While many people who seek psychotherapy feel victimized in some way, twins feel victimized in a distinctively specific manner. This situation arises because twins are frequently each other’s primary caregivers. The expectations and demands that accompany this attachment style are complex and often unarticulated. As a result, when twins enter new stages of adulthood, they have no clear pathway to understanding the differences they might experience.

An identical twin woman in her fifties reached out to me to try to understand why her twin was mean and uncaring toward her. My patient said she had been very helpful to her sister and her family over the years. Consequently, she assumed that her kindness and generosity would be unquestionably repaid when she needed her twin. When this failed to occur, my patient felt blindsided. Her feelings of rage and betrayal at this point prevented her from understanding the conflict from any other point of view.

As I listened to her and empathized with her situation and feelings, it became clear to both of us that she was not clearly seeing her sister’s distinct personality, strengths, and weaknesses. She was so overwhelmed with disappointment and resentment that there was little emotional space to view the “other” as a unique individual. However, over the course of our work together, as I showed compassion and understanding, she gradually developed the ability to perceive situations from other perspectives. This therapeutic shift helped her see her twin through a separate lens—not through the twin expectations of their childhood.

This shifting of self-states gave her an enormous sense of relief. Her anger with her twin, which is common among same-age siblings, had seriously undermined her sense of self and her entitlement to her own emotions and thoughts.

Feeling disappointed with one’s twin threatens the other’s claim to joy or contentment. It creates a black-and-white emotional world that does not allow for the presence and growth of two distinctly different personalities and sets of beliefs. In such cases, only one sibling can be the winner in their competition for shared emotional expectations.

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