Flying monkeys after NC (siblings)

mary_poppins · July 04, 2025, 05:48:12 AM

Hi all.

I went no contact with both my PD parents a month ago. I kept in touch with my brothers because I sincerely miss them and don't want to cut ties. Both brothers are either PDs or have NPD traits that are obnoxious and unhealthy. I still love them though, they are my brothers. However, ever since I blocked my parents, they have been sending me manipulative messages like Call your mom/dad, she/he is crying because she/he can't reach you or Call dad, he has been so worried about you. No message about how am I doing, if I am healthy and well. It's only about them, their parents and their obsessive need to carry out the toxic message that I should get back in touch with my parents.

I am really offended by the fact that my adult brothers decide for me, what I should do, how I should act. I am a grown woman who has authority over her life and knows well how to take decisions and live her life. And yet, my brothers think I can't behave normally and they should tell me how to act. It's very hurtful to be treated like that.

It may be possible that both my bothers have NPD (although a mild form) and I wouldn't be able to make them see how abusive our parents are. Having a relationship with them is impossible because the major topic of discussion is our parents. I've tried relating to them but it's just not easy.

The question is how do you deal with siblings who may have NPD traits and are still in contact with your abusive parents? And who cannot see the abuse that is perpetrated in the family. Did you guys maintain shallow contact with your siblings after cutting your parents off?

Liketheducks · July 04, 2025, 08:04:55 AM

My parents are/were very adept at roping us all in to be flying monkeys at one time or another. And, playing us against each other. At any one given time, one of us would be "in favor" and the others would be subject to the manipulation. If there was a playbook for familial dysfunction, this could be a whole chapter.

In my family, we've best handled this with boundaries. That didn't come easily or quickly. And, if I was the one not behaving in my parents opinion, it came with what felt like a full on assault of flying monkeys...a tag team of siblings trying to convince me to do what was "right". Many,many times of "I'm not going to talk about mom...it serves no purpose or we'll have to agree to disagree on this".

The tables have turned a bit now. One brother passed. It's just me and one other sibling. He's completely no contact now. Though, I have a great connection with him now. I'm super proud of the work he's done...and that I've done. Being the eldest female, much of the emotional labor kind of gets dropped on me. We're both VLC/NC with our parents. Though our parents or their proxies will phone me with all the health issues. Sometimes, I just let those calls go to voicemail...but as our parents get older and more infirm, I know more of those calls will come. In the past, I've let my brother know....simply in the interest of not wanting to be the reason he doesn't know...but that he doesn't have to do anything. We've assumed and reversed these roles over the course of our adult lives. He's recently told me that he doesn't want to know if they call me with these things and I'll respect that. And, I'm sure he will do the same for me.

It is remarkable how we grew up in the same family and have had very different interpretations of our parents as individuals. For my brother, our alcoholic/drug addicted/abusive father was safer to be around than our mother. It is the reverse for me. There is a 10 year age difference between me and my brother. I had a lot more time seeing the super scary physical abuse and rage from my dad. And after I moved out, our mother separated from our father...taking my brother with her. For him, she took him away from his father (which she needed to do), but also as a single mom, abandoned my brother to work and "have a life" and my brother was labeled as "just like his father"...and took a lot of emotional abuse from mom.

For me and my brother, just leaning into and honoring each other's pain points...which may be different from my own experience is what works best. And, also, honestly saying....nope....when we need to. We're both adults and have every right to do what we think is best for ourselves and the families we've created.

My brother and I have pretty clear boundaries now about what we're comfortable talking about or doing when it comes to our family.

TimetoHeal · July 04, 2025, 08:35:38 AM

Mary Poppins,
I am so sorry you are going through this right now.
I think this line is key:

Quote from: mary_poppins on July 04, 2025, 05:48:12 AMI am really offended by the fact that my adult brothers decide for me, what I should do, how I should act. I am a grown woman who has authority over her life and knows well how to take decisions and live her life. And yet, my brothers think I can't behave normally and they should tell me how to act. It's very hurtful to be treated like that.

Of course you're offended, because of course you are a grown woman who can make her own decisions. It sounds like your brothers are still very much in the FOG, and may have some fleas, if not a PD of their own.

I love Like the Ducks reply and how she is able to maintain a relationship with her siblings by strong boundaries that had to be repeated often in order to finally be effective. My brother and I are still close, even though my mother has pitted us against each other our whole lives. She changes our roles from GC to SC interchangeably depending on who is doing what she wants. Although I have been the most enmeshed with her as the oldest and the daughter and the one who lives nearby. It's exhausting.

Like Ducks' brother, mine sees how she is, but doesn't see certain things the same way. He can laugh about experiences of us hiding under the table to get away from her rages, whereas it makes me extremely angry. Maybe we just deal with it differently. And I think males and females process things differently, and there's the whole "what's socially acceptable" as far as feelings for each gender, too. It's very complex.

Anyway, my advice is stand your ground and don't let your brothers' harass you. State your boundaries and tell them you do not wish to talk about your parents right now. If they can't honor that, tell them you will have to hang up the phone until they can. They will either honor your wishes or they won't . You can't make them, but you don't have to keep listening either.

mary_poppins · July 04, 2025, 09:08:47 AM

@Time to Heal

Thank you for your reply. My brothers do not honor my boundaries and get angry if I dont comply with my mom's wishes of talking to her. The last thing right now would be to talk to my parents. My life is going okish now and it hasn't been like that in years. I don't want to ruin the little successes I've had lately.
I'm glad you can have boundaries with your sibling. Mine are different though and yes, it's possible they could have a full on PD.

mary_poppins · July 04, 2025, 09:13:20 AM

@Like the ducks

I am glad you can have boundaries with your siblings and that you could honor them. It is amazing to hear stories from people who have relationships with their brothers/sisters in a dysfunctional home. Me and my brothers didn't have much choice, I was made a scapegoat for leaving abroad when i was in my 20s and did not witness my family's dysfunction for a very long time. My brothers slowly turned into golden children (both) and are now acting like flying monkeys due to my decision to go no contact.

I have told my brothers about NPD and that our mom was diagnosed with it by one of my therapists. However, they either don't believe me or care enough to do something about it. One of my brothers who I think has NPD said something shocking to me once:

So what so and so has NPD? I think it's cool to be a narcissist.

My brother looks at NPD as something to brag about so, no wonder he doesn't care about our family's dysfunction. (if he even acknowledges it)

walking on broken glass · July 04, 2025, 11:16:15 AM

QuoteSo what so and so has NPD? I think it's cool to be a narcissist.

What did I just read?
I think your brothers may not be very safe people for you, mary poppins. You can put firmer boundaries for now, as long as they are pestering you to get back in touch with your parents, and take some distance from them. You can reassess the situation in the future but it's not good for you to be surrounded by all this toxicity. And if they are unable to talk with you about anything else, but this, what's the value of having them in your life?

My sister is BPD with narcissistic traits and I have stopped talking to her. For me, it was psychologically easier to go NC with my sister, as she had been malicious to me for many years. It was a relief to cut her out. I find it more difficult to do the same with my mum.

Rebel13 · July 04, 2025, 05:43:20 PM

Hi mary_poppins, I have a pretty distant relationship with my brother. He was always my mom's golden child and I resented him for that even though it wasn't his fault. He has tried the "mom wants you to call her" thing a few times with me, and I ignored him. Since I stopped talking to my mom two years ago, he has texted me a few times about her, mostly about medical "emergencies" which turn out to be her trying to get attention, or her anxiety carrying her away. (Of course, at some point it will be real, as she's in her 80s.) The few times that happened, I texted back "Thanks for letting me know" and left it at that. I think he has gotten the message at this point and he hasn't done it lately.

Here are a couple of thoughts of what I might do in your situation, but of course you'll figure out what will work best for you.

I would let all calls from brothers go to voicemail for a while. I would ask someone I trusted to listen to the messages and let me know if there was any important information that I would want to know. (Mom is hospitalized, etc.) I know you are on your own in a new place and you might not have someone like that; how would it work if you waited to listen to them until you took some time to calm yourself, and then made sure you had recovery time and a plan for de-stressing afterwards?

I'd also have someone else read texts for a while for the same reason. Can you turn off notifications for them so that the message doesn't pop up on your screen? If you don't have help, can you prepare yourself as above, then scroll through them quickly and reply "Thanks for letting me know" or something similarly brief and noncommittal? Or ignore, if there's no substance or if they just keep repeating the same thing?

Part of the trouble is that it's so irritating and annoying. I can hear how much their actions, their disrespect really, gets to you. I recently uncovered something like this in myself, the source of my frustration when people don't respect my expertise -- because my mother never respected my knowledge or opinions about myself. It was always, "You don't feel that way," "That never happened," "You don't really mean that," etc. I imagine you had some of that in your family. So when I get so frustrated nowadays, I realize it's kind of a hot-button issue for me, not being believed as the authority on myself, my wants/desires/needs. A lot of the energy of my reaction comes from the old stuff, not necessarily what is happening now.

So maybe you could think of your brothers as some sort of strange people that you just recently met, and how weird is it that they are giving me advice? How would they know what is right for me? And calibrate the reaction like that -- like how would I respond if some stranger did that? I'd see how inappropriate it was, and I wouldn't engage at any length, I'd be like, "ooooookay then," and I'd get away as fast as I could, right? And not feel weird or guilty, because I'd recognize the wrong was on their side?

I don't know, I hope it helps. The good thing is that you are far away, and you are in charge of you now. If it gets too bad, you can block them, temporarily or permanently. You ARE the authority on yourself now, you know what you need and what is right for you. They can't take that away from you.

TimetoHeal · July 05, 2025, 06:08:46 PM

Oof, yes, after having read your last reply about what your brother said, I'd say he is definitely toxic himself, and setting boundaries is not going to be super successful with him. He is more than a flying monkey at this point.

I'm so sorry. It can be very difficult to salvage any relationships from our kinds of families. It's almost a miracle when it is possible.

If your life is going well, hang on to that, and keep whatever boundaries/limited/no contact you need to in order to preserve that. You deserve no less.

mary_poppins · July 11, 2025, 11:38:22 AM

Hi guys.

Based on your responses, I realized how truly toxic my brothers are. I was depressed for a while but have come to accept it. I managed to block the one who was saying it's cool to be a narcissist. I have only one brother left but he keeps insisting on getting back in touch with my parents.
I think they all suffer from abandoment anxiety or whatever abandonment wound they have since childhood-so that, when a family member leaves for good, the wound is reenacted. But that's not my problem and sincerely I don't give a flying fuck about their anxiety and mental health problems (my brother keeps telling me about the stress I'm putting them through, LOL).

TimetoHeal · July 12, 2025, 10:18:17 AM

I'm so sorry, Mary Poppins.

There is a profound grief involved when we realize that our family members are disordered and/or toxic, and that they are very unlikely to change. It takes Radical Acceptance, as Dr. Ramani talks about. It's hard.

I'm proud of you for blocking your more troublesome brother, and I hope you can salvage a relationship with your other brother with strong, strong boundaries. But your relationship with yourself is the most important and precious one.

footprint33 · July 12, 2025, 12:12:34 PM

Hi Mary Poppins,

I'm just chiming in to say that I'm NC with both of my brothers, who I also think are PDs. I've been NC with one of them for about 15 years. With the other one, we'd been out of contact for about 12 years when he wrote to me and I thought there was a possibility of rebuilding our relationship. This idea of reconnecting with him brought me much happiness. In the end, I sadly realized through a third party that he was smearing me very badly behind my back, all while smiling in my face and acting like we were reconnecting. That was a huge personal blow and brought me renewed sadness, anger, etc. It turns out that he only reconnected with me because he wanted to be in charge of perpetuating the scapegoat narrative about who I am, which in turn would help him to keep me out of the picture in a negative way so that he can control my parents' estate as they get older. I've always assumed I'm out of any inheritance anyhow, so the fact that he was only in touch with me in order to make sure I'm disinherited was very sad. I returned to NC with him about 1.5 years ago and know that I will never be in touch with him again. I'm NC with my parents too and with many extended family members.

Although it's sad to leave some people from our past behind, there is a beauty in creating new relationships with healthy people out there in the world. These people see us for who we truly are. The distorted scapegoat narrative does not have to be a part of our lives.

footprint