Holiday Hoovering

So, Christmas and Hanukkah are over and the New Year is upon us. How many of you got hoovered?

Hoovering has one major objective: to allow the N to feel like s/he is in control of the relationship. If you have been successfully NC or LC over a period of weeks or longer prior to the holidays, unless your N is a malignant ignoring N, s/he is going to feel that you have taken control of the relationship, something she finds threatening. The malignant ignoring N will have put you out of mind so unless there is a compelling reason to put on the perfect family charade, you will likely be spared any contact. The rest of us are not so lucky.

By now, if your Ns were going to hoover you, it has begun. Most likely you received unanticipated gifts, cards, letters, even phone calls or texts. You may have inadvertently invited such contact by naïvely assuming that she would not take the Christmas card you sent as a sign that all is forgiven and the lines of communication are now fully open again. You may have maintained and defended your NC boundaries but your Ns believe their image is at stake so they have decided to take back control of the relationship by luring your back into their lair the fold.

You may have received just the gift you wanted/needed from them or they may have sent you the same old junk you usually get—Dollar Store and garage sale finds or things they would like for themselves. You may have received something you cannot afford for yourself like a new laptop or tablet or iPhone, or something you simply do not want: a course in Tae Kwon Do or a cruise to a deserted island. Or it could be gifts for your children but nothing for you, or gifts you could never afford for your kids like a battery operated child’s car or a bouncy castle or something outrageously expensive, gifts designed to hoover your kids because kids are easier to manipulate than wary adults and your Ns expect you will come right along with the children.

This is not likely to stop. You may get letters in which they cry about being lonely over the holidays, how they miss their grandbabies, how they miss you. They will paint a dismal picture of the sad lives they have now that you are no longer in it. They will tug at your heartstrings and make you feel guilty for turning your back on this sad, pathetic old woman… Or you may get the letter that rips the flesh off your back as it seeks to excoriate you for your refusal to give them their due. The letter may be blatant and bold or it may be sneaky and passive aggressive, but it feels to you, as you read it, like the attack that it is. Either way, you may get missives from your Ns that are designed to make you feel bad for not allowing your Ns to have their way with you.

If you got blindsided by this kind of crap this year, it was because you didn’t have a plan. The reason you lacked a plan may have been because you didn’t think you needed one—it never occurred to you that your feeling sorry for your N (a fatal weakness they will exploit) might backfire on you. You may have been left scrambling, trying to figure out what to do or how to handle it, on the spur of the moment. Depending on the method your N used to intrude on your holiday cheer, you may have been hurt, outraged or even frightened by their incursion into your peace.

Some Ns will hint at their intentions beforehand by sending messages in advance: invitations to Christmas dinner, hints that you should invite them for a holiday-oriented gathering, even blatantly telling you when they will be showing up at your house—uninvited—to deliver gifts. Other Ns will just send a card with no foreshadowing and pop up at your door uninvited, expecting to be asked in and entertained. Some will send packages with no return addresses—even fake return addresses. Others will send gifts and messages via a third party who is invited—or who is at least not persona non grata—to your home.

Any way you slice it, narcissism takes on a whole new dimension of insensitivity and disrespect during any kind of special occasion, from christenings to funerals, and most especially cultural celebrations. Your Ns friends may think nothing of her not having you over for Sunday dinners, but they most definitely will have something to say if your N’s holiday plans do not include you and your family. Your N doesn’t care about your feelings (if she did, she wouldn’t be an N) but she most certainly cares about her image. When her friends are waxing lyrical about their grandchildren, painting pictures of lavish holiday feasts attended by three or more generations of family, your N is sitting there thinking that you are the reason she is looking bad among her peers. Unless she is an ignoring N, in which case she has told everyone what a bitch you are and she is refusing to pander to you so she has cut you off this season—and how lucky her friends are not to have such difficult and uncaring children—she is going to be feeling that she has to do something so she isn’t left out of the Great and Gracious Grannies Club.

You first need to understand that this is mostly about power. If you have the power to keep her away from you and/or her grandchildren, then in her eyes, you have too much. It means you have the power to make her look bad in front of her frenemies and the rest of the family. It means, to her, that you are in control of her, not the other way around. And this does not set well with any N. Up to the holiday season she can fool herself into thinking she is controlling the silence or she has been able to make it work for her by telling her friends how sad her life is, how lonely she is, all because of you being a bitch.

She has no concept of a relationship in which someone is not in control, so no matter what your real reason for NC or LC, she perceives it as you thinking you are in control of her and she cannot countenance that. Some Ns will pick a fight in order to come out in control (they do not doubt their own power) but others—my guess is most of them—simply ignore your boundaries and do what they want. And if you refuse their invitations despite their manipulations, then they will barge in on you and your events without invitation, even if they have been specifically told to stay away. They will do whatever they can to wrest what they perceive as control of the relationship from you.

So what can you do? You can have a plan. If you have a fair idea of the kinds of things they will do, you can have a plan as to how to handle it. Just make sure that your image in the family is not more important to you than the peace you get from keeping her out of your special occasions because this is one of those “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” situations. Personally, I look at it this way: she is already assassinating my character behind my back over absolutely nothing so I might as well do something to deserve it.

What kind of plan? Well, what is your N likely to do? Here are a few scenarios:

1. Sends cards/letters to your children

Get a PO Box several months before the holidays and put in a mail forwarding notice with the post office. Have all mail forwarded to the PO Box. Intercept and determine what to do with the letters/cards. If they contain money or gift cards, decide whether to give them to the children or donate them to charity.

2. Sends packages to your house

A.      Invest in a custom-made stamp that says “Moved, left no forwarding address". Stamp the packages (and any mail addressed to you or your partner) and sent them back.

B.      Give the contents of the packages to a women’s shelter or other charity

C.      Put the packages in the bin

3. Shows up at your house uninvited

A.      If you answer the door and are surprised by her, close the door. Do not answer again until you are sure she is gone

B.      Tell her to leave and not to come back. If she refuses, call the police.

4. Calls on the phone

A.      Don’t answer

B.      Block her

C.      Tell her to not call again

Narcissists can be very creative and they can come up with all kinds of things that you hadn’t thought of so you have to have a “go-to” response. Mine is basically this: avoid contact. That means do everything you need to do to avoid contact: hang up the phone, close the door, walk the other way. It means never to invite them in, accept an invitation, respond in any way other than to say “leave me alone.”

We talk a lot about setting and enforcing boundaries with our Ns but this is a time that we must set boundaries with ourselves. The N is ruthless and heartless. They will do anything, literally anything, to get what they want and sometimes they only want it because you are withholding it. (That is when you finally capitulate to their heartbroken begging for a chance to see your children and when you give in they spend the time criticising our housekeeping by doing your housework or playing cards with each other and pretty much ignoring you kids.) You need to set boundaries with yourself now, boundaries that say that even if NM really IS heartbroken about not seeing your kids, it is too late. She had her warnings and she refused to respect your boundaries and now it is over and you will no longer allow her to hoover you back into a one-sided, self-serving relationship that gives you stress and anxiety and nothing in compensation for it.

You see, regardless of what your N thinks, the power ultimately rests with you and it always has. She cannot take it away from you, although you can give it to her. Whatever disguise she chooses to use—heartbroken grandma, outraged mother, pitiful old lady, cold, aloof superior—the struggle is really about control—control over you. She will put any face on it that she thinks will work to get you to relinquish control to her and you have to keep your eye on the truth so as not to be distracted by her theatrics, empty promises and meaningless gestures.

Why does she want control of you (even ignoring Ns want this control)? NSupply. If she has control of you, she has control of the NSupply she gets from you and through you. All of her antics, including all forms of hoovering, come down to this one thing: NSupply and control of its sources.

So, the best way to handle hoovering, especially around the holidays when it invariably ramps up, is to not respond and block all avenues of access to you and your family. For some very persistent Ns, it may take a Cease and Desist letter from a lawyer, even a restraining order from the court. But if you are serious about your peace as they about their NSupply, you won’t hesitate.

Set some boundaries for yourself. Start now so that by the time the holidays roll around next year you will be experienced and practiced at protecting yourself and your home and family, you will have heard all of her excuses and stories and complaints and you no longer feel a tug at your heartstrings when she rolls out one of her tear-jerking tales designed to soften your resolve. You are the one in control of your life and she cannot take control without your cooperation. The hoovering is all about her and her image and her NSupply and not in the least about you or your feelings or well-being. Remember that and don’t fall for her tricks. If you successfully resist long enough she will go elsewhere, to those whose resistance is less formidable. Then, and only then, can you have some peace.

The Flying Monkeys in Your Life

If you’ve got an N parent, you’ve probably got Flying Monkeys in your life. What are flying monkeys? To paraphrase the Glossary, flying monkeys are people who do the N’s bidding, whether to inflict additional torment or to simply spy on the victim or spread gossip.

Flying monkeys are people who take your NM’s part in the family drama and act on her behalf. They may be obvious or they may be so subtle that you react with utter shock when you discover their betrayal. But make no mistake: flying monkeys never truly have your best interests at heart because if they did, they would refuse to play secret agent for the narcissist.

In my experience, flying monkeys fall into two basic categories: willing, complicit partners and well-meaning dupes. The willing, complicit partners also fall into two categories: those who believe that you just need to forgive and forget and they are going to help you do just that, and those who just don’t like you and are therefore quite happy to spy on you for your NM, and to do her bidding. The dupes also break down into two categories: those who are fooled by her drama into helping her violate your boundaries and those who believe all of the lies and half-truths that NM and her minions have spread about you and who want you to see the error of your ways.

The complicit partners have their own agenda that they are going to satisfy through helping your N while the dupes are basically people who are fooled by your NM into helping her. I am not going to let the dupes off the hook, though…by stepping in as one of the N’s flying monkeys they are making one critical…and very disrespectful…error: they don’t bother to come to you and ask you for your side of the story. Any rational, truly well-meaning person wants to know both sides of an issue before they agree to assist one side against the other and they have a thirst for truth. Anyone who sides with your narcissist against you without having contacted you first, anyone who takes it upon himself to violate your boundaries after you have clearly stated them, is not your friend, no matter what s/he tries to get you to believe. You are not obligated to tell another person…not even a close member of your family…why you do not wish to communicate with another person. If it is not enough that you don’t want to, if the person refuses to respect your boundaries unless she agrees with your reasoning, then this is a person you cannot trust to have your back…and a person who is a potential flying monkey.

So, just what do flying monkeys do? Basically two things: act as a source of information to the NM and act against you on the NM’s behalf. Maybe your sister will call you and ask seemingly innocuous questions, draw you out, even sympathize and commiserate with you about your mother’s behaviours. But when you hang up the phone, Mum is the first person she calls and unloads everything she heard. It may go further than that…the flying monkey may send you emails or texts, may phone you, and say terrible things. If the flying monkey is also an N…and I believe many are, based on the basic premise that to be a flying monkey, one must be willing to disrespect the person targeted…then the flying monkey may go further: she may attempt to seduce the scapegoat’s husband or boyfriend, tell lies (or highly embroidered and biased versions of the truth) to the scapegoat’s children, even tell unflattering stories to the scapegoat’s coworkers or employer. The flying monkey may resort to outright threats: “if you don’t be nice to your mother, I will tell everyone you tried to seduce my ex-husband when we were still married” (when you did nothing of the sort). Or the flying monkey may try persuasion and guilt-tripping, telling you your mother loves you and how much you have hurt her with your refusal to speak to her…and anything else that may get the NM what she wants.

And what does your NM want? Well, whether or not you are LC, NC, or in full contact with your NM, what your NM wants is control of you, and for you to play your role in the family drama without any thought of backing out. The flying monkey is around to gather intelligence to help the NM further her agenda. When I was the young mother of two, I had not seen or heard from my brother, the Golden Child, for several years…he had been overseas with the military and when he came back, he didn’t tell me. One day a man showed up at my front door, a man on a blue Kawasaki motorcycle, and when I opened the door, it was my brother. Since this was before my knowing anything about narcissism and dysfunctional family structures, I was delighted to see him and invited him in. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me that he was snooping and asking a lot of personal questions, but being a person who was largely invisible during my childhood, I was delighted he was finally taking an interest in me. It never occurred to me that he was snooping on my NM’s behalf because I couldn’t imagine what would motivate that. My naïveté was to come back to haunt me, as this turned out to be NM’s opening salvo in taking my children away from me and giving them to her childless younger brother to adopt.

The court was full of flying monkeys as witnesses: an uncle, NM’s older brother who lived in another state and hadn’t seen me in seven years (before my children were even born), testified that mine was an unfit home, that he had seen it with his own eyes. A probation officer, who had never even been to my house but who had interviewed my brother, uncle, and mother in addition to interviewing me, described a house that I had never seen before, let alone lived in with my children. I cannot speak to the motives of the lying civil servant, but my uncle and brother’s motives were clear: they wanted my mother to have custody of my children. Why? Because she had convinced them I was a bad person, a bad influence, a bad mother. Did they know her real plan was to kidnap my kids and take them across country to give to her younger brother to adopt? I really don’t know, but I do know that is what happened and that she managed to rope my entire FOO into being flying monkeys for her because every time I called or wrote one of them and asked about the whereabouts and well-being of my children I was either stone-walled or yelled at. That is what flying monkeys can do.

I doubt the majority of flying monkeys are as pernicious as mine were, but it isn’t the big gush of water that wears a hole in rock, it is the steady, unrelenting drip-drip-drip of small drops over an extended period of time that wears down even granite. The small predations into your life, the constant awareness that you cannot know who to trust, the endless violations of your boundaries, the ceaseless little moments of disrespect…they all count, they all add up to the chipping away of your confidence, your self-esteem, your peace.

I know of a man who lives half the continent away from his parents and brother. A kind and compassionate man, when he decided to go NC, he tried to do it gently so as not to upset his mother, and told her that he was going to be out of contact for a while, that he needed some space from his family. His mother agreed, in her sweet way but, within weeks, she was back to sending him emails and texts, often closing them with something like “oops! I know I wasn’t supposed to contact you, but I thought you would want/needed to know this…” Within a month, his NM had violated his No Contact boundaries as if they didn’t exist.

When he stuck to his guns and didn’t respond to her violations she changed tactics and began sending in the flying monkeys. Out of the blue, a cousin he hadn’t heard from in years called him to “catch up.” Cousin asked a litany of nosy questions about his life, his plans, his work, his projects, and even mentioned the mother back home who was hoping everything was OK with him. Sneakily, while professing not to want to know what was wrong, the cousin made it clear that he thought the lack of contact between mother and son, initiated by the son, was wrong and that it made the mother so terribly sad. It was a combination flying monkey attack and hoovering session, all in one!

You can be pretty sure that when you interrupt communication with your N and within a month or two you begin hearing from people who have been off your radar for a long time, these people are flying monkeys. They may be a sibling who is invested in keeping your NM happy and therefore a complicit assistant, they may be old friends or relatives with whom you were once close but have grown away from, who are now dupes, but any way you slice it, these people have come back into your life at this moment for a reason, and the reason is not your well-being.

When I was 14 I lived with my father for a year while my mother was off gallivanting around the country with her latest boyfriend. When she returned, she decided she wanted me back home with her…I was not only her personal maid and housekeeper, I was a source of income in the form of child support. She showed up at the door one night and asked me to take a ride with her. To my surprise, we both got in the back seat. Expecting her boyfriend to be at the wheel, I was delighted to see it was my old singing teacher, whom I had adored.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten right out of that car and gone back into the house. But for the next hour the singing teacher drove us around and the two of them played me like a violin. They trotted out every cliché, every platitude, every conceivable reason I should go back to live with my mother. They succeeded and I made one of the worst decisions of my life: I went back to live with my her. And once I was there, nothing changed. My NM and her flying monkey successfully hoovered me, and I went back to live in the emotional Badlands with NM.

This is what flying monkeys do: they advance the cause of the N at your expense. They could be anybody, even your old grandmother…after my mother put me through 8 years of hell by stealing my children, lying to the whole family about me, and giving my children away to be adopted…my grandmother begged me to “bury the hatchet” with my NM. She was old, she told me, and she didn’t want to go to her grave with all the hostility between her only daughter and her favourite grandchild. I succumbed and, like everything else I do, I did it with a sincere desire to make peace. To me, that meant trusting and being honest and aboveboard…both of which were used against me yet again. But who would think my grandmother—and I always had been her favourite and we all knew that—would act as a flying monkey for my mother and set me up to be exploited and hurt by her yet again?

Whether you are NC, LC, or continue “normal” communication with your N, beware of flying monkeys. They are the people who will criticize you for not doing what your NM wants, will try to sway you towards her agenda and away from your own. They will sabotage, undermine and undercut you without compunction if it furthers the NM’s agenda. They may do it out of blind loyalty to her, animosity towards you, or simply well-meaning interference, but their reasons aren’t really important: what is important is that they are more than willing to put your NM’s wishes ahead of your own rights, feelings and autonomy. If you aren’t doing as your NM thinks you should, then they side with her against you with no thought to your right to self-determination or even your feelings.

Flying monkeys come in all shapes, sizes, ages and from every possible walk of life but they all have this in common: they unquestioningly further the agenda of the Ns in your life and they have no respect for you whatsoever. No matter what they say, they are not on your side.

Don’t pay them any attention.