Excerpt from “You Are More Than You Think You Are,” by Lynne Bernfield MA., MFT

Most people believe they’re living in the present, responding to what’s happening in the here and now, but they’re wrong. We come out of childhood believing we know who we are, how we’ll be treated, and what we can and can’t do, and we base our decisions and our actions on these beliefs. But these beliefs are not based on who we are, they’re based on how we were treated, and who we were told we were. Since there are no perfect parents, and therefore no perfect childhoods, we grow up with a limited version of who we are. Until we question these beliefs, we’re locked into a story we learned in the first years of our life; a story which may not only be inaccurate but debilitating.

Like the characters in the Wizard of Oz, the brilliant Tin Man, who yearned for a brain, the brave Lion, who wished for courage, and the tender Scarecrow, who dreamed of having a heart, many people don’t realize they have the qualities they long for, already are the person they want to be.

In my private practice I’ve worked with beautiful people who thought they were ugly, brave people who called themselves cowards, intelligent, interesting people who were convinced they were stupid or dull, and many people who believed they were worthless. The pain they suffered was unnecessary. They already were the person they yearned to be, but they didn’t believe it. The legacy of their childhood convinced them they were someone they were not and dictated behaviors which were often counterproductive and even dangerous.

We don’t outgrow our history which continues to tell us who we are and what we can and can’t do. The script your childhood assigned you is hard-wired in your brain and can’t be deleted. No matter how much you want to be different, it’s impossible to simply decide to change. Until you question these beliefs, you’re on autopilot.

You’ll never be someone who didn’t have your history

“The past is not dead, it’s not even the past.”  William Faulkner

Question: Why can my family push my buttons?

Answer: Because they put them there!

Even before their child is born many parents have decided he or she will be a musician, soldier, teacher, doctor, college graduate, or go into the family business. Consciously, or unconsciously they guide that child to the path they believe is necessary for its well-being, the parent’s comfort, or the prestige of the family.

Tennis star Andre Agassi’s father placed a mobile of tiny tennis balls over his crib, and tied a tiny paddle to his hands, so little Andre’s first experiences were of tennis. Tiger Woods was six months old when his dad put a golf club in his hand.

Families aren’t random collections of individuals. They’re units with roles, rules, and rituals. The smooth functioning of the family, even its survival, depends on its maintaining balance. Families are so carefully balanced that if a critical rule or ritual is broken, or any family member changes their role, the entire family’s stability is threatened, and everyone can feel unbalanced. So, the pressure to be the person your family needs you to be is overwhelming.

Families are like companies. Their product is children. The raw materials they use to create these children are the qualities they inherited from their parents, who had, in turn, inherited their qualities from the generations that preceded them. To achieve and maintain balance, families turn out specialists, not generalists. They spread the available qualities around by assigning different qualities to different children. Each child quickly learns which qualities to express and which to suppress. The decision to assign certain qualities to one child and not another isn’t calculated, intentional, or based on who the children naturally are, they’re based on criteria like,

• the child’s place in the birth order.
• who the child was named for,
• who the child looks like.
• the child’s sex.
• who the family needed a child to be when this child was born.

To achieve balance, families teach their children who they’d better be, and who they’d better not be. With amazing flexibility children learn to act smart or dumb, sick, or well, responsible, or incompetent as required. The following exercise will show you an image of the roles in your family, the ones you were assigned, and the ones you were denied.

The Family Pie Exercise

Draw a large circle and divide it into as many pieces as there were people in your family. Label each piece with the name of a family member.

Write the qualities that describe each family member in their pie piece; for example, patient, shy, care taking, impulsive, etc. Use one color to list the qualities that describe you and another color to describe your family members. If one of your qualities shows up in another family member’s slice, write it in your color. Consider enlisting others like your siblings or cousins, to do this too. It can be interesting to see if your descriptions match, or if they see you and other family members differently.

Were you surprised by anything you discovered in your Family Pie?  Do other family members have qualities you wish you had – or are glad you were spared? Do you share any qualities with other family members, or are you a singleton? Did you notice any patterns i.e. do all the same sex family members share similar qualities? Families are frequently made up of contrasts: One child will be patient and one impulsive, one artistic and another athletic. What about your family members? Are some friendly and others reserved, some independent and others dependent? If others did the exercise as well, did they share your opinions, or did they see your family roles differently? The next excerpt will explain how your assigned qualities became a Cover Story.