A few weeks ago, I acted as a cofacilitator for a small group of women with young twins. Most of the issues that the moms discussed are familiar and expectable challenges associated with raising multiples. One mom with ten-month-old twins talked about difficulties related to feeding and sleeping. She shared her story about a traumatic three-year battle with infertility that contributed to her unmitigated anxiety and feelings of helplessness during her pregnancy and after the children’s birth. Her boy/girl twins […]
Tag Archives: twinship
What Did You Ever Do for Me?
I work with a pair of identical twin women whose individual temperaments are as diverse as night and day. One of the twins, Sue, is a school nurse, and the other, Ellen, crunches numbers at a food warehouse business. Much of the focus of our work has been articulating the differences in the way they think, feel, and approach life. At times, Sue becomes frustrated when she expresses her needs and feelings because Ellen has difficulty grasping abstract concepts such […]
Adolescence and Multiples: Steering Our Selfish and Sassy Teens to Selfhood
For most children in our Western societies, the goal of adolescence is to become more independent from their parents. In his terrific book on adolescent development, Dr. Anthony Wolf writes that adolescence is not a single event but a number of changes happening within a relatively short period. The two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the turning away from parents. Young teens turn away from their childish feelings. They cannot feel close to or dependent […]
Thoughts about Dr. Phil’s Program “Identical Twins Starving to Death: Who’s to Blame?”
Recently, Dr. Phil featured a program about sixteen-year-old twins, Taylor and Tricia, who both have an eating disorder. It was tragic to witness how these girls’ lives have been swallowed up in an anorexic bulimic vortex. The visual images of their binging and purging behavior were graphically stunning. While we certainly cannot know all of the circumstances that contributed to the girls’ eating disorder, the producers of this program focused on the parents’ divorce, the mother’s boyfriend, and the father’s […]
Constantly in Search of Acceptance
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 […]