifying decision making, trying to explain the situation to the other person. It's just a waste of your time. The best thing that you can do is to completely cut off contact with anyone you suspect as being a flying monkey. Cutting off contact with anyone who you suspect as being connected to your ex. Now, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, that may not be possible depending upon the nature of the relationship that you have with that person. However, even if it's necessary for you to maintain some level of contact, it's important that you have very firm boundaries around what it is that you're discussing with that person. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that you can somehow convince them of your reality, of what you've been experiencing. That's a waste of your time. It's a waste of your energy, your emotions and other resources, and you're potentially only going to make the situation worse. You know what your truth is. You have absolutely no obligation to convince anyone else.

Speaker 1: 12:06

One of the things that really angers me when it comes to flying monkeys, enablers, advocates and allies of controlling and abusive people is the fact that when there's someone in their world who will accept their behaviour, who will accept their excuses, who will accept their denials, who will accept their narrative that you're a liar, when there are people in their world who will do those things, it makes it virtually impossible, if not completely impossible, that there will ever be any change in behaviour of that person. There's no cure for a personality disorder. So if that's what we're talking about in terms of your ex, change is not going to happen anyway. But if we're talking about an abuser who does not have a personality disorder, change would require them to identify and need to change. It would require them to acknowledge that they've caused harm, to take responsibility for that and to want to do something about that, to want to change. But if they've got people in their world who will accept their lies, who will accept their denials and minimisations and excuses, it's highly unlikely that there will be any motivation or incentive for them to change any of those controlling, entitled and abusive behaviours.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Something that I strongly believe is that we will start to see a shift in violence towards women and children when violence towards women and children becomes overwhelmingly socially unacceptable, and at the moment, there are too many people in the community who are prepared to take the word of someone who is accused of abuse. There are too many parents in this world who will support their children, no matter what their children are accused of doing. The biggest flying monkeys that my clients have to deal with are the family members of their ex-partners, and I don't want to dump mothers in this, but often mothers are the worst flying monkeys if they have a son who has been accused of family violence, and sometimes the behaviour of these mothers of abusers has been just as bad, if not as bad as their abusive son. The reality is that defending an abuser does not help them in the long run. It doesn't help them because they're not connecting the dots that their behaviour is causing harm. Now maybe they're not capable of that, maybe they don't have the capacity for that, but they're definitely never going to get to that point if they have people who are prepared to support them no matter what and people who are never going to hold them accountable.

Speaker 1: 14:48

If you're dealing with flying monkeys, I get it. The women that I'm working with get it If you think that you'd like to have some support in your corner from people who get it. I really encourage you to reach out. My clients find private one-on-one coaching with me really helpful, along with the group coaching support that I host on a weekly basis. That's where a group of my clients get together on a video call. We share our experiences and it's just so incredibly healing and supportive to be chatting with a group of other women who truly get what it is that you are experiencing, because they're also living something similar to you. If you're listening to this, if this episode has resonated with you, please know that you are not the only woman in Australia dealing with this. Unfortunately. You are one of many and you don't need to navigate this alone. Thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.