A mother of six-year-old identical twins shared a lovely story that illustrates how natural it can be to attend to each twin’s needs when guilty feelings don’t get in the way. Mother explained that her daughter Sandy talked about wanting to have her own room. Two issues had to be managed. The first was that this sentiment hurt her other daughter, Anna. Anna told her mom that Sandy’s wish to be on her own hurt her feelings. The second issue […]
Category Archives: Identity
Think Twice: You’re My Twin, Not My Parent
Parents who have adult children involved with partners whom they dislike know better than to share unsolicited opinions. Perhaps they learned through earlier mishaps or were advised by close friends that disclosing unwanted judgments or advice can cement their son or daughter’s commitment to what is perceived as an ill-fated outcome. This quandary became the topic of conversation with an identical twin gentleman in his fifties whom I will call Kurt. He contacted me because he was feeling estranged from […]
Finding Their Other Half
“I think my daughters are struggling with a desperate need to separate but are also struggling with gaps in their own individual skill sets because of their twinship. Where one has a weakness, the other may be strong.” This quote is from a mom of identical twins in their early twenties. In my years of working with twins and their families, I have learned that this conundrum of feeling incomplete without one’s twin is a common and expectable emotional dilemma […]
Commentary on the NPR Review of Three Identical Strangers
I was very moved by Ella Taylor’s review for NPR about a recently released documentary called Three Identical Strangers. While I have not yet viewed the movie, I have read about the three adopted men who were coincidentally reunited in their late teens by quirky acts of fate. The reunion of multiples separated at birth is an inevitable media sensation. When I mention that I am a psychotherapist who specializes in twin issues, nine times out of ten, people’s first […]
The True Nature of Twinship
Vivienne Lewin is a colleague who has written extensively about twin relationships. She graciously allowed me to share an article about the multifaceted complications of a twin connection that she wrote for the Hippocratic Post on April 16, 2018. Twinship: A Subversive Relationship Vivienne Lewin Twins generate a great deal of excitement and curiosity, and with the increasing frequency of twin births as a result of IVF and later age of conception, amongst other factors, it is important to understand the […]