Flying monkeys: who they are and how to handle them

Flying monkeys are the people a manipulative person recruits to act on their behalf.

They carry messages, repeat the story, ask you to be reasonable, and report back on what you said. Some know exactly what they are doing. Most do not.

The reason this hurts more than the original behaviour is that it comes from people you trusted, and it makes the pressure feel like consensus rather than one person’s campaign.

What are flying monkeys?

They are third parties doing the work of the conflict, so the person who started it does not have to.

The practical effect is a wider surface. Instead of one relationship to manage, you now have a network, and every one of them can reach you.

Like hoovering and smear campaign, this is a survivor community term rather than a clinical one. There is no research literature on flying monkeys as such, and no clinician will use the phrase.

What the term describes is real. It just means you are naming a pattern, not applying a diagnosis.

Where does the term flying monkeys come from?

From The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West sends winged monkeys to do her work while she stays out of it.

That is the whole metaphor, and it is doing real work. The person directing this keeps clean hands.

Nothing traceable is said by them. If a message lands badly, it was your friend who said it, and the original person was only worried about you.

How do you tell if someone is a flying monkey?

Most are not hostile. That is what makes them effective, and it is why the usual advice about spotting enemies does not help.

• They raise the subject. Every conversation finds its way back to the other person.
• They arrive with a position. Not curiosity about what happened, but a view already formed.
• They ask questions that feel slightly specific. Where you are living, whether you are seeing anyone, how you are really doing.
• What you say travels. Something you mentioned in confidence comes back through another route.
• They push reconciliation. Be the bigger person, family is family, it has gone on long enough.
• They minimise. That does not sound like them, are you sure you have not misread it.
• They deliver messages. They just want you to know something, and they have been asked to pass it on.

The single clearest test is whether information flows in both directions. A friend listens. A flying monkey listens and then reports.

Why do they believe it?

Because they heard first, and because the story they were given was built to be believed.

There is a documented pattern behind this. A 2024 study of DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, tested 602 university students and replicated the results in 335 community adults.

It found small but positive correlations between using DARVO responses, sexual harassment perpetration, and rape myth acceptance. The authors described it as part of a wider worldview that blames victims.

The relevance here is the reversal itself. By the time anyone speaks to you, they have already been told that you are the problem, and that you will say otherwise.

That framing is difficult to argue with, because arguing looks exactly like what they were warned about.

Add the ordinary reasons people go along with things. They like the other person. They do not want to take sides. Their own position is safer if they stay onside.

Are flying monkeys aware of what they are doing?

They sit on a spectrum, and treating everyone at the harshest end is a mistake that costs you real relationships.

	The deceived	The conflict-averse	The willing
Motive	Believe the story	Want peace at any price	Enjoy the position
Behaviour	Repeat it sincerely	Push you to concede	Provoke and report
Response to evidence	Sometimes shifts	Changes the subject	Uses it
Worth keeping	Often	Sometimes	No

Most people are in the first two columns. They are not running a campaign, they are avoiding discomfort or believing a plausible person.

That does not make the effect on you smaller. It does change what you should do about it.

What flying monkeys actually do to you

The damage is not really the messages. It is that speaking up starts to make things worse instead of better.

Research on disclosure has examined this. A 2024 study of 235 people with a history of sexual assault looked at negative social reactions to disclosure and trauma-related shame.

Both, separately and in sequence, helped explain the link between post-traumatic stress severity and risky alcohol use.

That study was about sexual assault disclosure, so it does not transfer directly. But the mechanism is the one at work: negative responses to telling people produce shame, and the shame carries the harm forward.

Flying monkeys are how negative responses get arranged in advance. By the time you speak, several people have a script for how to receive it.

Which is why the effects people report are so consistent. You stop mentioning it, you start rehearsing explanations, and you conclude you must be the problem.

When does a narcissist send flying monkeys?

At predictable moments, and almost all of them are moments where you have gained ground.

• After you go no contact. Third parties become the only remaining channel.
• After you set a boundary. Someone arrives to explain why you are being unreasonable.
• When you tell someone the truth. Your account has to be neutralised before it spreads.
• Around family events. Weddings, funerals and holidays create obligation and an audience.
• During legal or financial disputes. Character evidence becomes useful.
• When their supply drops. Flying monkeys carry hoovering messages when direct contact is blocked.

How do you deal with flying monkeys?

The aim is not to win them over. It is to stop being a source of information.

Assume everything you say will be repeated. Not out of paranoia. Simply as the working assumption that makes decisions easier.

Do not make your case. Explaining yourself gives them fresh material and confirms the description they were given.

Decline the topic, not the person. “I am not discussing that” can be said warmly, and repeated indefinitely without escalating.

Do not pass messages back. Refusing to be a channel in either direction ends the usefulness quickly.

Say it once if they matter. For the few people whose opinion has real consequences, a short factual statement, once, without heat.

Apply grey rock to the relationship, not just the person. Boring, brief, no detail worth carrying.

Accept the losses, and count them accurately. Some relationships will not survive this, which is a loss worth grieving rather than arguing with.

Watch what happens when you stop supplying. Genuine friends stay when the topic goes away. The rest lose interest, and that is your answer.

Common questions

Should I tell them what really happened? Usually not. The exception is the small number of people whose belief has practical consequences, and even then once is enough.

Can a flying monkey change their mind? Yes, most often through contrast rather than argument. Many work it out when the same treatment is turned on them.

What if it is my own family? That is the hardest version, because the cost of stepping back is real. The same principle holds: limit information rather than trying to convert people.

Are they abusers too? Some knowingly cause harm. Many are being used. The distinction matters morally and changes very little about what you should tell them.

How do I handle it at work? Keep it procedural. Written records, no informal one-to-ones on the subject, and allies you do not name.

Will they ever apologise? Some do, often years later. Building your recovery around that outcome hands the situation more time than it deserves.

What to take from this

Being surrounded by people repeating someone else’s version of you is genuinely disorienting, and it is designed to be.

The relief comes from a change of aim. You are not trying to correct the record with each of them. You are trying to stop being a source, which is a much smaller and more achievable job.

Most of these people are not enemies. They are convenient, and convenience fades when there is nothing to carry.

Where to go next. Smear campaign covers the story they are repeating and how it was built.

The grey rock method is the practical tool for becoming uninteresting to a whole network.

The no contact rule covers holding the line when messages start arriving through other people.

If you want structured support through this, the 8 week narcissistic abuse recovery program is built for it.