Excerpt #2 from “You Are More Than You Think You Are”  by Lynne Bernfield MA., MFT. If you missed Excerpt #1 read it here.

We come out of childhood believing we know who we are, how we’ll be treated and what we can and can’t do. I call these ideas about ourselves, our “Cover Story.” Although it’s not who we really are, we believe these ideas and base our life’s decisions on them. Just as a spy’s cover story protects their real identity from discovery, so does ours. But spies know their cover story is fiction, while we believe our Cover Story is the truth. This limited version of ourselves helps us get through childhood, but it can handicap us as adults.

When little Marsha did what she was told her parents smiled and called her a “peach.” When she didn’t, they put on the mad face and called her “rebellious.” Her parents’ mad face made Marsha’s stomach hurt. To protect her from the mad face, her brain dropped chemicals into her bloodstream which stopped her from risking the “rebellious” behavior. Her Cover Story became “good girl.”

You don’t outgrow your Cover Story, the early lessons you learned about who you had to be and who you’d better not be, are hardwired in your brain.

At 35 Marsha lives her life as though “good girl” is all she is. Whenever she thinks of doing something her parents (now long dead) would disapprove of, her stomach hurts and she doesn’t do it.

How Cover Stories are created

There are as many possible Cover Stories as there are situations to create them. If your parents didn’t want children, your Cover Story might be “I’m a burden.” If they’d tried for years and finally, had you it might be “I’m special.” A parent who gets sick or leaves to fight in a war, can saddle a child with an “expendable” Cover. Younger children often adopt a “good, quiet, or passive”, Cover after watching the punishment of an older child. Older children can adopt a “disposable. or unimportant” Cover when a younger sibling captures the attention, they needed to feel important or special.  Identical experiences can create different Cover Stories. Both Anna and Charlotte were five years old when their fathers died. Both were devastated. Today Anna’s “abandonable.” Cover tells her that her husband will leave her. Charlotte’s “I can’t trust “Cover keeps her from committing to any relationship.

It’s what you expect, but not what is!

Your Cover Story writes the end of the script before the play has begun. You may hear what you expect to hear but not what’s being said. You may get what you expect to get, although it’s not what is possible. Comedian Danny Thomas gave us this joke which describes this phenomenon.

A man gets a flat tire on a country road, but he doesn’t have a jack. He begins to walk towards a farmhouse hoping to borrow one. As he walks, he recalls tales he’s heard about how farmers dislike city people. His certainty the farmer will turn him down grows as he walks. When the farmer opens the door, the city dweller bellows “Fine, keep your damn jack,” and storms away.

It’s not who you are, but who you present to the world.

The way you present yourself to the world is a reflex, an automatic response, as much out of your awareness as how often you blink your eyes. Although hidden from you, your Cover Story is obvious to others. As though you’re wearing a sign your Cover Story announces – I’m smart or dumb, irresponsible or dependable, interesting or dull, pay attention to me, ignore me, take care of me, or beware of me. I’m a bully, a victim, the audience, or the star, and the world responds appropriately. As in this remarkable example from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, the Story of Success.

“Here we have two very brilliant young students, Robert Oppenheimer, and Christopher Langan, each of whom runs into a problem that imperils his college career. Langan’s mother has missed the deadline for his financial aid; Oppenheimer has tried to poison his tutor. To continue they are required to plead their cases to authority. And what happens? Langan gets his scholarship taken away and Oppenheimer gets sent to a psychiatrist. Oppenheimer and Langan may both be geniuses, but in other ways they could not be more different.”

Although born with similar IQ’s, Christopher Langan spent most of his adult life as a bouncer in a bar, while Robert Oppenheimer became the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. Gladwell says of Langan “He didn’t learn entitlement. He learned constraint.” In other words, Christopher Langan had an “I can’t have”’ Cover while Robert Oppenheimer had an “I always get what I want,” Cover. That’s what they believed, that’s what they presented, and that’s what they got.

A Self-fulfilling prophecy 

“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right” Henry Ford

It’s not who you are, but who you think you are, which determines what you do. The training of elephants is a good example of this.

Baby elephants are tied to stakes or small trees they’re too weak to dislodge. When full-grown these same elephants can be tied to small trees or stakes and, although they could easily escape, their early experience keeps them from trying.

Like these elephants, our brains use our early experiences to predict what we can and can’t do. As a result, we see smart people failing tests, competent people in dead-end jobs, and men and woman who believe they’ll be abandoned, consistently choosing people who abandon them.

Until you question your Cover Story you’ll continue to believe in, and act as if, this limited version of you is all you are. As you’ve been reading have you gotten an idea of your Cover Story? To find some of your Cover Story qualities do the Family Pie exercise I described in my last post. The qualities you write in your piece of the Family Pie describes your Cover Story. In the next post you’ll discover qualities you already have but had to deny in order to be what your family wanted or needed.