It stands to reason that many of us who enter the helping professions have a fundamental proclivity for being helpful, and we enjoy feeling needed and appreciated. In the case of psychotherapists, our professional training, our ongoing personal therapy, and our continuing education enable us to secure and maintain healthy boundaries with our patients. While we experience tremendous gratification and a sense of well-being when our clients are doing well, we are careful not to consciously or unconsciously demand that […]
Tag Archives: relationships
Find Your Comfort Zone and Leave It
I was listening to an NPR piece called “Wisdom From YA Authors on Leaving Home: Neal Shusterman” on Weekend Edition Saturday for August 27. Mr. Shusterman reminisced about his troubled adolescence adjusting to life in a new country. He related that overcoming depression and loneliness was instrumental in the future adaptations he had to make throughout the course of his life. His advice was “find your comfort zone and leave it.” This radio piece resonated with me professionally and personally. […]
Help Me Be Me
Defining the parameters of a healthy twin relationship is challenging because each person’s life experience is unique and complicated. The majority of the clientele who seek out my services are grappling with how to reorganize and redefine the boundaries of their adult twin connection. They have outgrown their accommodating childhood roles and are challenged by new intimate relationships and evolving life circumstances. Let me quote a portion of an e-mail I received from a twin struggling to cope with her […]
Love Cannot Conquer All—Even Twin Love
As so many of us discover after a number of years of marriage, the exact qualities that attracted us to our beloved turn out to be personality traits that may contribute to our feeling unhappy, lonely, or sad later on in the relationship. This predicament can become especially intolerable if you have a twin who gets you, has your back, demonstrates unconditional love and acceptance, and needs to hear no more than a few words drop from your lips to […]
Separate Classes, Different Lunch Boxes
Among the many interesting questions that were asked during my workshop and book presentation in Guatemala, there are a few that I’d like to write about in some detail. A mom of eight-year-old fraternal twin girls seemed puzzled by some behavior exhibited by her daughters. She explained how well each girl functions independently. They are in separate classes and have separate friends. So, when mom suggested that they each do a different afterschool activity, she was surprised by their reluctance […]