People don't have to be present to cause denial of experience silencing and isolation.
The dynamic of how others can unwittingly become enablers of this is important to understand.
(extract)
"Flying monkeys make the narcissist feel like they’re important and special. They help the narcissist feel like they’re grandiose, like they have high status, like they’re famous or a celebrity, which is what the narcissist wants to feel. Narcissists often have a whole entourage around them just like a celebrity needs an entourage in order to feel secure about themselves.
So who can become flying monkeys?
There are two different categories of people.
The first category is the naive.
The naive are people who are just clueless. They can’t see it, they can’t fathom it, they’ve never been through anything like that, so they can’t even imagine that somebody would do such a thing to just make up all these lies about you and spread them across town. They just can’t even fathom that a human would do that or maybe the naive is also the fawning type.
This is the type of people who when faced with a fight or flight dilemma, they choose fawning instead where they just melt into into a strong, dominant personality to feel safe and they don’t realize what’s happening. You might have noticed that even you became one of these flying monkeys when you were in your naive state before you woke up, before you figured out what was going on.
The second category of people who can become flying monkeys are the toxic.
These are the people with no boundaries. They love gossip and drama, they’re addicted to that stuff. They have an integrity problem and usually they want something from the narcissist. They want status, they want flattery, they want favours. They’re getting something out of the narcissist, which is why they’re willing to do their bidding." (continues)
medium.com/@OwnYourReality/flying-monkeys-the-narcissists-tool-for-the-smear-campaign-798daf7a59c0