Wombtwin survivors carry other people's stuff

Some years ago I began to notice how easy it is to pick up on other people's emotional issues. I found that very useful when I was a counsellor, because after a session with a client I would quite unexpectedly start feeling vulnerable or aggressive or tearful, when there was no particular reason for feeling this way. My training taught me that this is empathy, and the feelings inside me were in fact those of my client. That greatly helped me to understand them.

This happens to me frequently these days when I am talking to wombtwin survivors.

For instance, yesterday I was giving words of encouragement to a wombtwin survivor who has just begun the healing journey. I had to dig very deep to find anything at all positive to say, so deep was their sense of despondency and hopelessness.

Today, I woke up with a deep sense of vulnerability and despair, so deep that I could hardly get out of bed. After a while of inwardly interrogating this feeling, I decided it was not mine. I remembered the conversation with this wombtwin survivor. I gently and lovingly handed the despondent feeling back to where it belonged. Within ten minutes I felt a rising energy. Then I could not remain in bed a minute longer, but was ready for a brand new day, so I got up and wrote this blog.

This is not the first time I have had this happen to me, and it may have happened to you. You may have suddenly and irrationally felt overwhelmed, anxious, vulnerable or filled with pain or paralysing despair. Now this may be because you need healing and have not yet processed those difficult pre-birth impressions. However, intermixed with your feelings may be some feelings that belong to someone you know very well and have been with recently. It's worth developing that inner sense of what is yours and what is theirs, and gently and lovingly hand the feelings back.

I say " lovingly " because it is very important to recognise that this person did not dump their stuff on you : you willingly took it on and owned it as yours, because you thought it would help. This sounds good, but it is how we use other people's pain to keep ourselves hurting. It's this kind of mechanism that lies behind the difficulty some people have in leaving abusive or loveless relationships.

If you are in pain because the one you love is in pain, do try and separate your own pain from the pain of others. You cannot heal the pain of other people, but you can heal your own. Then, healed and strong, you can come to the ones you love in a stronger and better position to give them the help they need to heal their own pain.

Obesity is a careless choice made by wombtwin survivors?

Diet is a personal choice. People who are allergic to certain foods, if they are sensible, will live their whole lives without eating them at all in order to remain healthy. Food allergy and intolerance symptoms such as fluid retention are therefore a matter of choice because the choice is there not to eat these foods. Obesity is also a personal choice because it is a consequence of a diet that is not sensible. People who don't think about the consequences of their diet get fat or suffer some other kind of malnutrition. Obese people who are poor eat more than they can afford, but they don't care about the expense, they just eat. They could save money with a smaller food intake. In every income bracket there are obese people who just eat and eat without thinking. You can go on and on about healthy eating but the obese wont listen - for some reason, deep down, they need to be fat. They are addicted to food. I think it's about death - or at least not wanting to be alive and not caring if they die young.

I think that the morbidly obese are wombtwin survivors. It goes this way:

In the womb they shared food unequally with their twin because the two placentas were in some way not equally placed for each to get to get the maximum benefit, and one twin faded away, dying slowly of malnutrition.

As they re-enact their Dream of the Womb in born life, the morbidly obese share their food unequally and with great shame (ie they are greedy and often eat in secret) and very gradually they die of malnutrition, even while they are eating loads and loads of food.

This is slow suicide:- self-harming dietary choices, made by people who do not care if they live or die.

Now there's a wombtwin survivor for you! If you don't really want to be here and you would prefer to be dead, along with your twin, then why not create a lifestyle that makes sure you die young, just like your twin?

If you are reading this and you are obese, do contact me. I have some ideas that will give you back your life and a renewed desire to live it to the full.

I have been working with names. By the way, I spend a lot of time with wombtwin survivors, trying to find the best ways to help. One thing has become clear, that wombtwin survivors do spend a lot of time trying to work out what is wrong and will visit various therapists and medical practitioners seeking out some kind of explanation for how they feel. Furthermore, the wombtwin work fits well with Cognitive Behavioural therapy, counselling and kinesiology, so there's no need to stop one's therapy in order to do the work.

Anyway, the names:

I have found that to do the wombtwin work effectively we must find three names to describe three personalities, facets, faces, characters or whatever you want to call them.

Let's say that we have a wombtwin survivor called Amanda. Now the fullness of the personality is in the fullness of one's given name, so let's say that Amanda is the authentic, healed and whole self. However, it's hard for Amanda to consistently be Amanda, because she is a wombtwin survivor. There are times when she feels weak, lost, helpless, terrified and even despairing. Then she, as it were, "becomes her own wombtwin." Let's create a diminutive of her name for this little version of herself, and call her "Mandy."

So we have two faces, the Strong Survivor face and the Lost Wombtwin face. That makes sense, because wombtwin survivors do closely identify themselves with their lost wombtwin and think of their wombtwin as a weaker part of their own personality rather than as a tiny, separate person.

But there is another face, another personality. This person is Superperson, who is very, very sure of their capacity to survive. They are the ruler of their own little world and in it they have things to do or leave undone; structures to preserve or render chaotic; principles to uphold or deliberately flout. This person is full of energy and drive, to the extent of exhaustion, for the sheer amount of drive is the source of self sabotage, driven by an unexplained inner rage. For Amanda, this facet, face or alternative personality is A.

Without A, little Mandy cannot be whole and become Amanda. There must be a counterbalance to stay alive and keep the show on the road.

The work is to recognise these three ways of being within oneself and then think of who or what each one may represent. Once this is understood and the mood swings begin, one can work out who's talking and come out of the "little wombtwin" space into the present moment.

The only voice worth listening to is Amanda. Mandy and A are long gone: they are part of the Dream of the Womb, and it's time to wake up.