Twins are constantly compared. This dynamic is an integral part of the twin landscape. If the dyadic pair has not yet learned how to manage the expectable vicissitudes of a twin connection, and one of the twins has not yet attained a well-functioning sense of a separate self, he or she may feel that his or her mood is always up or down. An older twin in his sixties tells me that he is always up. This delusional upbeat mood […]
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Two Different Worlds
I have been thinking about two sessions I had recently with two different twin clients—both struggling with twin loss, physically and emotionally. One woman has been attempting to work through her grief about the death of her twin sister, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack a few months ago. My client and her sister were incredibly close. Although they were both married with careers and children, they spoke every day and saw one another frequently. They shared an inexplicable […]
Boundaries
I recently spoke with several twins whose relationships have been adversely affected and undermined by a lack of proper boundaries. This can be an ordinary consequence of navigating a twin connection. However, when boundaries are improperly managed, twins may have serious difficulty recognizing and eventually reconciling the importance of respecting and acknowledging separateness and space. An article from the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy entitled “Holding the Line: Limits in Child Psychotherapy” stresses the importance of boundaries: Developmental […]
Silent Sacrifices: Disenchantment and Despair
The majority of my identical twin patients struggle with the lifelong consequences of having been the caretaking twin in their relationship. This dynamic occurs in different familial situations for different reasons—some inexplicable and unconscious and some in response to traumatic childhood experiences in which a relationship with a parent was unavailable or unreliable. Generally speaking, the twin who assumes the caretaking role has a specific developmental trajectory. This dynamic is most pernicious when one twin unilaterally and purposefully takes on […]
Not Seeing Eye to Eye: The Eye of the Twinship Storm
Many of the adult twins that contact me are experiencing emotional pain due to a growing awareness that they are different from their twin. They struggle mightily with this dawning realization that they are not magically and nonverbally on the same page. Often, external circumstances trigger a series of events that make a twin pair’s differences obvious. For example, becoming a parent for the first time can be a tumultuous developmental adjustment for many people. When one twin discovers that […]