Did you know that there is a new phenomenon in Japan called "karoshi"? It is a case of working yourself to death -- literally, as they are found dead at their desk at the office in the morning. It is becoming quite common over there. And it reflects a pattern that is becoming pandemic in our times -- the workaholic/servaholic who can't be intimate or allow love into their life.
They operate out of a self-sufficient seal-over and a "don't deserve it" self-concept, along with a considerable amount of alienation and intimacy-distrust. This arises out of a feeling of emotional and social worthlessness that leads to their compulsive contribution and "good works" "atonement" pattern. In the meantime, they avoid love like the plague as they are busy "out riding fences".
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
The "desperado" is born before birth, usually, in the sense that the mother was deeply ambivalent or actively angry or hostile about carrying a child or this child, and the feeling was intense enough that it was communicated to the foetus. Furthermore, this pattern continues throughout the individual's childhood, resulting in abandonment-annihilation anxiety arising from near-fatal love-deprivation in infancy and subsequently.
The "desperado" is convinced that love leads to annihilation, and that to let love in or to let love out is to invite vulnerability to being murdered. The result is that they responded to the mother's hostility with a "sea anemone pull in" survival-seal-over early on. They have no trust of love, and they have the foundational belief that there is something about them that makes this so -- that they don't deserve trustable love.
The mother puts out a great deal of subtle or not-so-subtle rejection and punishment about the individual's never measuring up to her standards. They are never able to satisfy their unpleasable mother, as she does a "You can do no right!" number on them. She maintains perfectionistic expectations, and in her continuing rage over having to care for the individual, she is forever intensely dissatisfied with their beingness and performances, particularly in regard to their relationship.
For instance, she constantly accuses them of not loving her, yet she won't allow them to express or feel love either. The result is that they conclude that they have no heart and that they are some sort of "tin man" who isn't really human. She also emotionally holds them accountable and responsible for the dysfunctionality of the family and the unhappiness in her life. To complicate the picture further, there is often a strong subterranean sexually loaded double-binding component of the parent-child relationship in which no matter what they do in the affectional realm, it is very negatively reacted to. This further insulates them from the ability to connect with intimates.
The "desperado" feels that they always "let her down and caused her harm/misery". Hence they end up feeling worthless, monstrous, super-selfish and awful, and that they have to constantly atone. They also end up feeling that they have to be continuously "calm, cool and collected" and in control of things to make them go right. And they come to the conclusion that they have no right to connect elsewhere or to impose their "evil, klutzy, alien, weird and useless" self on any intimate ever again. They feel like the "Creature from the Black Lagoon".
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
"Desperado" means "desperate one" and/or "despairing one" who is given to heroic hope, and that is a good description of them. They are "on the run" all the time, and they spend their life avoiding the "inevitable" annihilation they "deserve". They are constantly on "red alert", and they are forever trying to delay or deflect their expected "disastrous" destiny. They often have perfectionistic "drivers", and they not infrequently die of heart attacks (broken heart), as they discover that service and success aren't going to cut it and they burn out and drop dead.
They feel responsible for everything, while at the same time also feeling emotionally and socially incompetent. They try desperately to "earn" their love and "cosmic forgiveness" by accomplishments and success. As a result, they super success-seek and they are massive accomplish-aholics as they try to earn substitute strokes. But they bottom line know better, and they ultimately resign themselves to a life of loneliness and despair as they work/serve themselves to death.
"Desperados" think they are their contributions and that their contributions are them. They are highly achievement-motivated, and they evaluate themselves on the basis of their performances. They are also so dedicated to their desperate drive to "earn the God Housekeeping Seal of Approval" that they expect everyone who works with them to do the same as they do. They tend to not have awareness of others' needs or experiences in this regard. They tend to impose their lifeway on everyone, which is rather unfortunate, since they lack the ability to have self-commitment. They expect everyone to have the same degree of driven achieve-aholism that they do.
Their motto is "No rest for the wicked", as they try to contribute their way to atonement for their guilt and to avoid annihilation for not being good enough. They are incredibly self-blaming, as they assume responsibility and accountability for everything. As a result, they can become horrendously self-restricting out of their deep self-distrust, and they can be mercilessly demanding of themselves out of a felt need for atoning punishment.
They are convinced that they have to EARN anything they get and they certainly don't deserve love, appreciation or support. They run all their commitment and vulnerability through work and service., and they feel that their needs don't count, only other people's needs. Resignation is their bottom line, and "But not for me" is their theme song. They have a profound fear of retribution from the "Home Office" in an "Oh no you don't!" reaction if they seek anything for themselves.
Their basic approach is that if they produce/serve enough to earn the right to live, to atone for their "sins", and to prove their loveability, they might then be able to relax and enjoy the show. The trouble is that they never can achieve this outcome. And furthermore, once they become irrelevant, obsolete, dispensable, replaceable or burned out, they face their underlying profound annihilation-anxiety and worthlessness feelings again. This can precipitate a death-out reaction at retirement or in response to the "empty nest" situation.
They have an irrational annihilation-anxiety-based dogged refusal to surrender or to be passionate about anything, especially in intimacy. They have a severe "Don't deserve it!" reaction to relevant relationships and resources, and when they have one, it is experienced as, "Something's wrong with this picture!". They also have a fear that the rug will be yanked at any time, and that they will cause the kind of harm and misery to their intimate that they did to their mother. They have been so horrified of intimate relationship that they have a gut-level fear of dying at the hands of those who profess to care. They more they want to care, the worse they fear, distrust and shut down.
"Desperados" only trust "Woodstock" relationships (like the little bird with "Snoopy") because they desperately fear relevant, reciprocal, respecting, responsive relationships. They can't tolerate an equal or superior intimate, out of non-deservingness feelings and out of annihilation-anxiety. They are incapable of vulnerable loving or of letting love in. They have no connection points because they were so badly hurt that they decided never to open up again. They therefore do a "solo soul" trip, because trusting people to commit is to them putting themselves in front of a firing squad in their experience. They live an isolated and insulated existence, with a strong potential of "running out of steam" after "running on empty" for so long.
To the "desperado", sex and love don't go together, and when one is on, the other is off -- with the result that they make poor intimates. Furthermore, their experience is that both go with hatred directed at them, and they can't respond to the sexual and affectional requirements of intimate and spousal relationships. The vulnerability and importance of the relationship reminds them too much of the original prototype, and they can't open up to their intimates as a result. They try to reassure themselves that they are capable of love by pedestalizing past (safe) relationships as "proof" that they can do it. They are terrified of having to face "the awful truth" that they are totally unlovable. And at base, the experience is that "God hates me".
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
The "desperado" is the original "self-made person" who found out at the very beginning that they don't fit in, and that what works for other people doesn't work for them. So they self-sustain and self-teach, resulting in a deficit of "docking devices" for overlapping with other people's experiences and for fitting in with other people. They therefore never find relevant mentors, guides and teachers. They are literally unteachable, and they have to do it all by themselves in a "bootstrap" operation. They also can't be hypnotized, skill-taught or imitation-demonstrated. They can learn by self-teaching only.
They do the "elephant man" trip in the form of a life-long continuous "ejectee-rejectee-dejectee" experience. They find that they don't connect well and that they mismatch a lot. This validates their alienness and "should be" separateness trip. They are also chronically self-rejecting in an, "I'm not one of you" reaction. They experience others as dangerous, demanding, needy, or irrelevant, and their feeling is, "I don't belong here". They live in utter isolation, wondering what's the matter with them that there's nothing out there for them and why they can't rise above the situation and connect to the world at a deeper level.
Their separateness makes for highly creative and innovative solutions to problems, but they are so deviant that they are often misread, misattributed and mistrusted, which further isolates and alienates them. Indeed, their innovativeness and evolutionary/revolutionary contributions often deeply alarm others. Groups therefore reject them because they make the group members uncomfortable. Groups are always rejection-ejection experiences for them, and they hate group experiences. They end up fearing annihilation -- either by group anger or self-destruction due to accusation-decimation reactivations -- in group situations.
"Desperados" are happiness-disbelieving and intimacy-deflecting, and they become over-achieving joy-avoidant work-aholics and love-avoidant serve-aholics who are socially and emotionally distant "supertechs" or "charismatics" who keep people at a distance and who produce the "preacher's kid" and the "shrink's kid" rageful rebellion reaction to the "desperado's" inability to be there for them like they seem to be for the world. They tend to be quite accomplished in the world while being utterly alone or unsuccessful in intimacy. They end up substituting needing to be needed for intimacy.
However, they tend to find that $ucce$$ (financial success) won't buy them love as the "Queen of Diamonds" beats them. And they avoid the "Queen of Hearts" (loving intimacy in this context) like the plague. They are heavy subtle withholders and withdrawers in relationship, and they do an instant "roadrunner reaction" to approaches for intimacy. Unfortunately, the traditional male programming tends to fit right into the "desperado" pattern. Non-career type female "desperados" tend to be "super-mom" serve-aholic "quadra-boobs" who are into compulsive chronic nurturance as their only way of relating.
"Desperados" tend to be heavy into various intimacy-substitutes, one of which is the need-to-be-needed. Food as a love-substitute is often a biggie for them, and they also do semi-connects with other "desperados" to be safe and to get some life-sustaining strokes. These are really non-relationships in which there is no vulnerability or real emotional involvement. Self-disclosure is avoided frenetically because of their terrible feelings about themselves and to avoid rejection and humiliation. Any disagreement is reacted to as total rejection, and so they try to avoid talking about anything personal or unsafe. They tend to semi-connect outside their intimate relationship because they can control things there. Unfortunately, they also tend to be continuously hooked on "fatal attraction" nemesis figures who make them feel like the original prototype did, which only totally re-validates their whole program.
"Desperados" are terrified to disclose and experience the very things that intimates need to have happen. They are often trying to protect the other person or themselves by selective sharing and careful withholding, but it is a sure-fire way to destroy the relationship. It produces the "nobody home" and "relating to library paste" experience. So they end up in a lose-lose situation where to risk is to blow it all away and not risking does blow it all away. And of course, in true self-fulfilling prophesy fashion, the intimate does end up punishing them and leaving them, which accelerates their potential final despair spiral.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
The basic bottom line for the "desperado" is trusting themselves to be and letting in love so they can connect and merge. They have to break the intra-uterine seal and to release the "infant within's" trust of the world. Trust of the Universe is the real issue, and they have to turn on to the whole human race and to release their sexual capacity. Only when they have dropped the "not OK" feelings can they receive love. It often requires a lot of "mirroring (positive feedback for who they are), and it has to all be done very sensitively.
Melting the "desperado's" heart of stone goes in small, super-trust-inducing and supportive steps. They have to learn that they deserve love and that they can let love in. And of course, all of it is based on the development of self-love. Self-love development goes through several stages, such as the end of self-destructive activities, of self-punishment, of self-hatred, of aloofness, of "don't deserve it" feelings. Then there is the emergence of self-acceptance, of self-trust, of self-grief, of self-liking, of self-commitment, and finally of self-loving. They also need to learn how to play -- relevantly for them, of course.
They have to learn that the war is over and that they need to drop the performance-earning strategies, along with the fear of self-disclosure. They need to find out that they don't have to do the self-sustaining success-seeking self-validation stuff. They have to learn that they can have love just for being who they are, with no accomplishment or excellence criteria involved. There has to be a fair amount of thinking-restructuring to deal with their self-denigration pattern, along with systematic self-monitoring practice and progressive modifications of their self-evaluations because they are their only true teachers, bottom line.
This usually involves a "pole vault" relationship therapy figure who gives them unconditional positive regard while caring enough to present the very worst at the same time. There has to be a trust-inducing series of experiences along with considerable insight-induction. This is designed to, among other things, give them a sense of deservingness and belongingness/connectedness. After they have had this type of experience for a while, they can even experience group merging as well.
After all this has gotten under way, relationship-capacity establishment can commence. This requires among other things their giving up their "back door" self-sustaining strategies and "walking off the cliff" into fusion. Only by being inter-dependent can they be powerful and only by being powerful can they truly contribute and be loved. This requires that they be able to self-validate and self-love, so they lose their addiction to rejecting parental nemesis figures. Only then can truly trustworthy love that can heal the wound and open their soul happen.
Finding the perfect partner puts the issue squarely before them. They must fuse or re-seal -- no in-betweens. If they've done their homework, though, it can happen, and quite quickly. This requires of course that the potential mate be already "performing reciprocally" with full relevance and safety.
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
They have spent their life in desperate contribution, and they are past masters of achievement. When this pattern is separated from their self-negating dynamics, the result is a rather remarkable elegance and efficiency of accomplishment. They are very effective in their utilization of time and effort, and simultaneously, they are able to have ample time for self-nurturing, intimacy and quality of life. And in this, they model for all of us what we must all become.
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