Liar
How maladaptive story-telling becomes so common in the process of self-discovery — and why it’s critical to leave it behind.
Maladaptive story-telling describes behavior that falls outside of the realm of typical, malicious lying and covers a more social, self-centered form of falsehoods — the story that “makes you look good”
High school girls and the bravery of truth-telling
It was the early 2000’s. Warped Tour, MySpace, and AP English were the central focus of my waking life; weekends were spent in semi-legal activities with friends of mine who loved nothing more than collecting themselves on a trampoline to stare at stars, talk about getting into college, and work up deeply hidden secrets in the company of their friends.
“Okay, I have something kinda weird to tell you,” Britney* said on this particular night, several hours into the sleepover. “Remember how I told you about getting cat-called at the renaissance fair?”
I did remember. The story she’d shared a few days ago was hilarious. At the ren fair, where she’d worn her corset and a period dress, someone had shouted something suggestive, offensively. Then someone else (maybe her, maybe a guy, I can’t remember) responded strongly. Hijinks ensued: several things happened in the course of a few minutes, none of which I specifically remember now. I do remember thinking it was the sort of thing you’d see in a teen drama — like Riverdale, if Riverdale was set in a poverty-stricken, beige-tastic border town full of literal actual tumbleweeds, instead of whatever teenage model farm the Riverdale kids emerge from.
That being said, I had no reason to doubt it. It wasn’t that far-fetched, really; Britney was attractive, assertive, and fantasy-obsessed, with a talent for cosplay. I wasn’t surprised this had happened to her. Britney always seemed to find the adventure in our town, and this was just another case of it.
Except it wasn’t true.
In a moment of ballsiness I have yet to see be matched by any martial artist or skydiver I know, Britney threw herself under the bus, confessing something I completely didn’t see coming.
“Yeah, I kind of sort of made up the entire thing,” she told me, taking on a pained stoicism usually reserved for prisoners of war. “Not for any real reason, just…because. And I do that…a lot. I lie about stupid stuff. I make things up. Honestly, it’s really bothering me, and I don’t know why I do it.”
I was dumbstruck. The idea that someone I knew and respected, someone widely considered exceptionally smart and a gifted artist, would engage in petty lying — elaborate, mundane, minor tall-tales that served no purpose — was scandalous to me — except, of course, for the fact that I absolutely did the same thing. I told her immediately. Something deep in my chest felt released.
I’d never have brought it up on my own, but the truth was, I was a maladaptive storyteller as a teenager too — a run-of-the-mill, full of bs, liar— just like Britney was the day she confessed. Being found out was our worst fear, and yet, the guilt and shame and trust all somehow combined to make us bubble over that night. Our desire to rid ourselves of this toxic habit became so strong that we opened up.
Britney, me, and about a million other teenagers had discovered the pitfall of maladaptive story-telling.
Like so many other teenagers at the time, Britney and I were book-addicted, inexperienced, and insecure; we vaguely tried to get control over people’s perception of us as individuals by feeding them some garbage — garbage that we thought painted maybe ourselves favorably. I didn’t really know who I was, but I knew who I wished I was — and the falsehoods reflected that.
The little stories I’d sprinkled around in my life were often exaggerations of true events; for example, I used to claim that I spent summers at piano camp, toiling away every day. I thought it made me sound smarter, classier, less distractible.
In reality, while I did attend the Colorado Suzuki Institute most summers, that program runs about 8 days max — and I definitely spent all 8 of those days every year having wildly disruptive ADHD (as well as some godawful sight-reading skills for my age)
We spent the rest of the night sharing stupid lies we’d been growing under, and nearly crying from relief and sudden hilarious self-awareness. I’d made up a boyfriend in middle school to avoid having sex when my friends started hooking up with each other, for example. Britney, on the other hand, had successfully faked a British accent for weeks on end to convince a number of people that she was from Kent. It worked too, for at least a few weeks.
Self Acceptance Takes a Lot of Forms
After that night, we felt a cosmic shift in our patterns and knew things had changed— Britney’s scripted-sounding stories, previously shared as if they were fact, would go on to become actual short films; usually with great results. I went on to slowly forge a new identity out of the most mundane and real parts of myself, spurred on by reading “Peace Is Every Step” and “In the Palm of My Hand”, books that taught me a combination of mindfulness and poetry-forging that created magic in everything I was previously ashamed of. I went to the University of Chicago to write speeches about being poor and awkward, after which I started my career in software engineering — a field my teenage self would never have known I could sit still long enough to be successful at.
I became who I was slowly and with little fanfare, with the occasional mantra to get me centered back on my values. It’s a process I continue working on to this day; I barely stopped dying my hair lighter this year, and it took me until probably 2019 to feel comfortable making mistakes in Spanish despite it being the language of my other country of citizenship — I’ll never be a perfect Mexican, American or a perfect anything, but I am who I am, and that’s enough for me. Being comfortable with who I am played a crucial role in being strong enough to grow and adapt.
A common problem
I shared this story openly with people I got close to over the years. Surprisingly, several people I got to know over the following decades told me something similar: they too struggled with making stuff up in high school, and similarly tried hard to rid themselves of it in adulthood. This led me to the question: why is this type of identity-fluffing/chronic lying prevalent in adolescence? Maybe it’s because…
Lying to ourselves is a way to take back control
Sometimes things happen in our lives that leave us confused, hurt, embarrassed, or just plain exhausted. Sometimes things happen to us that attack our self-image, or maybe leave us feeling weak. Story-telling to distract our own brains might briefly convince us that the truth isn't what we feel it is — and for what it’s worth, it’s not: we’re not weak, we’re not shameworthy; it’s just that being young means having a lot of challenging stuff happen at a time when you have the least context for understanding why. For many people at this time in their life, the confusion or self-image wounds we sustain from our hidden memories are only offset by an image we can conjure up ourselves, a distraction too compelling to ever look behind.
Maladaptive Storytelling is sometimes a result of painful memories or unresolved trauma; you don’t want to remember a memory the way it happened, so you try to make it “safer” instead
I know I used to exaggerate things like piano camp as a child because deep down, I was deeply insecure about the fact that I was an aggressively mediocre piano player for the amount of time I’d been getting lessons. My ADHD and sensory processing issues were unacknowledged at that point in my life; all I know was that I was supposed to be “smart”, good at things, able to focus for long periods of time. Making it sound like I studied during summers more than I did often gave me a sense of relief from the discomfort of underperforming; it also drew attention away from things like my own social awkwardness or my family’s basket of unusual/struggling circumstances.
Other people I talked to lied about things because they felt they were inherently uninteresting, or they didn’t know how to explain the reality of their life. One person lied about growing up on a farm (he lived next to one), another about witnessing 911 in person (He was from New Jersey, and saw it on TV).
Thankfully, everyone I talked to had independently come clean well beforehand, usually with a hilarious story involved. I remember these stories because they put a smile on my face now; I feel compassionate, not condemning. The truth, it turns out, is a relief and a pleasure — even more so in retrospect.
One thing was present in everyone I’ve ever talked to about this phenomenon: a burning guilt/fear of being caught — and the eventual desire to leave behind that activity.
So what’s behind this?
Social instincts that need adjusting: stories are usually good for us
If your family or culture expects a story you tell at the table or fire to be, at best, a bit of a stretch — everyone’s expectations are aligned, in other words — then story-telling without journalistic standards of fact-checking is just regular story-telling; it’s a parable or a form of entertainment meant to socially bond and instruct, and it’s an incredibly important part of our development as a species.
Story-telling as a whole is extremely important to society: it helps us learn, form bonds in groups, and figure out our values.
Maladaptive story-telling, however, is the unhealthy response to a very healthy evolutionary urge: we want to tell stories because we’re socially and neurologically, we’re hardwired to do so.
At the end of the day, the phase “maladaptive storytelling” is just a way to describe a particular type of lie that roots itself in the use of a story as a social tool. There are plenty of healthy outlets for telling and crafting stories; lying is not one of them.
Lying hurts you in every form
Lying introduces cognitive dissonance; additionally, at the body level, studies show it’s actually bad for your health. Maintaining a lie instead of correcting the original story to reflect your memory more accurately can hurt you just as much as the people around you.
When a person lies knowingly, their mind trusts less in their own self-assessments. The conflicting information struggles to take root, jostling for space and creating undercurrents of uneasiness.
The final step is taking back the truth
The real you — the real story — doesn’t need a rewrite. It needs a P.R team.
I’m just gonna tell you this now: honesty to yourself is so much better than shying away from things or changing their nature. Sell your story to yourself, and mean it: see your own story kindly, through the eyes of someone rooting for you.
Powerful stories come from vulnerable origins.
(Like this one)
Ultimately, very few stories will be as rewarding for you to explore as the ones you dread telling. It’s worth doing — even if you only ever tell them to yourself.
There’s nothing standing in the way of you becoming your own hero except the act of figuring out how to tell your own story. Your story is in there, unexplored, unashamed. It’s missing a lens of compassion and insight, one that you alone can give it.
No matter how good you make the fake version, the real story will always be a thousand times better — thousand times more meaningful, a thousand times more impactful, a thousand times more illuminating to you and the people who love you.
The real you is worthy — and waiting.
*Note: “Britney” is not her real name, but I swore to secrecy about a billion years ago; also, I’d like to think she’d do the same for me
