Flying monkey is a popular psychology term that refers to an enabler and, in some cases, an enforcer of a narcissistic person’s agenda. According to flying monkey theory, these individuals help create an environment where perpetrators of abuse face no consequences — allowing misconduct and abuse to continue unchecked. In this article, you will learn about the different types of flying monkeys, the psychological forces that drive their behavior, and the profound impact they have on the targets of narcissistic abuse.
Table of contents
- What is a Flying Monkey?
- The Difference Between Being Supportive and Being a Flying Monkey
- Why People Become Flying Monkeys
- Flying Monkeys and the Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse
- The Main Types of Flying Monkeys
- Psychological Foundations of Each Type
- The Impact of Different Types of Flying Monkeys on Relationships
- The Role of Flying Monkeys in Different Contexts
- How to Recognize Flying Monkey Behavior in Your Own Life
- How to Protect Yourself from Flying Monkeys
- Can a Flying Monkey Become Self-Aware and Change?
- How to Protect Yourself from Flying Monkeys
- Summary
- Related Links
- Recovery From Flying Monkey Dynamics
- References
- FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Flying Monkey?

The term flying monkey is borrowed from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which the Wicked Witch of the West commands winged monkeys to carry out her bidding against Dorothy.1 In popular psychology, the metaphor captures something essential: flying monkeys are the agents through whom a narcissistic person extends their reach, exerts their control, and insulates themselves from accountability.
In practice, flying monkeys are enablers who act on behalf of narcissists. They are typically friends, family members, or colleagues who serve as surrogates, emissaries, and enforcers within the narcissist’s social network. Whether they act from ignorance or intention, their function is the same — they make it possible for narcissists to carry out campaigns of abuse by proxy.
It is worth noting that the Wicked narrative — both the novel and its iconic stage and film adaptations — retells the Witch’s story with a crucial inversion: Elphaba is revealed to be a bullied figure who is manipulated by a more powerful authority into casting the spell that gives the monkeys their wings.2 This reframing is instructive. In many flying monkey dynamics, those who do the narcissist’s bidding are themselves operating under a kind of spell — acting on a version of reality that has been carefully constructed for them by a skilled manipulator.
The Difference Between Being Supportive and Being a Flying Monkey
This distinction matters enormously — both for those on the receiving end of flying monkey behavior and for those who may unknowingly be playing the role themselves.
A genuinely supportive friend or family member listens to one person’s account of a conflict, offers emotional care, and may even advocate on their behalf. Crucially, however, they maintain their own moral judgment. They remain open to complexity. They do not recruit others, carry coercive messages, or actively work to harm a third party based solely on one side of the story.
A flying monkey, by contrast, has been recruited into the narcissist’s conflict as an active participant. They are no longer bystanders offering comfort — they have become instruments of a campaign. They may gossip, spy, threaten, pressure, stalk, or simply provide social proof for the narcissist’s smear campaign. The harm they cause to the target is real, regardless of whether they intended it.
The dividing line, then, is not warmth or loyalty. It is the willingness to act against another person on the basis of a single, unverified account — and to do so in a way that serves the narcissist’s agenda rather than the truth.
Why People Become Flying Monkeys
People rationalize the flying monkey role for a variety of reasons. Understanding these motivations is essential — not to excuse the behavior, but to understand how narcissists successfully recruit agents and how those agents might be helped to see what they are participating in.
- Necessity — They feel beholden to the narcissist because of a family tie, a financial dependency, or a professional relationship they cannot easily exit.
- Acceptance — They crave the narcissist’s attention and validation. Being included in the narcissist’s inner circle provides them with a sense of status and belonging.
- Avarice — They benefit materially from enabling the narcissist. Their loyalty is, in essence, transactional.
- Schadenfreude — Some individuals genuinely enjoy the spectacle of another person’s suffering. For them, participating in the narcissist’s campaign provides a sense of power and entertainment.
- Manipulation — Perhaps most commonly, they are empathic, well-intentioned people with poor personal boundaries who have been deceived. They believe they are helping. They do not know that the story they have been told is a fiction.
Flying monkey behavior is symptomatic of childhood trauma and codependency. The propensity to enable toxic dynamics is not born from nowhere — it is usually rooted in early relational wounds that made appeasement, loyalty at any cost, or alignment with power feel like survival strategies.
Flying Monkeys and the Fawn Trauma Response
Many benevolent flying monkeys are not simply naive. They are fawning — operating from a trauma-based survival response that predates the narcissistic person’s recruitment of them.
The fawn response — first described by Pete Walker in the context of Complex PTSD — is an appeasement strategy developed by people who grew up in threatening or unpredictable environments. Where fight, flight, and freeze are responses to threat that involve opposition or withdrawal, fawning involves compliance and appeasement. The fawning person aligns with perceived threats rather than confronting or avoiding them.
People with a dominant fawn response are disproportionately represented in benevolent flying monkey networks. The narcissistic perpetrator identifies their compliance, their empathy, and their discomfort with conflict — and deploys the victim narrative precisely to activate the fawn response. The benevolent flying monkey, confronted with a compelling account of the perpetrator’s suffering, does what their nervous system has always done under relational threat: they appease. They help. They carry the message.
This does not remove responsibility from benevolent flying monkeys. Adults are accountable for the harm they cause regardless of their trauma history. But it changes how targeted persons understand the dynamic — and how they might, where it is safe to do so, address it.
Understanding fawning also matters for survivors who recognise this pattern in themselves. Many targets of narcissistic abuse have their own fawn responses — conditioned through childhood experiences that made appeasement feel like survival. This shared vulnerability is sometimes part of what made the original relationship feel so familiar. The TENEL™ framework addresses this dimension of the Adult Child of Narcissists experience directly.
Flying Monkeys and the Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse

Flying monkeys are not simply passive bystanders. They are actively deployed across every stage of the cycle of narcissistic abuse. Understanding how this works makes the pattern far easier to recognize.
1. Idealization (Love Bombing)
In the early stage of the relationship, when the narcissist is presenting their most appealing false self to their target, flying monkeys serve as character witnesses. They provide social proof that validates the narcissist’s performance. They vouch for them, describe them in glowing terms, and help persuade the target that what they are seeing is real. They may also offer false verification for the scapegoat stories the narcissist has already constructed about previous targets — helping to preemptively discredit anyone who might one day challenge the narrative.
2. Devaluation
As the narcissist turns on their target, flying monkeys amplify the contempt. Their function here resembles the canned laughter of a television sitcom: they echo and validate the abuser’s negative assessments of the target, normalizing the cruelty and making the target feel increasingly isolated. At the same time, flying monkeys may provide cover while the narcissist grooms a new source of narcissistic supply.
3. Discard
When the narcissist moves to end or dramatically restructure the relationship, flying monkeys enable them to control the narrative. They provide social proof for the smear campaign and are frequently deployed to weaponize DARVO: the manipulative tactic in which the abuser denies the abuse, attacks the person confronting it, and reverses the roles of victim and offender.
4. The Hoover
In the final stage of the cycle, when the narcissist attempts to re-engage with the target they have discarded, flying monkeys often carry messages on their behalf. They may contact the target under the guise of friendship — gathering intelligence, softening resistance, or applying pressure. In more extreme cases, malevolent flying monkeys may harass and slander the target so relentlessly that resuming contact with the narcissist seems preferable to enduring the siege.
The Main Types of Flying Monkeys

The are two main types of flying monkeys in the narcissist’s orbit: benevolent and malevolent.3 While both enable narcissistic abuse, they do so from fundamentally different psychological positions — and understanding the difference is key to recognizing which type you may be dealing with.
Benevolent Flying Monkeys
Benevolent flying monkeys are not consciously trying to cause harm. In most cases, they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. Nevertheless, the harm they cause is real — and their willingness to be recruited into the narcissist’s campaign makes them indispensable to its success.
Benevolent flying monkeys share four core characteristics:
- The harm they inflict is largely unintentional.
- They are highly susceptible to manipulation.
- They have poor personal boundaries.
- They are people pleasers with a sociotropic nature.
Sociotropy — sometimes described informally as the “disease to please” — is a personality orientation in which an individual’s sense of worth and safety depends heavily on the approval of others. Sociotropic individuals are exquisitely sensitive to interpersonal conflict and will go to great lengths to restore harmony, even at cost to themselves or others. This makes them ideal targets for a narcissist’s pity play.
Benevolent flying monkey behavior is symptomatic of some forms of childhood trauma — specifically the “fawning” survival response, in which a person learns to manage threat by placating and accommodating those who hold power over them. 4 In adulthood, this same reflex makes them vulnerable to manipulation by anyone who presents themselves convincingly as a person in need.
There are three common subtypes of benevolent flying monkey:
- The Meddler – The Meddler is driven by the thrill of the rescuer role. They are typically activated by the narcissist’s theatrics — the dramatic presentation of victimhood that is designed to provoke intervention. Meddlers often lack firm personal boundaries, which makes it easy for the narcissist to overwhelm them with an unrelenting narrative of suffering and self-pity. In many cases, Meddlers are in awe of the narcissist and find their dramatic intensity exciting, even while they are being manipulated by it.
- The Empath – An unseasoned empath can be just as easily recruited as any other type of flying monkey — and arguably more so. Highly empathic people often have a genuine blind spot for deliberate scheming. They find it difficult to conceive that someone would intentionally manufacture the kind of chaos and cruelty that narcissists routinely produce.
Narcissists exploit this by mirroring the empath’s own goodness back at them. The empath sees a reflection of themselves in the narcissist’s false persona, identifies with it, and extends trust without verification. Their empathy is then weaponized: because the narcissist seems like someone they recognize, they treat them the way they would wish to be treated themselves — with unconditional belief.
Dr. Paul Bloom has argued compellingly that unbridled empathy can itself be a liability. His proposal — rational compassion over raw empathy — is directly relevant here. An empath who grounds their care in evidence rather than feeling alone is far less vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
“Empathy can be weaponized. It is biased toward those who seem like us, and it can be exploited by those who understand how it works.”
Dr. Paul Bloom, Yale University
- The Coward – The Coward does the narcissist’s bidding not out of genuine belief but out of fear. They perceive — often correctly — that failing to keep the narcissist happy will cost them something: a job, a social position, access to privilege or resources. Their conscience registers discomfort, but their self-interest overrides it. In this sense, the Coward is perhaps the most calculating of the benevolent types, even though their motivation is ultimately one of self-protection rather than malice.
Malevolent Flying Monkeys
Malevolent flying monkeys are an entirely different matter. Unlike their benevolent counterparts, they know exactly what is happening — and they are glad to participate in it.
Malevolent flying monkeys share four core characteristics:
- The harm they inflict is intentional.
- They take genuine pleasure in destroying others.
- They are amoral — questions of right and wrong are effectively irrelevant to them.
- They are highly antisocial in their orientation.
Their behavior is symptomatic of some forms of childhood trauma in which an antisocial, “fight”-oriented survival response was adopted. Rather than fawning, they learned to dominate. Rather than appeasing, they learned to attack. Narcissism in this group tends to present as grandiose and overt rather than covert and vulnerable.
There are three common subtypes of malevolent flying monkey:
- The Scandalmonger (Sadist) – The scandalmonger specialises in reputation destruction. They participate in smear campaigns not reluctantly and not unknowingly — but with genuine enthusiasm for the damage caused. The narcissistic person recruits them specifically because of this appetite. In exchange for the thrill of participation, the scandalmonger carries the narrative into every social context they inhabit — amplifying, embellishing, and spreading it with the commitment of someone who has found their purpose.
What makes the scandalmonger particularly dangerous is their capacity for performance. They frequently make a show of sympathy toward the targeted person in the immediate aftermath of the discard — presenting as a concerned friend while functioning as an intelligence-gathering asset for the perpetrator. Everything the targeted person confides is immediately conveyed. Everything revealed becomes ammunition. - The Flying Monkey Narcissist – The flying monkey narcissist is a narcissistic person who takes on the flying monkey role — not as a subordinate but as a co-conspirator with their own agenda. They are drawn to dominant narcissistic personalities and identify with them, but they are also pursuing their own needs through the relationship: for status, for supply, for the sense of power that proximity to the perpetrator provides.
Unlike benevolent flying monkeys who are manipulated into participation, the flying monkey narcissist is a willing and self-interested participant. They may eventually turn on the narcissistic perpetrator if the relationship no longer serves their interests — but while the alliance holds, they are among the most effective and most dangerous instruments in the perpetrator’s network. - The Psychopath – The most dangerous class of malevolent flying monkey. The psychopathic flying monkey participates not from narcissistic identification or sadistic pleasure alone — but from a calculated assessment that the relationship with the perpetrator serves their interests. They have no genuine loyalty to the narcissist either. They are instrumentally aligned — and will shift that alignment without warning when circumstances change.
The psychopathic flying monkey is capable of sustained deception across multiple social contexts simultaneously. They are skilled at presenting warmth, concern, and credibility to the targeted person while actively working against them. Their capacity for harm is constrained only by the limits of what serves their self-interest at any given moment.
Psychological Foundations of Each Type

Why Are Flying Monkeys Loyal to Narcissists?
At its core, flying monkey loyalty is an expression of narcissism — which is not, in itself, a pathology. Narcissism is a trait that exists on a spectrum and that all human beings possess to some degree. It is, fundamentally, an expression of self-idealization: the drive to see oneself as special, significant, and worthy of protection.
Narcissists recruit successfully because they appeal to this universal drive. They position loyalty to them as a mark of good character and membership in a worthy in-group. Benevolent flying monkeys tend toward vulnerable or covert narcissism — their self-idealization is expressed through the performance of goodness and care. Malevolent flying monkeys lean toward grandiose or overt narcissism — their self-idealization is expressed through power, dominance, and alignment with those they perceive as strong.
Acting Out Childhood Trauma
The propensity to enable abusive dynamics is almost always rooted in early experience. Children who grow up in households where love and safety are conditional — where they must earn approval, manage a parent’s moods, or survive by aligning with a dominant and volatile figure — learn relational patterns that persist into adulthood. For those who became benevolent flying monkeys, the childhood lesson was: keep the powerful person happy and you will be safe. For those who became malevolent, the lesson was often: align with the powerful, target the weak, and you will not be on the receiving end.
The Emotional and Psychological Toll on the Flying Monkey
It would be a mistake to assume that flying monkeys emerge unscathed. Benevolent flying monkeys, in particular, often experience significant psychological harm when the truth of the situation eventually comes into view. The disorientation of discovering that they have been used — that the person they were protecting was the actual perpetrator — can be profoundly destabilizing. Grief, guilt, and confusion are common responses. Even malevolent flying monkeys are not immune to long-term consequences: sustained antisocial behavior erodes character, damages relationships, and eventually narrows the social world.
The Impact of Different Types of Flying Monkeys on Relationships

How Each Type of Flying Monkey Affects the Narcissist’s Campaign
The benevolent flying monkey is invaluable to the narcissist’s public image. Because they are genuinely convinced of the narcissist’s version of events, their testimony carries a credibility that the narcissist alone cannot manufacture. They are, in a sense, the narcissist’s most powerful witnesses — not because they are powerful themselves, but because they are believable.
The malevolent flying monkey serves an entirely different function. They carry out the coercive and punitive dimensions of the campaign: the intimidation, the character assassination, the harassment that keeps the target in a constant state of fear and social isolation. Their willingness to act without conscience allows the narcissist to maintain plausible deniability — after all, the narcissist did not personally do these things.
Consequences for the Target
The impact of flying monkey activity on targets of narcissistic abuse is severe and multidimensional. Beyond the immediate psychological distress — the anxiety, confusion, shame, and grief — flying monkey networks cause lasting social damage. They erode the target’s credibility, isolate them from potential allies, and can make it extraordinarily difficult to be believed, helped, or protected by the very institutions that should offer support.
At their most extreme, flying monkey campaigns constitute a form of coercive control in their own right — a concerted effort to strip a person of their social resources, their professional standing, their reputation, and their sense of safety in the world.
The Role of Flying Monkeys in Different Contexts
In Romantic Relationships
In romantic relationships, flying monkey recruitment typically accelerates during the devaluation and discard phases. Mutual friends, family members, and colleagues are drawn into the conflict — usually on the basis of a compelling and one-sided narrative provided by the narcissist. The pattern has been documented in high-profile public cases: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, described in his memoir a pervasive institutional and familial dynamic in which senior figures and press operatives worked to manage the narrative and suppress his capacity to tell his own story — consistent with flying monkey behavior operating within one of the world’s most powerful institutions.
In Families and Parenting
The family system is among the most fertile environments for flying monkey dynamics, precisely because the emotional stakes of family loyalty are so high and the power structures so entrenched. In families organized around a narcissistic parent, siblings, grandparents, and extended relatives are frequently conscripted to enforce the family’s preferred narrative, dismiss disclosures of abuse, and pressure estranged members to return to contact. In parenting disputes following separation, flying monkeys may be used to undermine the other parent’s credibility with children, schools, social services, and family courts.
In Divorce and Custody Proceedings
This is where flying monkey behavior causes the most concrete and the most legally significant harm. In divorce and custody proceedings, flying monkeys may provide false witness statements, submit affidavits containing the perpetrator’s narrative rather than their own direct observations, make reports to child protective services based on manufactured or distorted information, and serve as character witnesses who have been carefully prepared to present a specific account.
The family court system is particularly vulnerable to this because it is designed for good-faith disputes between two parties — not for the coordinated deployment of a social network as an instrument of litigation. A flying monkey’s statement in court carries the same procedural weight as a genuine witness’s account. The distinction between the two requires the court to understand the full coercive control dynamic — which many courts currently do not.
Flying monkeys in custody proceedings may also be used to gather intelligence about the targeted parent’s home environment, parenting decisions, and emotional state — information that is then used to construct false allegations or support applications for custody modification. Children themselves are sometimes recruited as unwitting flying monkeys, asked to report on the targeted parent’s activities, relationships, and household.
Document every instance of flying monkey involvement in legal proceedings. Who said what, when, and in which context. Pattern documentation is your most effective legal protection. For the full legal framework on how narcissistic perpetrators weaponize the court system, see Lawfare: How Narcissists Weaponize the Legal System.
In Workplaces and Friendships
In professional environments, flying monkey behavior manifests as workplace mobbing: the coordinated targeting of an individual by a group, typically orchestrated by a colleague or manager with narcissistic traits. Flying monkeys in this context may participate in the systematic discrediting of a targeted employee, relay private information to a narcissistic superior, or actively obstruct the target’s ability to perform, advance, or seek redress.
In Parasocial Relationships and Political Organizations
The flying monkey dynamic extends well beyond the personal sphere. The propensity for enabling behavior manifests strikingly in parasocial relationships — the one-sided connections people cultivate with public figures they have never met. This is observable in entertainment fandoms, where devotees aggressively defend their chosen figure against all criticism. However, the same pattern appears with notable prevalence in certain political organizations, where followers operate as enforcers of a leader’s narrative — targeting critics, silencing dissent, and insulating the authority figure from accountability, all while believing themselves to be righteous defenders of something important.
How to Recognize Flying Monkey Behavior in Your Own Life
Recognizing flying monkey behavior — whether it is being directed at you or whether you may be participating in it yourself — is a critical step in breaking the cycle.
Signs that someone is acting as a flying monkey toward you:
- They seem to know private details about your life that you did not share with them.
- They approach you with messages, requests, or pressure on behalf of someone who has hurt you.
- They dismiss your account of events without hearing you out, or quickly become adversarial.
- Their attitude toward you has shifted suddenly and without apparent reason of their own.
- They contact you repeatedly despite your requests for space.
- They spread information about you in your social or professional network.
Signs that you may be playing a flying monkey role:
- You have accepted one person’s account of a conflict without seeking the other side.
- You have shared private information about a third party with someone who asked for it.
- You have applied pressure to someone on behalf of someone else.
- You have dismissed another person’s account of being hurt.
- You feel a strong sense of righteousness about your role, but have not examined the full picture.
How to Protect Yourself from Flying Monkeys
Recognizing flying monkey behavior — whether it is being directed at you or whether you may be participating in it yourself — is a critical step in breaking the cycle.
Signs that someone is acting as a flying monkey toward you:
- They seem to know private details about your life that you did not share with them.
- They approach you with messages, requests, or pressure on behalf of someone who has hurt you.
- They dismiss your account of events without hearing you out, or quickly become adversarial.
- Their attitude toward you has shifted suddenly and without apparent reason of their own.
- They contact you repeatedly despite your requests for space.
- They spread information about you in your social or professional network.
Signs that you may be playing a flying monkey role:
- You have accepted one person’s account of a conflict without seeking the other side.
- You have shared private information about a third party with someone who asked for it.
- You have applied pressure to someone on behalf of someone else.
- You have dismissed another person’s account of being hurt.
- You feel a strong sense of righteousness about your role, but have not examined the full picture.
Can a Flying Monkey Become Self-Aware and Change?
Yes — but it is uncommon, and the conditions required are specific.
Benevolent flying monkeys are more capable of change than malevolent ones because their participation is based on false information rather than genuine moral alignment with the abuse. When the false information is disrupted — when they directly observe behavior that contradicts the narrative they have been given, when the narcissistic perpetrator turns on them, or when they encounter the targeted person’s account directly and find it more credible than expected — the cognitive dissonance can resolve in the targeted person’s favour.
This resolution is most likely when the benevolent flying monkey has their own direct experience of the narcissistic perpetrator’s behavior. Being on the receiving end of devaluation, being discarded, or witnessing the perpetrator deploy the same tactics against someone else are the most reliable routes to genuine recognition.
Malevolent flying monkeys rarely change in any meaningful sense. Their participation is not based on misinformation — it is based on values and motivations that genuine recognition of the abuse would not disrupt. Change in malevolent flying monkeys requires the same conditions that change in narcissistic personalities requires — genuine self-awareness, meaningful motivation, and sustained therapeutic engagement. None of these is common.
What targeted persons can realistically hope for from benevolent flying monkeys is not immediate change but gradual disillusionment. The narcissistic perpetrator eventually devalues their flying monkeys too. Time and direct experience are often the most effective disruptors of benevolent flying monkey allegiance.
If you recognise flying monkey tendencies in yourself — if you are reading this and feeling an uncomfortable recognition — that recognition is itself the beginning of change. The willingness to examine your own role in a dynamic, to question whether the account you have been given is complete and accurate, and to consider the impact of your actions on the targeted person is evidence of exactly the moral capacity that malevolent flying monkeys do not have. It is worth paying attention to.
How to Protect Yourself from Flying Monkeys
If You Are a Target
Dealing with flying monkeys is one of the most disorienting aspects of narcissistic abuse. The following steps can help you protect yourself if you are a target:
- Limit the information you share.
Be thoughtful about what you share and with whom. Flying monkeys are often gathering intelligence whether or not they appear to be doing so.
- Do not engage with the flying monkey’s narrative.
Attempting to correct or persuade a flying monkey is almost always futile and often escalating.
- Document everything.
Keep records of harassing communications, smear campaigns, and interference in your professional or personal life.
- Cultivate genuinely safe relationships.
Deliberately seek out people who demonstrate intellectual honesty and who are not part of the narcissist’s network.
- Seek professional support.
Trauma-informed therapy, coaching, and survivor support communities can help you process the experience and rebuild your sense of self and safety.
- Consider your legal options.
Where flying monkey behavior crosses into harassment, stalking, defamation, or coercive control, legal remedies may be available.
If You Recognize Flying Monkey Tendencies in Yourself
Recognizing that you may have participated in a flying monkey dynamic — even unknowingly — takes courage. The following steps can help:
- Pause before acting. When you feel compelled to intervene in a conflict on someone else’s behalf, stop and ask yourself: have I heard the other side of this story?
- Seek out the missing perspective. Before forming or acting on a judgment about a third party, make a genuine effort to understand their account of events.
- Establish firm personal boundaries. Practice declining requests to relay messages, gather information, or take action against someone else on another person’s behalf.
- Examine your motivations. Are you acting from genuine care and clear evidence, or from loyalty, fear, or a desire to be seen as righteous?
- Consider therapeutic support. Working with a trauma-informed therapist to explore the underlying relational dynamics can be genuinely transformative.
Summary

Flying monkeys are enablers — and in some cases enforcers — of narcissistic abuse. They are typically friends, family members, or colleagues who are recruited into the narcissist’s social network to carry out their campaign of abuse by proxy. Whether they act from good intentions or bad ones, the harm they enable is real and consequential.
Ultimately, narcissistic people recruit flying monkeys by appealing to their narcissism — the universal human drive toward self-idealization. Benevolent flying monkeys are won over by appeals to their goodness and desire to help. Malevolent flying monkeys are won over by appeals to their superiority and in-group identity. In both cases, the narcissist’s central mechanism is the same: position themselves as deserving of protection, loyalty, and advocacy at any cost to others.
Understanding the flying monkey dynamic is essential for those who have been targeted by it. It is equally essential for those who may, without realizing it, have been recruited into it — and who, with greater awareness, may choose a different path.
Related Links
Recovery From Flying Monkey Dynamics
Being surrounded by a flying monkey network is one of the most psychologically damaging dimensions of narcissistic abuse — and one of the least addressed in standard recovery frameworks. It removes the social support that recovery requires at precisely the moment it is most needed. It extends and intensifies the hypervigilance that the original abuse installed. It actively prevents the accumulation of safety experiences that nervous system recalibration requires.
Recovery from flying monkey dynamics does not happen in isolation. It requires naming what is happening accurately — which is what this article is designed to support. It requires the disengagement strategies described above. And it requires the kind of specialist support that understands the social dimension of coercive trauma as well as the neurological and identity-level dimensions.
The Coercive Trauma Recovery Method™ addresses flying monkey dynamics within the pattern recognition domain — helping survivors understand the specific architecture of the flying monkey network they have experienced, why it was effective, and how to disengage from it without the self-blame that targeted persons so frequently carry. A free 15-minute consultation is the starting point.
References
- Baum, L.F. (1900) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Chicago: George M. Hill Co. ↩︎
- Maguire, G. (1995) Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. New York: ReganBooks. ↩︎
- Wakefield, M. (2020). The Narcissist’s Flying Monkeys. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
- Wysoski, B. (2023). People Pleasing and the Fawn Survival Response. Bridger Peaks Counseling. ↩︎
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
A flying monkey is a person who acts on behalf of a narcissistic perpetrator — carrying their narrative, gathering intelligence about the targeted person, applying social pressure, and insulating the perpetrator from accountability. The term comes from The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch commands winged creatures to do her bidding. Flying monkeys may be conscious willing participants or unwitting proxies who genuinely believe they are acting from concern.
The two primary types are benevolent and malevolent. Benevolent flying monkeys are empathic, often trauma-conditioned people who have been manipulated into participation through a false victim narrative — they frequently do not know they are being used. Malevolent flying monkeys are willing participants who share the perpetrator’s contempt for the targeted person. Within these two types, specific classes include the Scandalmonger, the Flying Monkey Narcissist, the Psychopath, the Enabler, and the Bystander.
Narcissists recruit flying monkeys by appealing to their narcissism — the universal human tendency toward self-idealization. For benevolent types, they appeal to empathy and the desire to be seen as good and helpful. For malevolent types, they appeal to shared contempt, superiority, and in-group identity. The central tool is always the same: positioning the narcissist as deserving of loyalty and protection.
Key signs include: they seem to know private information about you that you didn’t share with them; they contact you with messages or pressure on behalf of someone who has harmed you; they dismiss your account without hearing it; their attitude toward you has shifted suddenly and without apparent reason of their own; and they spread information about you in your social or professional network.
Yes — and this is extremely common. Benevolent flying monkeys typically believe they are helping a person who has been wronged. They have been subjected to the narcissist’s manipulation and have accepted a distorted account of events. Their willingness to act without verifying the full picture is what makes them useful to the narcissist.
Limit the information you share, avoid engaging with their narrative, document any harassing behavior, cultivate safe relationships outside the narcissist’s network, seek professional therapeutic support and/or trauma-informed coaching, and consider your legal options where relevant.
Begin by pausing before acting in any conflict involving a third party. Seek out the perspective you have not heard. Practice declining requests to carry messages or take action against others on someone else’s behalf. Explore the underlying relational patterns — often rooted in childhood trauma — that made you susceptible, ideally with the support of a trauma-informed therapist.
Absolutely. In professional environments, flying monkey dynamics manifest as workplace mobbing — the coordinated targeting of an individual, typically orchestrated by a colleague or manager with narcissistic traits. Flying monkeys in this context may relay private information, participate in the discrediting of a target, and actively obstruct their ability to perform or seek redress.
Yes, particularly benevolent flying monkeys. When the truth of a situation eventually comes into view, many experience significant distress — grief, guilt, confusion, and shame. This awakening is uncomfortable but can be the beginning of meaningful personal growth and changed behavior.
Several psychological mechanisms are involved. Sociotropic personality structure produces the people-pleasing and conflict avoidance that makes benevolent flying monkeys easy to recruit. Trauma-based fawning creates automatic compliance with perceived authority. Narcissistic identification draws narcissistic individuals to dominant narcissistic personalities. Material benefit, social acceptance, and schadenfreude motivate others. The most commonly recruited flying monkeys are empathic, boundary-poor individuals who have been deceived through a compelling victim narrative.
The most consistent signs include: the same narrative about you reaching you through multiple people who do not know each other well; people who were warm becoming suddenly distant without apparent cause; confidences being betrayed back to the perpetrator; receiving contact designed to destabilize rather than genuinely help; and reputation damage in specific social contexts that correlates with the perpetrator’s access to those networks.
Benevolent flying monkeys can and sometimes do change — particularly when they directly experience the narcissistic perpetrator’s behavior themselves, are eventually devalued and discarded, or encounter the targeted person’s account and find it more credible than expected. Malevolent flying monkeys rarely change because their participation is based on values rather than misinformation. The most realistic outcome with benevolent flying monkeys is gradual disillusionment rather than immediate recognition.
The core principle is disengagement — removing the emotional reaction the flying monkey network is designed to provoke. Apply grey rock to flying monkey interactions. Protect your information. Document every contact. Do not defend yourself to people who have been recruited into the perpetrator’s narrative. Invest in relationships that have not been compromised. See the No Contact and Grey Rock guide for the full practical framework.
Flying monkeys are frequently deployed in divorce and custody proceedings — providing false witness statements, making reports to child protective services, and serving as character witnesses for the perpetrator. This is one of the most damaging dimensions of post-separation abuse because it gives the flying monkey network institutional access and judicial weight. Document all flying monkey involvement in legal proceedings as part of the overall pattern documentation. See the Post-Separation Abuse guide for the full framework.
The fawn response is a trauma-based survival mechanism — an appeasement strategy developed by people who grew up in threatening environments. People with a dominant fawn response are disproportionately targeted for flying monkey recruitment because narcissistic perpetrators identify their compliance and empathy and activate the fawn response through a compelling victim narrative. The benevolent flying monkey who is fawning is not gullible — they are operating from a conditioned survival response that predates the narcissistic person’s manipulation of them.
Photos by Deposit Photos.



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