It’s hard enough dealing with a hurtful person. You know they are going to show up in a certain way almost every time, so you get used to it.
However, what if they start convincing your friends and family that you’re the one hurting them? What does their playing the victim make you look like?
If friends and family believe the emotionally abusive person over you, perhaps they should read this article and learn that their perception of you is flawed.
When someone you care about starts treating you like you’re the problem in your relationship, it can feel like the ground is shifting beneath your feet. You know what you’ve experienced. You know the hurt you’ve endured.
But suddenly, friends or family members are looking at you with suspicion, questioning your version of events, or worse, actively taking sides against you. This isn’t random. This is often the result of what some call a smear campaign, where an emotionally abusive person has convinced others that you’re actually the one causing harm.
The term “flying monkeys” comes from The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch had creatures that did her bidding without question. In the context of emotional abuse, these are the people who believe everything the abusive person tells them and act on that information without considering your side.
Flying Monkeys are what I call blind followers: People who have been fed a very specific narrative about you and have accepted it as truth. They don’t question it. They don’t look deeper. They just believe.
What makes this so devastating is that these blind followers are often people you care about. They might be mutual friends, family members, coworkers, or anyone in your social circle.
The abusive person reaches out to as many people as possible, painting themselves as the victim and you as the villain. They want you to look terrible. They want to appear resilient, long-suffering, and patient while you supposedly put them through hell.
The reality is usually the opposite. You’ve probably been the one showing resilience, giving chance after chance, tolerating behavior that no one should have to tolerate.
The abuser knows exactly what they’re doing when they create this narrative. They’re setting up expectations in the minds of these blind followers. They’ll say things like, “They’re going to get so defensive when you talk to them,” or “They always overreact to everything,” or “Watch how dramatic they get.”
Then, when a blind follower approaches you, they’re watching for those exact behaviors. So if you show any sign of defensiveness or emotion, it confirms everything the abuser told them, and your reaction becomes proof that the abuser was telling the truth.
This is where many victims of emotional abuse make a critical mistake. They try to convince the blind follower that they’re not the bad guy. They explain, they defend, they get emotional, they provide evidence.
But the problem is that the more you try to convince someone, the more you’re meeting the expectations that were set for you. The abuser predicted you’d be defensive and emotional, and now you are. In the blind follower’s mind, this makes the abuser more credible. Every expectation you meet gives the abuser more power.
The Foundation for Changing Minds
If you want any chance of helping a blind follower see things differently, you need to follow some basic principles. These aren’t guaranteed to work, but they give you the best shot at planting a seed of doubt in someone’s mind.
And that’s really all you can hope for in these situations. You’re not trying to completely change their mind in one conversation. You’re just trying to create a small opening where they might start questioning what they’ve been told.
The first principle is simple but, at the same time, incredibly difficult:
Don’t get defensive.
I know how hard this is. When someone comes at you with accusations or treats you like you’re a terrible person, every fiber of your being wants to defend yourself. You want to explain what really happened. You want to set the record straight.
But defensiveness is exactly what the abuser told them to expect. As soon as you get defensive, you’re confirming the narrative. The blind follower thinks, “This is exactly what I was told would happen.”
The second principle is equally challenging:
Don’t get emotional.
The abuser has likely told people that you’re overly dramatic, that you always overreact, that everything is a big production with you. They’ve painted a picture of someone who cries at the drop of a hat or flies into a rage over nothing.
If you show strong emotions when confronted, you’re again confirming what they were told to expect. This doesn’t mean you don’t have valid emotions. Of course you do. But showing a blind follower in that moment works against you.
The third principle ties into the first two:
Don’t try to convince a blind follower of anything.
This might sound counterintuitive. If someone believes something false about you, shouldn’t you correct them? Shouldn’t you explain the truth?
Well, the problem with that is that trying to convince someone often involves explaining, defending, and getting emotional. It puts you in a position where you’re working hard to change their mind, and that effort itself can look suspicious.
Instead, help them come to their own conclusions. There’s something powerful about letting someone arrive at their own understanding. When you try to force a conclusion on them, they resist. But when you simply open their mind to other possibilities and let them think it through, they’re more likely to actually question what they’ve been told.
The abuser wants to close the blind follower’s mind, giving them one specific story to believe. If you can open their mind instead, there’s a subconscious shift that can happen. The blind follower might start thinking, “This person wants me to believe something very specific, but this other person is letting me make my own choice.”
That difference matters.
Before you use any of these approaches, you need to feel confident in yourself about what the truth is. Not arrogant, not self-righteous, just quietly confident. You know what happened. You know what you experienced.
That inner certainty will come through in how you handle these conversations. If you’re shaky or uncertain, it’s harder to plant those seeds of doubt. But when you’re grounded in your truth, you can ask questions calmly and let the answers speak for themselves.
Questions That Open Minds
The real power in dealing with blind followers comes from asking the right questions. These aren’t gotcha questions or traps. They’re genuine, open-ended questions that invite someone to think more deeply about what they’ve been told. Each question is designed to create a small opening, a moment where the blind follower might pause and reconsider.
One of the most effective questions is simply, “Why do you think they said that?”
This is powerful because it shifts the focus away from the specific accusation and moves it toward the motivation behind it. The blind follower has to think about why the abuser would tell them this particular story.
They might answer, “Because you’re a bad person,” which keeps them in the same mindset. But they might also start wondering, “Because they want to make you look bad.”
You’re not saying those words. You’re letting them arrive there on their own.
Another useful question is, “What do you think about that?”
This truly empowers someone to form their own thoughts about something they may have closed off in themselves. The blind follower may have shut down their own critical thinking and just accepted what they were told. This question invites them to actually think. It works with anyone, including kids. It’s a way of saying, “I trust you to form your own opinion about this.”
You can also ask, “Do you find that at all unsettling?” Or, “Don’t you find that at all unsettling?” Which is a slight variation, but has a different feeling.
The word “unsettling” is particularly effective because it’s not accusatory. You’re not saying the abuser is lying or manipulating. You’re just asking if something about the situation feels off. Maybe the blind follower does find it unsettling that the abuser reached out to so many people. Maybe they find it unsettling that the accusations are so extreme. No matter what, you’re giving them permission to trust their own instincts.
“Don’t you think it’s a little unusual they said that about me?” is another question that plants doubt without being confrontational.
That question is gentle. It’s curious. It suggests that maybe, just maybe, there’s something odd about the whole situation. You’re not telling them what to think. You’re just pointing out that the situation itself might warrant a second look.
If you’re someone who doesn’t typically speak badly about others, you might ask, “Have you heard me say anything awful about them?”
This can be particularly effective because it highlights a contrast. The abuser has been running around telling everyone how terrible you are, but you haven’t done the same. That difference might make the blind follower pause.
Of course, this only works if you actually haven’t been badmouthing the abuser. If you have, this question won’t help.
You could also point out, “Did you notice how they reached out to as many people as they could to tell you how awful I am?”
This is a longer question and might not be as effective, but it can instill curiosity. Why would someone need to tell so many people? Why the campaign? The question itself suggests that something about the behavior is worth examining.
Now that you have some tools to help the “flying monkeys” figure out the truth, let’s talk about a technique that confuses abusive people.
The Gray Rock Method
This is an incredibly effective tool when dealing with an abusive person, though it’s one of the hardest things to do. The Gray Rock Method is when you become as uninteresting and unresponsive as a dull, gray rock. This is when you give minimal emotional responses. You don’t engage with drama, and you become… boring.
This works because emotional abusers feed on your emotional responses. They use your emotions against you. When you’re sad, they know how to make you feel worse. When you’re angry, they know how to turn it around so you’re angry at yourself. When you’re confused, they know how to deepen that confusion.
Your emotions are an abusive person’s fuel. They use your emotional reactions to guide you into a powerless place.
Think about it. An abuser sees you cry and thinks, “Perfect. Now they’re vulnerable. I can put them down, belittle them, and later they’ll come apologize and try harder to please me.”
They see you get angry and think, “Great. I can turn this around and make them feel guilty for their anger. I’ll make them focus on their own behavior instead of mine.”
Every emotional reaction you give them is a tool they can use.
When you become a gray rock, you take away their fuel. Without your emotional responses, they don’t know how to abuse you. They’re confused. They might escalate for a while, trying harder to get a reaction from you. But if you maintain that calm, uninteresting demeanor, they often lose interest or at least lose some of their power.
This is incredibly difficult for most people who end up in emotionally abusive relationships. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a compassionate, kind, caring person. You’re connected to your emotions. You’re empathetic. You care when someone is hurting, even if that someone has hurt you.
When the abuser plays the victim, it’s hard not to care. It goes against your nature to be cold and unresponsive. But gray rock isn’t about being cold to everyone. It’s about protecting yourself from someone who uses your warmth against you. It’s about recognizing that your emotional generosity is being weaponized and choosing to stop feeding that weapon.
You can still be warm and emotional with people who treat you well. You’re just learning to be a gray rock with someone who doesn’t.
The technique requires practice. You have to catch yourself before you react emotionally. You have to remind yourself that showing emotion in this particular situation will be used against you. It feels unnatural at first, especially if you’re used to being open and expressive.
Many people who’ve used this approach report that it does decrease the abusive behavior. It doesn’t fix everything, as the abuser will find other ways to try to maintain control, but it removes their primary method of manipulation.
Moving Forward With Your Power
The goal of all these approaches isn’t to win some battle or prove you’re right. The goal is to keep your power and maintain your sanity while dealing with an incredibly difficult situation. When an abusive person turns others against you, it can feel demoralizing. You can feel isolated, like you have no support system left. That’s exactly what they want. They want you to feel alone and powerless.
You are not powerless.
You have the power to choose how you respond.
You have the power to plant seeds of doubt rather than desperately trying to convince.
You have the power to ask questions that open minds rather than making statements that close them.
You have the power to become a gray rock when emotional reactions would only hurt you.
Not every blind follower will come around. Some people are too invested in the narrative they’ve been given. Some people don’t want to question what they believe. And that’s okay. You can’t control what other people think or believe. You can only control your own actions and responses.
What you can do is give people an opportunity to think differently. You can create small openings where doubt can creep in. You can be the person who empowers others to form their own conclusions rather than the person who desperately tries to force a conclusion on them.
That difference, subtle as it seems, can be the difference between someone digging in their heels and someone starting to question what they’ve been told.
Remember that you deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. You deserve honesty and sincerity. You deserve to be treated as worthy and significant, because you are both of these and more.
When people believe lies about you, it doesn’t change your worth. It doesn’t change the truth of what you’ve experienced. It’s painful, yes. It’s frustrating and unfair. But it doesn’t define you.
The smear campaign, the flying monkeys, they’re tactics used by someone who needs to control the narrative because they can’t control their own behavior.
A person who treats others well doesn’t need to convince everyone that they’re the victim. A person who treats others well doesn’t need to reach out to every possible person to explain how awful someone else is. That behavior itself tells a story.
Trust yourself. Trust what you know to be true. And when you interact with those who’ve been convinced you’re the problem, remember that you’re not trying to win them over in one conversation. You’re just trying to plant a seed.
Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that seed grows into doubt, and that doubt grows into questions, and those questions lead to a very different understanding of what’s really going on.
You’re not alone in this. Many people have faced the same situation, where an abusive person turned others against them. It’s common, unfortunately, because it’s effective at isolating the victim.
But I realize that knowing it’s common doesn’t make it easier. What does make it a tiny bit easier is having tools and approaches, and other ways to respond that don’t leave you feeling powerless or crazy.
These questions and principles, and the gray rock method, are all tools you can use to navigate an incredibly difficult situation while keeping your dignity and your sanity intact.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions. |
