My first job after I received my social work license involved working with children and their families in a medical setting. I was in my twenties, single, and inexperienced. My first psychoanalytical training program included a child-centered curriculum that involved working closely with children and their parents along with mastering countless readings about child development theories and approaches. What has stayed most poignantly with me is not the various and sundry pieces of parenting advice, which ebb and flow throughout […]

The message conveyed in the phrase “sharing is caring” teaches that considering other people’s needs and feelings instills a sense of individual well-being and generates a purposeful societal connection and contribution. In principle, I agree wholeheartedly with this concept. In fact, one of the particular satisfactions of being a psychotherapist is exactly that—the wish to help one’s patients feel cared about, understood, and supported. However, as I have written about extensively, in some twinships the burden of caring for each […]

A colleague of mine (“J”), who lost her identical twin to cancer about four years ago, shared some interesting insights after she attended a sibling grief group. She has participated in several twinless-twin groups for many years. As a professional interested in learning more about her loss, she became curious about how nontwin siblings experience and manage their grief. An important backstory is that J and her sister, like many other twin pairs, grew up without adequate maternal attention. J […]

The different roles and functions that twins play for each other are powerful and poignant. Talk to parents of twins and you will hear them recount story after story about how their children were best friends, looked out for each other, soothed and protected each other, and pined for their sibling when they were separated. Of course, witnessing these loving and devoted behaviors in young twins cements an indelible expectation of ongoing, lifelong twin love. Unfortunately, this perspective obliterates the […]

The inability of twins to get along has many possible explanations—for example, complications with a twin’s significant other, a twin’s mental illness or emotional instability, unabated competitive rivalry, parental favoritism of one twin over the other. What underlies all these issues is the siblings’ profound grief and sadness about the loss of their twinness. Their shared childhood fantasies and aspirations are shattered. These imagined scenarios and hopes cannot be fulfilled by anyone else. One young woman sobbed inconsolably about not […]