Not achieving what one’s twin has achieved can cause tremendous shame. Evading crushing anxiety can easily become a lifelong challenge. Many adult twins whose sibling finds a compatible romantic partner or attains a prestigious professional position struggle enormously. For some, the divergences bring up strong emotions that have been bubbling underneath the surface for quite a while. I see this primarily in identical twin pairs. Fraternal twins are confronted with a host of differences from an early age, while identicals […]

The individual who wrote the following post has given me permission to share it on my blog. It is a beautiful albeit painful description of how she has managed to understand and accept her twin’s need for separation. As she relates, she has no recourse other than to acknowledge her sister’s reality and feelings. She cannot have a real discussion with her sister or share her own perspective because her sister’s thinking is irrefutable. I wanted to share I made […]

Envy is a topic I have written about frequently as it is a probable consequence of many human interactions. Envying something or someone can be a motivating influence to work toward getting what you’d like for yourself. Or, to the contrary, hateful envy can lead to damaged relationships and disastrous outcomes. Many twin pairs have definitive tendencies toward envious behaviors. This is understandable in light of how much they are compared to each other and viewed as a dyadic couple […]

An identical female twin in her midforties is getting married. This will be her second marriage. She had a very acrimonious divorce from her first husband. In our work together we identified that her first marriage in her early twenties mirrored the emotional and physical abuse she experienced as a child. My patient, “Clare,” feels tremendous shame about the role she played in that marriage. She recalls that she perpetuated much of the conflict and rage that was exchanged, and […]

My identical twin sister and I frequently reminisce about our worst fight. Although we both remember the incident with slightly divergent perspectives, the upshot of the argument was that my sister ended up with a few broken fingers after I pushed her and she fell down onto the pavement. I believe we were about seven years old at the time. When parents seem surprised and dismayed about their twins’ incessant bickering, I wonder if they are under the spell of […]