A mom of ten-year-old identical twin girls called to ask for advice and reassurance. The mom said that both girls are doing well in their separate classes at school. She has tried diligently since they were quite young to direct them toward separate activities. Sometimes she is successful and other times frustrated. We talked about how similar monozygotic twins’ interests and skills often are due to their identical DNA. Both girls play the same musical instrument and share a group […]

I was reminded the other day of how often we presume that a twin’s challenges are related to the twinship. A mom of five-year-old identical twin boys recently asked me for advice about one son’s behavior. She told me that her son, whom I shall call Alfie, had recently been complaining that he did not want to go to school. Alfie and his brother, Aaron, were in separate classes at the same preschool. Their mother wondered if putting them back […]

Since many twins consider their sibling their other half, I enjoyed a recent Huffington Post article entitled “How Relationship Experts Define the Word ‘Soulmate’” that explores this concept in a nontwin context. I appreciate how many of the quoted experts emphasize that a soulmate is someone who challenges you to grow, who does not take away your sense of self, who expects you to be imperfectly perfect, and who requires ongoing authenticity and transparency. Image courtesy of Tagard via Pixabay

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 […]

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 […]