Do you see that absolutely gorgeous creature over there with half the room surrounding them in awe-struck admiration? That is the local "Will-O'-the-Wisp" (WOW) charming the pants off of everyone while delivering almost nothing. They are the original "dance-away lover", the "Lucy with the football". They are expert "hope-hookers" who specialize in breaking hearts and milking situations, the original "Heartbreak Hotel". They are masterful at generating a "magnificent obsession" towards themselves and they are incredible at the elicitation of longing with their "haunting capabilities". The whole thing is built on a delightful childlike innocence, ingenuousness and charm.
The trouble is that they never come through. They lead you on -- right off the cliff in pursuit of the enticing little puffball on top of the dandelion. The fact is that as you reach to grab it, the air pressure drives it away, just as seeking to consummate results in another "carrot-yank" from the WILL-O'-THE-WISP. This pattern even carries over into their parenting pattern -- which guarantees another generation of "dance-away hope-hookers". They are the original commitment-avoider, and their impact is enormous due to their startlingly powerful compellingness, coupled with their utter genius at the elicitation of commitment from others with no follow-through from them.
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
They are the product of a "dance-away parent" who is unable to fully commit or to form true attachments, often because they themselves are the product of a WILL-O'-THE-WISP parenting process. It usually starts very early on in the form of the mother's withholding the "right to self-respect" personal worth feedback the infant needs. The result is the individual becomes obsessively fixated on gaining the "God House-keeping Seal of Approval" from the approval-withholding parent and to anyone who makes them feel like the original parent did.
Because of the earliness with which it starts, WILL-O'-THE-WISP's become hooked on hope because of the developmental imprinting effect which generates a "magic Golden Orb" -- "Holy Grail"-seeking process that makes all other commitments pale, and which terrifies with the prospect of loss or failure in the pursuit. There is also the specter of abandonment-annihilation that comes with the territory. It's done by brilliantly bedeviling implied promises of "nirvanic" fusion and union with the "Home Office" that arises from the "in loco Deity" effect of the early developmental period in which kids put God's face on the parents. They become soul-threat desperate to prove their worth to the "God figure", and they put all of their eggs in this one basket because of its profound significance.
This lays the foundation for their entire life, or at least until they finally manage to break through the "promise of the Golden Orb" one way or another. Once the pattern is laid down, the father can tie into the power of this "Divine Pursuit" by playing on the power of the original infant period vulnerability and utilizing it to generate the experience that if the child just "measures up" to some never specified criterial level on some unidentifiable characteristics or performances, they will finally be able to have the "Eternal Union" they so desperately desire.
The significant parent engages in a "promises, promises" pattern in which they put out a nexus of indirect innuendoes, hints, implications and indications that if the child ever manages to somehow match the unspecified standards, the parent will place the "Stamp of Approval", the validation of worth and the bestowing of the "right to love" upon the child. They also strongly convey that they and the child will then "fly off into Never-Never Land" together, leaving the other parent and the world behind for a life of eternal bliss ("Nirvana Union" with the "Home Office"). However, this is all done on a subconscious, subtle and subterranean level so that no one is ever the wiser as to what is going down.
In effect, the parent engages in a worth-withholding and continuous "carrot-dangling -- carrot-yanking" "soul-stakes game" with the child, in which nothing ever really "measures up", but the gossamer implication is always that it is just around the corner. The parent in essence puts perfectionistic expectations and premature demands on the child in an incredibly insensitive and devastating manner. They take advantage of the child's total impressionability to activate the profound motivation that drives the system, and then they utilize the ineffability of their criteria, the subtlety of the process, and the impact of the "intermittent reinforcement effect" or the "gambler's fallacy" that after all this effort, the payoff is BOUND to come any minute now to hold the child in a spell of hope for connection and validation.
Another dynamic that sometimes occurs with more pathological parenting is when the parent is both utterly dependent upon and massively vengefully rageful, with the result that they subtly, subteraneanly and subconsciously threaten the child with punishment, crippling or death if they commit anywhere but them. Under these circumstances, the WILL-O'-THE-WISP becomes convinced that it is ultimately dangerous to commit even to themselves in any way, and they end up experiencing no power, connection, success, quality of life or mature sexuality.
The child becomes a hopelessly hooked understudy waiting in the wings for the "dance-away parent" to come through with the acceptance of their soul. They become totally addicted to "carrot-chasing" in an unrequited "special relationship" that is never even acknowledged, much less validated. They are held hypnotized by the promise of their worth, with the result that the child ends up tied to the parent with a "silver cord" that won't allow them to grow up or away, to achieve their potential, or to truly commit elsewhere. They become compulsively commitment-avoidant as a result, based on "soul-annihilation-anxiety".
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
"Cosmic survival" is the ultimate issue for the WILL-O'-THE-WISP, as at base, their utter gut conviction is that that was the "Home Office" who was dissatisfied and withholding the "Seal of Approval". They literally feel that their soul is on the line. They are in effect trying to squeeze blood from the ultimate turnip, and they become caught up in a "magnificent obsession" pursuit of the "Golden Orb". They are in the grip of the longing for the Divine, taken advantage of by the "dance-away parent". The central issue for the WILL-O'-THE-WISP, then, is the right to love -- Divine Love.
To them, the "Golden Grail" is always just out of reach, and the are in effect addicted to God -- the ultimate addiction. They are deathly afraid to give up the pursuit of the "Golden Orb" for fear of "spiritual suicide", and so they are totally commitment-avoidant to anyone or anything else for fear of this cosmic catastrophe. NOTHING else measures up to the potentials of this "Nirvana Union" goal, and as a result, they are utterly unwilling to give up the pursuit. They therefore become quite hypercritical of everyone and everything on the grounds that they don't hold a candle to the standards required and to the goal object. They consequently develop a "wandering eye" commitment-incapacity, always feeling that perhaps over there the "Final Communion" can occur.
In effect, the WILL-O'-THE-WISP is hooked on the promise of "Heaven on Earth". They can't commit anywhere else because it would result in the loss of the parent's "Promised Land". They also continuously experienced coming close to "having it all", so they want it all, and they hold out for the "Golden Orb". In the meantime, they use their magnificently developed capabilities to generate the massive enticement effect to bring in their "getting through the night" sustenance until their "ship finally comes in". And the grip of the WILL-O'-THE-WISP is the longing for connection with the Divine -- both for them and for those they hook with their hope-inspiration.
For the WILL-O'-THE-WISP, giving up the quest after the "Golden Orb" feels like the ultimate "settle-for", and "I want you (It) because you're (It's) unattainable" becomes their lifestyle. To a WILL-O'-THE-WISP, anything attained is worthless by definition -- because they have it, and it isn't the "Promised Land" -- which they wouldn't deserve anyway. They feel that they have bought a pig in the poke -- and lost in the bargain. They are always into the "grass is greener over yonder" and the "What'll I lose if I commit here?" approach/criterion in all they do. They are on a perpetual immobilized "holding pattern", out of their "Great Expectations". They can't even really relate to or identify with the real thing -- such as a spiritual path, form or undertaking.
They can't commit to anything -- including their own destiny and welfare. They also can't cop to anything for fear of the cosmic abandonment-annihilation implied, and they are world class situation-twisters and "boulder of truth" self-justifiers (where they take the truth of something and use it to validate all their actions). Reality just doesn't get through to them. They are amazingly effective self-abservers and self-deluders -- and they are just as convincing to others because they are TOTALLY unaware of their pattern, with the result that they are deadly in their sincerity. They really do believe what they're saying, and they are fervently convinced that they are telling it like it is when they are called to accountability for their actions and impacts.
They fear ultimate annihilation via final invalidation by the parent if they fail to "measure up" or if they commit anywhere. They also fear total engulfment by any commitment, due to the ultimate engulfment they have experienced at the hands of the "dance-away" parent. They are therefore compulsively vulnerability-avoidant and rejection-deflecting, and they therefore prefer to remain safe by denigrating and withholding. They are in effect engulfment-paranoid to the extreme. They distrust commitment as a "poison apple" that will destroy them.
They dread love as salt in the wound that reminds them of the love that never came, with its terrifying cosmic implications. They also consider love as the ultimate booby trap. They remain completely addicted to the original relationship, and they are always hoping and jumping for the withholding parent at some level. They therefore systematically find fault, avoid entanglement and remain distant and somehow aloof -- always in a maddenly attractive and enticing manner, of course.
They react with paranoid disbelief and terror when love comes their way. They are incapable of trust, either of the world ("You can't ever be counted on!", "I don't want to be accountable") or of themselves ("I'm so unpredictable and uncommitted that I don't want to be planned on!"). They settle for admiration as a life-sustainer, and they become hooked on infatuation until love realities threaten. They then move on to new "conquests" with their "tantalizing dance" and astounding enticingness.
Ironically, the bottom line of all this is that the WILL-O'-THE-WISP feels horrendously worth-anxious and worthless. They feel really bad, wrong and evil, due to the continuous subtle, gamey, and disastrously effective rejection by the "dance-away" parent. They are consumed by self-hatred, and they desperately fear self-release. They therefore are suffering from what could be described as the ultimate worth-paranoia -- they feel at base that they are somehow "Lucifer's instrument". Their whole life then becomes a "magnificent obsession" with trying to "make up for" whatever it is about them that resulted in this evaluation by the "Home Office'.
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
Due to the intense hovering, even engulfing, yet distant and invalidating presence and involvement of the hope-hooking parent in the individual's childhood, they become in effect a "Pygmalion figure" of the parent's. They are carefully honed and sculpted to fit the parent's standard and/or the individual seeks to perfect themselves in the parent's eyes, with the result that they often become extremely strikingly attractive, beautiful or handsome. Not all WILL-O'-THE-WISP's do this, of course, but in the case of the ones where the parent(s) were sexploitatively involved, this is definitely the case.
Similarly, as they frantically attempt to match the unspecified and intangible criteria of perfection the parent(s) seem to be holding and using to evaluate them, they often also develop a wide range of rather remarkable talents and capabilities, with matching accomplishment histories. And they furthermore develop an extremely magnetic personality and an all-but-irresistible behavioral style. They in effect become "femme fatales" and "homme fatales" who are amazingly arresting and addicting in their functioning.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are incredibly admirable and attractive due to their learning history. They become almost universally competent trying to win the "God Housekeeping Seal". They also have an absolutely radiant smile that wins the world and which they use continuously and exploitatively. They have a real gift for gab and charismatic persuasiveness and communication capability. They know just when and how to stir the fires of hope with super-enticements and carrot-dangles -- after all, they learned from a pro.
They convey either childlike ingenuousness or alluring worldliness, and they give the promise of "God-fusion". Hope springs eternal with them as they use carrot-dangles and little moments of reality and seeming commitment to string people along. They are terrifically seductive and endearing in their style of operation, but they are in actuality very machine-like and mechanical because their heart belongs to Daddy/Mommy and they are just biding time till their ship comes in.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are "whim of iron" undependable -- great at enticement but terrible at follow-through. They do a lot of reaching out and pulling back, and they are continuously commitment-breaking in an elusive and evasive manner. They are completion-avoidant due to their fear of losing the "Golden Orb" if they ever do so. They project so much on the world, layers upon layers of it, that the world doesn't have a chance of getting them to come through or to understand what is happening. They want to be busted in their games, but at the same time, they'll do anything to avoid it -- anything. It is an "Alice in Wonderland" experience with them.
At the same time, there is a real childishness about them. They are hung up on physicalism like an immature three-year-old, and they are discomfort-avoiders and escape-artists par excellence. They do a "Stop pressuring me!" commitment-avoidant thing the moment their implied promises and their responsibilities are activated. They operate out of the "grass is greener" psychology and they use their hope-hooking to get whatever new grass there is. They are also compulsive people-pleasers and walking approval/disapproval antennae. They try to be all things for all people -- and they string themselves out too far. They reality is that they can be nothing for anyone.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are massively self-involved and incapable of giving, which is a narcissism that covers their underlying self-hatred and worthlessness feelings. They don't listen, they take off from people's inputs into their own concerns, they exploit mercilessly, they are perfectionistically persnickety and rejecting, and they are grandiosely self-justifying. Yet they keep everyone hooked on hope with innuendoes of acceptance and validation from this remarkable figure.
You feel continuously uncertain of your reality, worth and connection when you are involved with them, and the feeling is that you have blown it somehow all the time. They are masterful at making you feel like it's all your fault as they do a "blemish and vanish" thing when they dance away. They never tell the truth about their "agreement" with their parent at risk of death, and they put up a "wall of silence" around anything to do with it. They are "dance-away talkers" who are really very secretive. You play hell getting the situation out of them about anything. They are totally withholding, with the result that they leave a trail of felt "failures" behind them wherever they go.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are intensely perfectionistic out of a reaction formation to their underlying massive self-hatred, self-disgust and self-judgement. They find everything and everyone failing to measure up to snuff, and they make no bones about it. They also are seeking to "earn" the "God Housekeeping Seal of Approval" by finally measuring up themselves with this pattern. Finally, they use it as a self-protective commitment-avoidant strategy by denigrating anyone or anything that might win their allegiance.
All of this results in a pattern of startlingly insensitive interventions and evaluations. They are often very harshly judgmental, logos- or animus-dominated and elitist in a chronic contempt pattern. They have a photographic/phonographic recall, and everything is recorded and compared to their perfectionistic criteria. And, of course, nothing ever measures up because they couldn't. They are operating our of parent-entreatying cold standards of perfection and quality-control in a worth-freak-out pattern. Nothing and no one is deemed worthy -- least of all themselves. As a result, everything is meaningless to them, ultimately.
As might be expected, there is a ball of fury over the "carrot games" with their soul that have been played on them and about the condemnation to a destiny of doing unto others what was done unto them. A part of their commitment-avoidance is a protective strategy based on a fear of rage-release (perhaps even murderous) that would happen if they DID let go and the spouse ultimately carrot-yanked them again. They are terrified of the "final rage-out", and they are into catastrophe-avoidant denouement-deflection. As a WILL-O'-THE-WISP finds a relevant other, the relevance looms larger and larger until it hits life and death "up to the eyebrows" proportions. At that point, they "burst the bubble" and dance away lest they kill themselves or the spouse.
If the WILL-O'-THE-WISP commits outside the "Golden Orb" parent, intense abandonment-annihilation-anxiety is activated immediately, and it feels like an utter life and death situation to them. To protect themselves, they develop an idealized "Mr/Ms Perfect" to compare everyone to so that connection is impossible. They also do a lot of rage-eliciting to intimates who insist on bull-dogging it with them. They then utilize the reactions they get as "realistic" reasons to terminate the relationship.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's feel hopelessly inadequate as males or females because of the devastating effect of the "carrot-yank" parenting pattern. There may also have been systematic denigration of their gender by the "rejecting" parent. The result is that they tend strongly to compensate with a "Don Juan" or "Donna Juana" syndrome of seduce-destroy. Under these conditions, they often actually are really wanting to be like the other gender due to having had the critical parent pair whatever acceptance they got with treating them like one of the guys (gals) -- like the other gender. They go for the emotional jugular of the other gender as a result as a power-seeking strategy and as a desperate effort to prove their worth.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are into vengeance with their chosen gender for the sexploitation component of the "dance-away" parent's pattern with them. They also need the power of seduction-control to feel non-powerless. All kindness, empathy and straightforwardness they express are being used as control or seduction moves. But once they have someone, they don't know what to do with them. Without the seduction, power ploys and hostile manipulation, the relationship feels meaningless and boring. So they become dissatisfied and they "dance away". They then start over with new possibilities -- especially successful ones they can "bring down to their level".
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's feel valuable and worthy only in the pursuit process, not in the conquest. Seduction makes them feel powerful, important and sexually lovable, rather than ugly and disgusting like their "dance-away" parent made them feel. They can also avoid internal conflicts that are unresolved by forever being involved in the pursuing or being pursued game. Getting their "prey" into a vulnerable position where they can hurt them whenever they wish gives relief from their sense of their being nothing and worthless.
They tend to be gender-identified with the other gender parent, even if the "dance-away" parent is of the same gender (especially if this is the mother) due to their connecting with the anima or animus (the woman in the father or the man in the mother) as a potential ally in their desperate struggle. However, due to the guilt and fear involved in both their rage-revenge and their "failure to come up to snuff", they tend to reaction-formate into a hyper-gender-manifestation and hyper-sexuality. And, of course, both of these tend to greatly add to their incredible alluringness.
To sum it all up, what we have here is an incredibly attractive and impressive person who is totally devoted to a "dance-away" parent while they systematically "hope-hook" and "dance away", doing unto others what was done unto them. They leave a sad string of devastated recipients of their profound charmingness behind them as they go, and they themselves are utterly devastated by their underlying complete sense of failure, worthless and rejection by God.
WHAT DO THEY NEED?
The WILL-O'-THE-WISP's ultimate issue is self-commitment and self-representation. They are totally hooked on trying to "prove" to the parent their worth, as if there was a real worth problem there. The real problem was the PARENT's "dance-away dynamic" that would lead them to do what they did to the individual. The WILL-O'-THE-WISP needs to be able to learn to represent to themselves correctly who they are, who others are and what's really going on.
They require systematic worth-induction by means of unwavering commitment from one or more key relationship therapy figures who do a systematic "re-parenting" process with them in which they are consistently there for them while simultaneously providing continuous reality feedback and input. They also need undeniable achievement and quality feedback around characteristics, behavior and accomplishments that put them in a position of moral and worth value, appreciation and acclaim, with careful doses of applause.
They must learn to validate themselves, rather than seeking it from the "dance-away parent-in-the-head" and their stand-ins. They also need guilt-alleviation for "betraying" the parent by committing to themselves and their destiny. Along with this will be required grief-relief around giving up the "Golden Orb" and mourning for their lost childhood. Another component involved is graduated success experiences to remove their deep-seated (but often out of awareness) competence-anxiety that was generated by all the "failure" messaging they got.
The prime target of the whole healing process has to focus on their self-worth issue. When they are able to develop a sense of value as their "inner child" goes through an "educating Rita" process, it dispels the sense of "vileness" that lurks in their deeper recesses. It also lets them know that there's no need to prove, no need to avoid commitment elsewhere, and that trying to satisfy the "dance-away" parent is deadly self-destruction.
In addition to their development of self-worth, they also have to disengage from their family in a non-cut off fashion (unless the family is so destructively still in the "game" that they can't have contact without further damage). They simply HAVE to find out that their heart doesn't belong to Daddy/Mommy. They also have to develop their ability to connect and commit "out there". They have to be able to make peer and career commitments, as well as to develop the capacity for vulnerability.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP's are engulfment- and entrapment-paranoid due to their experiential history and they will tend strongly to take a "Don't parent me!" approach to the healing people in their life. But they also need the re-parenting process that leads them to get betrayal-fearful and abandonment-anxious. They will double message the healing person as a result of all this. The response needs to be just hanging in there with them and staying grounded and committed.
One important aspect of worth-validation for the WILL-O'-THE-WISP is to convey acceptance of and total empathy for their experience, along with validation of their strategies as only needing modification, not elimination. Also, giving them the right and permission to engage in self-commitment activities and experiences is very validating to them. That includes standing up for their own rights, especially with the healing people.
A very useful component of the process of healing the WILL-O'-THE-WISP is to have them work with "tiny targets". These are goal statements based on their deep issues which are extremely trivial in nature (such as, "I will say hello to my supervisor once this week"), but which are central to their self-worth and commitment-anxiety concerns. What happens is that they aren't able to do it for several weeks, but eventually it happens. Then they up the ante a tiny bit, and so on. It soon leads to "seven league boot" increments in accomplishment and fundamental attitude changes.
This strategy can also be applied to having them write their assets, along with making success/passion commitments and being totally vulnerable/honest with intimates. A similar approach is to have them do a list of "red flags" and "green flags" on their "fatal attraction" and "relevant intimate" people-preferences, along with genuine non-script assets and achievements they cannot deny. They then know who to trust and they have irrefutable evidence of their own admission of worth. Still another tool is to help them create positive uses of their former script strategies, with much real respect and reward for their accomplishments in the process. The result is quality-provision for them and for the environment. They are, after all, quality-control experts when they aren't "doing their script thing".
Frankly, this is a "real tough nut to crack" due to the enormous stakes involved from the "inner child's" point of view. To them, it seems absolutely true that it is their immortal soul on the line with God rejecting it. They feel profoundly that they simply HAVE to "win over" the "dance-away" parent. But they are not unreachable. Indeed, they tend to be rather remarkable beings of huge capability -- some of which was generated by their life experience but most of which they came in with. After all, what do you suppose set off the parent in the first place?!
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
Which brings us to their potential contribution and destiny. Because of the often quite superior equipment with which they came in, both soul-wise and genetically, they have a great deal of "horsepower" with which to work. This makes them effectively leadership material. They have tremendous charisma, capacity to elicit commitment and resources with which to ascertain what is needed and to follow through in bringing it about.
They also have their tremendously developed and penetrating perceptivity generated by the perfectionism and the pursuit of the "Seal". This makes them superb quality-controllers and profound product-deliverers. They have exquisitely refined standards, the ability to put their money where their mouth is, and the dedication to really pull it off. And when they are clear of the worth-anxiety-driven pursuit of "Heaven on Earth", they can ironically come close to producing it for the world in practical form.
In short, their "cosmic potential" is to lead the way to the generation of the best we can be, do and have with their incredible inspirational capacity and their enormously developed ability to deliver fine quality.
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