Narcissistic Mother - Flying Monkeys - "Agents" Role Play

In toxic family systems, the narcissistic parent is rarely acting alone. Other family members — usually siblings or the other parent — often get enlisted as enforcers, protecting the dysfunction and pressuring anyone who questions it. Borrowed from The Wizard of Oz, these enforcers are commonly called flying monkeys. In this video, Patrick Teahan, LICSW uses a three-version role play to show what flying monkey dynamics actually sound like inside a family.

Patrick plays a conversation between a brother and a father who are pressuring their sister / daughter to stop holding the mother accountable. The mother never appears on camera — her power is carried entirely by her agents. In the first version, the brother and father are abusive enforcers of the mother's narrative. In the second, a healthy version of the same family shows what attunement and accountability would actually look like. In the third, an empowered daughter stands up to both flying monkeys and refuses to be split from her own reality.

Between takes, Patrick connects the dynamic to clinical 'splitting' — the way a person with pathology can divide a family (or a psychiatric unit) into warring camps — and uses the Wizard of Oz image to name how unnerving it is to watch people you love carry a toxic parent's agenda. The video is aimed at survivors working through sibling and co-parent betrayal as part of their recovery.