Womb Twin Survivors

I have spent that last week buried in various excel files and have some interesting results. I carefully divided up the respondents on the basis of whether or not they have some medical proof that their twin did once exist. 110 had proof and 88 had no proof, but most of the "no proof" group had a lifelong feeling of being a twin or had always thought they had a twin out there somewhere. My run-in with the sceptics raised the issue that "vulnerable and impressionable" people may read the website and suddenly become convinced that this was "the answer to all their problems": in fact for all these people that feeling of being a twin had been there all their lives and this was the first time anyone had taken it seriously.

Also in this no-proof group are those who did not have a feeling of a twin out there until they were diagnosed as a survivor by a therapist, or their mother told them about their twin. I did not include 5 individuals, either because their twin lived for more than 6 mths after birth, or they gave me too little background information in their questionnaire and did not append a story either. The spread of answers and the sincerity of the stories satisfies me that all respondents are genuine.

So on that basis I carried out a detailed analysis of the "attitudes and feelings" section to see what were the questions most likely to be answered with an A. I did not include any other levels of response in this analysis.

Here are the top 5 responses in the "attitudes and feelings" section of the questionnaire, divided into the "proof " and "no proof" groups. Each question has a choice of answers from 1-5. 5 is an A response, that means that the statement is true for that person.

The top five questions were:

1. Deep down, I feel alone, even when I am among friends
2. I know I am not realising my true potential
3. I have been searching for something all my life but I don’t know what it is
4. I fear abandonment or rejection
5. I grieve deeply and for a very long time after someone close to me, or a beloved pet, has died

The graph shows that, despite the lack of firm medical evidence of the lost twin, the "no proof" group seem to be responding in a very similar way to those who do have evidence. I think we may safely take their claim seriously that their feeling of "being a surviving twin" has some basis in fact after all.