Maliciously Dismissive

The Friend of Nag

Normally, I give the people in my blogs character names that describe them and their behaviors. Yet, the friend of Negative Nag (a coworker I have pegged as my arch-nemesis based on her narcissistically abusive behaviors towards me) will have to go without a name. I can’t seem to name him yet, and I’m not particularly sure of the reason. So I’ll just refer to him as “the friend of Nag”.

I’ve searched within his eyes, and all I know is that giving him any eye contact often makes me fiercely uncomfortable. At times, his eyes and the energy around him lets off an evil energy which I cannot always describe in words. All I can say is that he makes me cringe inside, and although he was the first coworker that was nice to me at first and seemed to welcome all of my questions, something about his behaviors became very off-putting.

The feeling I get about him is beyond neurodivergence, and I think that he may actually be neurodivergent, but as with my mother who has neurodivergent traits of autism, I cannot bear to be around her because of the evil that permeates through her when I’ve been in her presence. There’s an unsettling otherworldliness that resides within the atmosphere she moves within because she leans more to her narcissistic traits when dealing with people, particularly me.

So it is with the friend of Negative Nag … In fact, I sometimes I can’t even bear to be around him or hear his voice because the sound he makes literally scratches a place of annoyance within me. In some manner, he triggers me. His behaviors come off like a pesky fly needing to be swatted away. Upon further investigation of why even the sound of this person’s voice had become an issue for me, I gained the clarity that someone who was once so welcoming to me and was the voice and tone of friendliness in the best way when it came to how a coworker treats a newbie, suddenly became tainted when I realized he was simply a maliciously dismissive person to others in the worst way possible.

The friend of Nag also plays as her flying monkey. Thus, my perspectives about him and his motives towards me have greatly changed my view of him. He’s definitely not the kind person he appears to be on the surface. In fact, I often sense his contempt for me and others. Contempt is a a deep, often subtle feeling of disrespect or disdain that a person directs towards others, often with a sense of superiority. To operate in contempt means to mask it behind charm, good works, or social ease. Yet, there’s an underlying tone of arrogance or judgment that leaks through in how the person treats people they believe are beneath them.

The friend of Nag has everyone else fooled, but I’ve seen the way he looks at me and others who he has very little regard for, and it shows up in the way he is so dismissive of the actions, thoughts, and opinions of others. His behaviors are covert enough that no one else seems to have picked up on his behaviors. Everyone behaves as if he’s a nice guy.

Yet, underneath the surface, I see the friend of Nag for who he really is as a person. For example, I discern condescension in the way he treats others as less intelligent or less important, his disdainfulness in openly showing his dislike of someone he’s dealing with or his lack of respect for them, his pretentiousness in the way he acts more important and more knowledgeable than others, his sanctimonious behaviors in pretending to be morally superior while actually being judgmental or hypocritical, and his pompous attitude in being that he behaves as if he’s full of self-importance, often showing off his own virtue or intelligence.

The fact that he “speaks of his own good works” but his energy tells another story points to moral grandstanding—where someone uses displays of virtue not out of sincerity, but to boost their image or superiority. He has mastered the art of playing performing “niceness” publicly, but my discernment has zeroed in on the truth about him. Disdain, even when sugar-coated, is a form of emotional violence, and I’m certain I’ve seen a contained rage within his eyes. I believe that’s why I often feel uncomfortable around him because I know he’s masking it. He tries hard not to let that mask slip, but I’ve grown adept at seeing pass the surface, and I know that’s a divine gift, because at first, I could easily overlook it until I couldn’t.

Needless to say, the friend of Negative Nag strikes me as a person with no backbone. He allows Negative Nag to boss him around to the point that he willingly does whatever she says. Their relationship is strange because he’s got a wife, but Negative Nag behaves as a wife away from home – basically the work wife. He doesn’t seem to have an individual thought on his own apart from her presence, and he only seems to halfway come across as a cool person only when The Nag is not around.

I perceive that his rage comes from being bossed around by the women in his life – not taking it upon himself to rise up and advocate for himself. He appears to work hard to conceal this rage from everyone else, but I can see that it’s simmering beneath the surface. It has to be difficult being and feeling emasculated, controlled, or powerless in certain areas of his life. Based on conversations I’ve overheard as he vents to Negative Nag about homelife, I perceive that his wife bosses him around at home just as much as he’s bossed around at work by Negative Nag.

Yet, instead of the friend of nag attending to and healing his pain, he instead projects it onto others through contempt, passive-aggression, and emotional manipulation. That’s what I sense he’s attempting to project onto me as well, but I see him … I SEE him! This also explains his own stare down into my eyes. I think staring me down is a way to attempt to dominate me in some way. I mean, treating me with contempt gives him some type of dominance over me, but also the staring me down as if he’s attempting to capture me as prey.

For the most part, he’s unpleasantly dismissive and at times his dismissiveness comes across as malicious. It’s as if he means to dismiss his targets into an abyss of desolation and/or isolation so that only his opinions and thoughts matter on any given topic, even when he’s wrong and even when someone expresses their lived experience. He comes off as super nice and the most helpful kind of guy, but deep down, I see his contempt for others and I often hear it in his voice. Since I’ve come to know this coworker, I’ve noticed he always has a way of downplaying any of my experiences no matter the circumstance.

Yet, he’ll occasionally saunter over to my cubicle to check in with me to see if I’m okay. I don’t buy it at all! Is not only narcissistic behavior, it’s sadistic behavior as well. I’m the prey, and his objective is to annihilate me by any means necessary. Whenever anyone has shown me contempt in the past, it has created within the depths of my being a sinking feeling to the point that I long to disappear from the face of the planet. I feel emotionally annihilated as if I don’t matter and as if I was created for nothing.

So whenever I’m around the friend of Nag, I have to be proverbially prayed up and armored up because the verbal and emotional assaults I endure, no matter how subtle, are psychological and spiritual warfare. It’s like playing a game of chess without a chessboard, without the pieces, and without a plan. I never know what’s going to come out of this person’s mouth towards me. I never know what he’s thinking, and I don’t know what behaviors and conversations of mine he’s been monitoring so that he can interject himself into them and show me how wrong I am about my own thoughts, opinions, and lived experiences.

The “Educators are probably autistic” Comment

Although not necessarily a malicious comment, it was meant to be dismissive for my experience. Oddly, this was a comment coming from the friend of Negative Nag once he found out about my neurodivergence. Being that he discussed that he has a child with autism, I figured this was common ground for discussion, but he refused to allow it to be so with his dismissive attitude towards me. “Oh, everyone’s like that as an adult, so it’s not a big deal. In fact, most educators are probably autistic.”

As a response, I didn’t know what to say because I was so befuddled by the friend of Nag’s logic. He made it seem as if autism was not a communication disorder but something so commonplace that anyone was susceptible to it. When I mentioned his child to gain understanding at how to he truly viewed autism, it was a different story. I honestly don’t believe he clearly understood autism, but I wasn’t really interested on educating him. He, himself, was a former educator. Research could not have been beyond him on the topic.

Even though I was aware that the friend of Nag and Nag were close, I didn’t know how close in the beginning. I simply presumed it was familiar stuff, but I’d grow to learn that closeness entailed to him basically being a flying monkey and somewhat subservient to her demands. Negative Nag openly ridiculed, teased, scolded, and controlled the friend endlessly. So, I could only assume that by being dismissive of me was a way for him to feel some type of dominance. I didn’t feel sorry for him though. I was simply observant, and as often as he was invalidated by Negative Nag, someone in his path obviously needed to suffer the consequence of her actions.

Needless to say, the friend of Nag was obviously aware that I had a personal connection to the topic of autism and even though I commented in agreement to things his child experiences from that perspective, he invalidated my experiences. In fact, he minimized my experiences in the way of his tone and condescending attitude. He talked to me in a way that was an attempt to make me feel dumb, but it’s not my problem he was uncomfortable acknowledging my reality. That is something with him. Given his connection to Negative Nag, I believe he subconsciously mirrors her views without even realizing it. He’s a flying monkey after all.

The Monitor

Besides doing the job well, the friend of Nag surely knows how to monitor. I sensed right away when the shift in the atmosphere changed at work that he was sent to monitor my every move. When something happens where Negative Nag is concerned, he is always sent to check on me. of course, I don’t believe ne nor Negative Nag suspect that I’m on to them, but I was on to them even moments before the subtle shift at work had occurred because I was observing their every move.

Perhaps I’m a monitor too, but I don’t monitor to check on people for ulterior motives of destruction. I monitor as a way to observe behaviors. When things escalate against my favor, I monitor for self-preservation. I’m not looking to be a spy in anyone’s business. I stay in my own lane. Yet, the thing about most flying monkeys is that they primarily monitor the behaviors of a narcissist’s target. They are nosy, and they will position themselves to mind your business. They will speak to you in such a way to make you think they are a good person, and although they may exhibit many good qualities, those qualities don’t inherently make them a good person.

Since the subtle shift, the friend of Nag has monitored almost my every move. From sitting in his car during lunch to keep watch me while I sit in my car during lunch, which was not a task he’d taken to doing prior to my arrival on the job, to walking past my cubicle after having conversations with Negative Nag, I can’t seem to escape his monitoring eyes. I know he’s always monitoring me to gauge whether Negative Nag’s tactics to have shaken me as she throws upon me her subtle jabs and remarks, her silent treatment and stonewalling tactics, and her innuendos designed to smear my character.

A Good Person In His Own Eyes

The friend of Nag seems to operate by a controlled string and doesn’t seem to operate of his own volition when Negative Nag is around. She tells him what to do and influences his thought patterns. The thing about an open office, even with cubicles, there is no true privacy. Conversations are not really private even at the level of a whisper. I can often hear conversations I wished that I wasn’t privy to, and I always know when I’m being discussed even when my name isn’t mentioned. Most times, Negative Nag and the friend discuss how good they are as people, and it’s quite cringy when I know how they truly operate.

The friend of Nag seems to be good in his own eyes, and although I had no reason to doubt his goodness at first, I’ve come to see a side of him that I don’t particularly like. He operates on pretentiousness and seems to think that performative works are the key to being a good person. It’s like there’s no need for his heart to truly be indulged in doing good, and when his actions often don’t match who he claims to be, I mark off my imaginary bingo card of traits that line up with the ever-circus actions of a flying monkey.

Out of his own mouth, the friend of Nag told me he wasn’t a good person. When he said this much, I turned towards him to look at him and saw something within his eyes shift. There was a piercing darkness within his eyes that overtook the brown color, and I’d seen this so many times before with other individuals that I didn’t even flinch as if I’d seen the change. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was another entity controlling him from within. (If you know, you certainly know.)

There was also a slight devilish smirk that formed at the corner of the friend of Nag’s mouth. In that moment, I felt a little unhinged by what I was feeling about what I saw, but I didn’t react. The hairs on my arms stood up at attention, and something within nervous system stood up at high alert. I couldn’t help but think that the friend of Nag had the potential to be dangerous, and something about what he said went beyond the context of his joke about setting someone up for a prank who was doing some work around his home.

According to Luke 6:45,  “It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds” (The Message Bible). When a person tells me who they are, I typically believe them especially when I see their true character and what they’ve told me lines up with who I see them to be. Perhaps this is the reason there are times when I shutter at the sound of the friend of Nag’s voice. Something literally goes through me that I can’t comprehend, and I find myself not able to trust his words when he seems to behave normally. This is such a big thing for me because his behaviors somewhat reminded me of the behaviors of my mother, and she does have an evil streak.

That otherworldliness that I experience during times where I must be in close proximity of him often bothers me. It’s nothing lustful; it’s more of a penetrating gaze that upends me within my nervous system. I feel uncomfortable with his gaze, but I will often stare back to see what it is that appears within his eyes. If I stare long enough, I think whatever it is tends to look away or become angry and lash out with a dismissive attitude or biting remark meant to be argumentative based on something that I’ve said about whatever topic. I tend not to back down though, but when I sense that a battle of words is desired, I shrink back and shut myself down.

For the most part, both the friend of Nag and Negative Nag herself appear to want to entice me into word battles with them so that they can say that I’m wrong about my thoughts or opinions. Now I just respond in kind with “hmm”, “I see”, or “okay” before turning away back to my tasks. I refuse to spar with them, and I often have to catch myself by literally biting my tongue to respond in an effort to shut them down. Yet, I don’t want to ever be unprofessional, and for whatever reason, I discern that this is what the friend of Nag and Negative Nag both want from me – my unprofessional reaction.

Yet, overall, the friend of Nag is maliciously dismissive – not just to me, but he’s also maliciously dismissive to others. His ways about being this way, however, seems as if to be in defense of being a decent person … a good person. If I didn’t already see the evil expressed within his eyes, I might actually believe him to be a good person deep down based on his words and actions on the surface alone. I might actually be deceived into believing he’s just being docile towards Negative Nag out of familiar obligation, but I’ve also come to learn that flying monkeys can sometimes be worse than the leading narcissist, and quite actually, narcissists themselves.

As it’s said, birds of a feather flock do together.

There’s more to come as this unfolds. Stay tuned …