A healing path (5) no worst: depression

Depression has been well described:  here are words by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who obviously experienced the feelings of depression himself. 

No worst, there is none.
Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief        
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.    

 O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap 
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.)

A healing path (4) What is YOUR favourite way to relate?

What is your favourite way to relate to others?

 1) A leader, triggering others into action

2)  A follower, stimulated by other people's ideas

3)  A loner, standing apart looking on

4)  The life and soul of the party, in the midst of the group

5 ) The partner, sharing everything equally with one other person at a time

6)   The clinger, who never leaves, never lets go, always stays close

7) The isolate, who knows no intimacy with anyone

Are these styles ways of keeping alive different Dreams of the Womb? I wonder....

Is there a true "Womb Twin Survivor Syndrome?

In the beginning, in 2003, there was the hypothesis. I discovered that I am a womb twin survivor in 2002 and I assumed that there would be others like me, who were also womb twin survivors, who felt like me.  As the number of stories I heard increased, and as the questionnaire statements were gradually refined, it seemed that we did all think and feel the same way. I was therefore able to come up with my first Womb Twin Theory in 2004:

Womb twin survivors spend their lives constantly re-enacting their Dream of the Womb.  Nothing is more important than that - even life itself.  They will go to extraordinary lengths and choose to create all kinds of fantasies, simply to keep that Dream alive, for in the Dream is the twin they yearn for and search for, their whole life long. 

Then came a couple of rather heated exchanges with sceptics on the James Randi Sceptics Forum, to whom I put my hypothesis and the problem I had with finding a control group who were certainly NOT womb twin survivors. They told me in no uncertain terms that I had nothing more than an hypothesis, if that, and to talk about a "theory" would be to make out that I had certain knowledge, which I clearly did not have.

Personality disorders - living out the Dream?

Its easy to explain away the psychological signs of  being a womb twin survivor as " personality disorders".  Over the next few days I will take a look at some common personality disorders and consider them in depth in the light of the womb twin hypothesis.

The whole idea of "personality disorders" is vague and insubstantial, and subject to conjecture and disagreement, even between the experts involved.

Here is an article about the prevalence of different personality disorders,  written in  1992.

Among 452 subjects who were personally interviewed, 9.6% of the male and 10.3% of the female subjects were diagnosed as having at least one personality disorder. Compulsive, dependent, and passive—aggressive personality disorders were most frequent. Significant associations between Axis I disorders and personality disorders were observed; anxiety disorders with avoidant personality disorder, and affective disorders with borderline personality disorder. Due to the lower base rates and the reduced severity of individual disorders, these associations were less stringent than in clinical samples.

(If we recall that, thanks to the work of Dr Charles Boklage we know that at least 10% of the population  is a womb twin survivor,  then the fact that 10% of the population is diagnosed as having a personality disorder may be suggestive.  )

By December 2010 the list of these "disorders"  had radically changed, and in particular "Narcissistic personality disorder" was removed altogether from the list.


(My own thoughts on this are that narcissism is now so prevalent, it would seem to be a nonsense to suggest that people with these specific traits are "disordered". It is also possible that the experts chosen to be in the Work Group that had the job of redefining the DSM  may possess these traits, which are common among people who take a leadership role.) 

The idea that emerged from the redefinition was to replace the concept of "disorders' with the idea of core impairment in personality functioning and specific pathological personality traits.

 My own work, in creating the womb twin questionnaire, has been to discover the personality traits of womb twin survivors by gathering a list of commonly- used  personal statements.  This method is similar to that used by experts to discover to what extent people are "impaired in their personality" or whether they have certain "pathological personality traits."

I propose that these impairments and pathological  traits are no more than a perfectly normal response  to a rather unusual  prebirth situation - the loss of ones co-twin before birth.

Tomorrow I'll look a little more at Narcissism and demonstrate how this set of pathological personality traits perfectly reflects the psychological effects of living out a particular Dream of the Womb.

To find out more about your personality try this test:

Are you a womb twin survivor? Try this questionnaire.

The Black Hole (2) Negativity

Is this how you feel?

There is a grey cloud with me always. It hovers just out of sight. It does not lie within me, but outside of me. It is Other. It is a brooding, silent presence of mystery, it is sadness and desolation. In it there is no hope, no joy. All my life I have tried to explain the cloud that haunts me by pretending it is part of me. I have walked a way of inner emptiness. I have quelled all desire and yearning. I have used all my inner strength for this sacrifice. I have surrendered all these things and handed over my life. I have become nothing, without feeling, without desire. I am grey. I have become the cloud.

Pride, is it said, is the father of all sin. I would put it differently: it is the father of all negativity. Pride is the deliberate concealment of shame by denial. This careful concealment is a fearful, rigid, negative and deadening place. Sometimes negativity is mistaken for something other than pride, but if we take a close look we will find pride there.

Fearful
If you deny feeling shame then you are blinding yourself to the consequences of your actions. You may do this by pretending that the shameful thing you are doing (or not doing) isn't happening. Alternatively, you may pretend that the thing you are doing (or choosing not to do) is nothing to be ashamed of. Either way exposure is to be feared.

Rigid
The concealment of shame by denial imposes a kind of paralysis. By adopting "standards" as artificial, rigid structures that must be maintained at all costs, it is possible to create a kind of "smoke screen" that conceals the shame beneath. This rigidity, maintained by fear of being discovered, acts counter to
change and personal progression. It soaks up personal power to the point where you are hemmed in by "musts" and "shoulds". Every path towards fulfilment is blocked by some rigid structure that you have
created for yourself.

Negative
If you are always trying to anticipate circumstances where you may be exposed so that you can take avoiding action, that takes up a whole lot of energy.! The first casualty in this war against imagined shadows is trust. Negativity is a deliberate choice. Given the chance to be positive about other people or the world, you probably refuse. Terrible things may happen if you are open, so its best to say nothing.

Apathetic
This negative place is lifeless and static. It creates a state of being "stuck”, but remember: your resistance to change has a very important meaning. This choice to remain helpless and out of control is created in your imagination. It is a sad, lonely and lifeless place with no escape. If you were once trapped in the womb with a dead presence that did not respond or change, then negativity is your way of life. You feel isolated and unseen. In your mind and heart there is a kind of hard, cold "spiritual deadness" that you are deeply ashamed of.

Are you stuck in a place of negativity?  Watch this and discover how you are deliberately keeping yourself trapped in a negative place.....




I wonder why you are doing this to yourself?

It can only be in order to keep alive your Dream of the Womb.

Healing path (5) The death of illusion

ACTING TO BRING ABOUT THE DEATH OF ILLUSION

The phantoms from the womb seem very real and present, because only in the false "knowledge" of that fantasy can you keep desolation at bay.  The heavy price price of awakening from your Dream of the Womb is to re-experience the desolation of being separated at birth from a place of safety where there once was the real presence of the Someone you hold most dear - your womb twin.   For you to be born fully, the Dream must die: you must wake up know that the Dream is over and your companions are dead and long gone.

This can be hard: in the recognition of death and separation is the pain of bleak and dismal emptiness. In parting is the grief of being utterly wretched and unhappy. In isolation from even those dear shreds of memory of your lost womb companions, is the most dreaded state of being totally abandoned and alone.

Letting go of the Dream
This "death" can be enacted in a symbolic way by entering into a ritual of separation from something or someone that you love very much.  It cannot repeat the original separation, but it will feel the same as it once did. It is a way to access the memory of the separation between you and your womb companions that happened so long ago.   You may have tried to make rituals before, but perhaps you were not yet ready to let go of everything.  One by one, the  features of your Dream can be explored and relinquished, perhaps in a series of symbolic acts. ( Like Frodo in "Lord of the Rings" if you are not prepared get hurt in order to achieve your aim; when there is no hope, to keep on hoping and in the end be prepared to destroy everything you hold most dear, then don't bother - stay at home and read the book.)

Once the deed is done, you are separated from the Dream that is holding you back. Now you can begin to grow to completeness.

The paradoxical reward

Then comes the paradoxical reward. By letting go you will get back: by giving away all that you hold most  dear, you will receive more gifts than you never dreamed possible, in an endless stream of generosity in the midst of abundance.

Can there be more? I hear you ask? Just wait until tomorrow!

The threat of the Womb Twin hypothesis

 The Womb Twin Hypothesis states:

Womb twin survivors spend their lives re-enacting the life and death of their womb twin. Nothing is more important than that, even life itself. Once the real pre-birth scene, which is being constantly re-enacted, is made clear, then the re-enactment tends to diminish or cease altogether, greatly to the benefit of the individual.  [more]

The main reason why no one wants to know about the Womb Twin project, or indeed any project involving fetal awareness and womb memories, is that it is far too threating to most mental health professionals.

( Thanks for your visit, by the way; there are few visitors to this blog and the associated blogs and sites, so you are especially welcome.... come back soon!)

The very idea that we may remember the womb is deeply unsettling to some people.  To believe it would be to "open Pandoras box", to quote Peter Hepper. 

Hepper is a psychology professor in Belfast who has worked with fetal awareness and learning for many years, has published extensively on the subject.

( Just one example : McCorry, N. K. and Hepper, P. G. (2007), Fetal habituation performance: Gestational age and sex effects. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25: 277–292. )

Professor Hepper  knows only too well that his ideas are far too threatening to the received wisdom of most Freudian-trained psychologists, who claim that any memory or impression dating from before the age of three years or so, is a "false memory".  This was  because Freud put so much focus on incest or child sexual abuse,  and not on the nature of memory per se.

Meanwhile, report after report comes out to prove that fetal memory exists.

We remember the womb, and womb twin survivors remember their twin. It is as simple as that, but 90% of the population refuses to believe it - but then 90% of the population are not womb twin survivors, so perhaps it is not so surprising.

Chapter 23: A fragile sense of self

Womb twin survivors can become so strongly identified with their womb twin that they cannot find their true selves.  They may not be sure if they are truly male or female, visible or invisible, of vital importance or of no account whatever.  This chapter will explore the various ways in which aspects of the Dream of the Womb can weaken your sense of self.

All my life I have been pretending to be someone else, and I know it’s not my authentic self

We are told that an authentic self is real and whole and carries no elements borrowed or assimilated from anyone else, which means acknowledging and representing one’s true self, values, beliefs and behaviours to oneself and others.  If you are a womb twin survivor and you are always putting on a false front to the world, then there may be a good reason why you are not acknowledging and living your life as your true self.

You may have created a false identity to cover up your inadequacies; you may be too much identified with your chosen profession so that the “real you” is hardly ever visible; you may like to please people so you are perpetually nice and never get angry: you may conceal your true feelings and always say “I don’t mind” when really you do.   To be “inauthentic” is to project a false self and keep your true self hidden from the world, as if you always wear some kind of mask. There is a natural process whereby one can become identified with a person or social group and even with an imagined concept of how the ideal individual should be.  When you identify yourself with a person or group, you are choosing to take on some characteristics of that person, in order to construct an identity for yourself.  In the same way, as a womb twin survivor you may have become completely identified with your own fragile, tiny womb twin.  This may be so long-established that it feels absolutely authentic for you to run the womb script of I feel fragile deep inside, for example, and therefore assume that you need constant emotional support.  You have probably felt this way for as long as you can remember and it seems to express your authentic self.  In fact, you have been living the life of your Beta womb twin as if it were your own. This is not your true identity: your assumption, I am fragile, is in your Dream. You are not fragile, you are the strong Alpha survivor.

All my life I have felt empty inside
If you are a womb twin survivor, you may have experienced a sense of inner emptiness.  This kind of emptiness inside has been variously described, as a sense of lack or a feeling of meaninglessness. Emptiness inside may be triggered by some external event, such as being left alone, or the death of someone near.  For most womb twin survivors it is mostly a sense of being lost, forsaken, yearning and confused. Inner emptiness has been beautifully described as “an ineluctable trace of nothingness in our being, of death in our life.” An inner void inside you may be a womb memory - a sense of having lost something infinitely precious.  You probably feel as if the loss of your twin reduced you to a fraction of what you might have become, had your twin  remained alive.  There are a hundred ways to fill inner emptiness. A common one is addiction.  Robert Lefever, director of the Promis Clinic in London, has focused his work on what he calls the “spiritual void” that is to be found in all addicts. The Womb Twin hypothesis has an alternative explanation for the spiritual void that drives addictive behaviour: it is the pre-birth loss of your twin who was too weak to be able to survive and remain with you.


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Chapter 15: The lost twin in the Dream of the Womb

Many decades of research and exploration have revealed that an imprint of your time in the womb still remains, deeply rooted in the most primitive part of your brain.  In this book, this vague and ineffable impression is known as “The Dream of the Womb” for it cannot be described as a “memory” exactly.  In this chapter we will explore how a hundred years of studying the Dream of the Womb did not reveal the lost womb twins until we developed the technology to see into the womb.  Only then did we fully recognize that womb twin survivors have always had a lost twin – or more – in their Dream of the Womb.
    Like everyone else on this planet, you have a Dream of the Womb, which is constantly being re-enacted in your life.  Nothing in the world is more important than that - but you may not realize it yet.  Your Dream drives your choices, fuels your desires and controls your fears.  It is a strange place but everyone has a Dream like this.  It seems to be at the very back of your mind as deep and primitive as can be; yet at the same time it is just behind your eyes and creates a kind of prism through which you see the world and everything in it.  It is a memory of long ago, yet it seems to be happening right now. 

Hard-wired
Your Dream was built as your brain was built.  The whole pre-birth experience is “hard-wired” into the neurones of your brain.  It is integral to your personality, written into your mind and seemingly inescapable. Your whole life so far has consisted of keeping your Dream alive.  If you are a womb twin survivor then the life and untimely death of your womb twin is in your Dream of the Womb and constantly re-enacted.  This imprint of Someone Else lies somewhere just below the lowest threshold of memory.  However, it has not passed out of sight and out of mind for all time.  There is evidence from womb twin survivors themselves that the imprint is always held in mind and expressed in the body, mind and spirit of the survivor as a kind of lifelong, coded message.  We now have the key to that code, thanks to ultrasound technology.

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The lost twin in the Dream of the Womb

The title of the new book is "Womb twin surviviors, the lost twin in the Dream of the Womb. " Now some experts in prebirth psychology have complained about that, saying: "Well if this is supposed to be only a "dream", are you saying it's all a fantasy, that we made this up? Are you with Sigmund Freud then, who  talked about fantasies all the time? Like we dont remember being born, that we don't remember the womb? We have been working hard for decades to convince the world that we DO remember the womb, are you promoting the idea that its not real, all just a dream?"

My answer is that it's all a matter of words and definitions. The words "remember" or "memory"  got the sceptics screaming at me that we don't  remember the womb and telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for even suggesting the idea. ( See some of these extraordinary exchanges here if the psychology of scepticism interests you at all..)

Assuming  (with good reason, based on my experiences so far)  that scepticism on the subject of pre-birth memory is widespread, I have been very careful with my terminology. The word "dream" works psychologically because in post-traumatic stress the trauma is often re-experienced as a nightmare: the loss of a twin before birth can be traumatic. Dream also suggests a longing or hope, and any womb twin survivors who experience that the nameless painful yearning for Something that refuses to be named until a way to name it is found, will  agree. Subjectively, the lost memories of a womb twin have a dream-like quality - they are vague, nameless, haunting and often appear, truly and  symbolically, in dreams while  asleep.

Finally, its a matter of how we are learning to heal womb twin survivors, and we have come a long way in the last seven years. The womb twin work takes the Dream of the Womb; names it; validates it; puts strong biological evidence behind it, thereby makes sense of it; then peice by peice the Dream becomes a reality.  With the help of that reality the constant search for the lost twin eases, for in a sense the original reality of the twin has been found.  In time, the day of true awakening comes and the healing is complete - it took me five years, but I had to do it alone.

I look forward to the day when we have many womb twin survivors who have awoken from their Dream of the Womb and will be ready to reach out to others and enable them to experience the joy of living free of the Dream.

This how the Dream has been described:

Just behind my eyes, my Dream of the Womb 
is like a matrix through which I see the world. 
Like a dark, mysterious cloud whirling through the primal places 
of my unconscious mind, this Dream is my way of being. 
In the light of day, however hard I try, 
I cannot see through the cloud obscuring the meaning of this Dream. 
It is with me always; I cannot remember a time without this Dream. 
In the dark hours of solitude when there is no one there 
and all there is is emptiness and stillness, 
out of the corner of my eye, I catch the faintest glimmer of gold. 
It is elusive but it is always there, and it gives me hope. 
It is like a light to show me what came before the Dream. 
But I am convinced nothing existed before the Dream. 
The Dream is all I have.

An energy economy

I have been giving a lot of thought to why I find it so hard to get help with this project and I think its part of our shared womb story,

There is a script that runs again and again - I ask for some help from someone who seems to be ready and able and they initially respond well. Then they just fade away, not having done very much at all and leave me either chasing them or left alone, feeling disappointed and let down.

It reminds me of the vanished twin, who promises well but then quickly fades away, leaving a sense of disappointment and let down.....

And hidden inside this story is one of two kinds of energy: the one is the energy of self preservation, self care and  self healing, and this energy is focussed inwards.  The other is the energy of relationship and connection - its a reaching out energy  and is essentially depleting. 

A critical piece of personal work,  in my view, would be to be aware of the balance of these energies on ones life.

If there is too much reaching out and making connections and one becomes depleted, then the result is an inability to cope and often exhaustion.

If there is too much inward self  preservation, the individual becomes isolated and devoid of all sense of reward  and support from others.

To balance these energies, the altruistic wombtwin survivor needs to practce a little more self care and not try and rescue and heal the world and everyone in it. Their batteries will soon recharge.

The self- protective womb twin survivor needs to reach out a little more and discover what the atruistic womb twin survivor already knows, - that there is a huge reward in helping, and this will be enough to recharge the batteries.

Is that interesting? Do post some comments and lets debate this.

The first quote

I am working through the 43 stories looking for useful quotes. This from "Ana".

This is all so speculative and unsubstantiated and, though I know that it is the only way to speak about what may end up being one of the most important things in this life, it still feels a bit funny at the moment.

Ultimately, this discovery has been very exciting and gratifying and validating for me. Thanks for being part of it and giving people the venue for expressing related things that must be expressed but that cannot necessarily be grasped cerebrally.

This kind of thing gets me out of bed in the morning. This what this book will be for - to put words to the Dream of the Womb.

Out of your Beta space!

I am editing Nick Owens talk as an audio file for the site and one of the questions has brought something to light for me: the "Alpha" twin who survives and the "Beta" twin who does not. The wombtwin survivor (in particular the identical wombtwin survivor) lives them both out.

The wombtwin survivor has two modes of being: in one (the Alpha space) he or she is the active, strong survivor, with cognitive capacity, agency and mastery. In the other, (the Beta space) he or she is the torpid, weak, lost twin, in a state of cognitive incapacity, helplessness and dependency.

The question at the conference was: "When you wake up in your Beta space, how do you get out of it?"

It's a big problem, because the sense of helpless incapacity that characterises the Beta space tends to hold you there is a state of spiritual paralysis.

It's as if the Dream of the Womb is rendered all-powerful and all-consuming, eclipsing any sense of normal existence. Drenched in that sense of total lifelessness, the survivor is rendered unable to function normally and is left unable to make choices or decisions, to act or to make anything happen. This is a state of mind that is similar to clinical depression, but may never be diagnosed at such. A more likely diagnosis is bi-polar disorder, for the Alpha state and the Beta state are so different from one another.

For the Beta state does pass. Antidepressants, therapy, strong social pressure and other outside influences may force one out of the Beta state into something that passes for an Alpha state - at least something a bit more functional and active. Yet there is always the risk that the Dream will come again and eclipse the Alpha energy once more, and the will to live is gone once more.

So how to get back that will to live? There seems to be several ways to do this.

Recapture Alpha energy
As you lie there unable to get up and get on with life, you can cast your mind back to a time when you were active, masterful and clever. You were the Alpha survivor then and that capacity is still within you. Catch hold of that energy and use it to get out of bed.

Increase activity
Just do something. Get up; wash; make a cup of coffee. Walk; run. Anything. Give yourself examples of how active you truly are; how alive you are. By simple activities, rediscover your Alpha energy.

Notice when you enter the Dream
Notice how the negative Beta energy swamps you. As you sit there, feeling eclipsed, notice that this is your Dream of the Womb. In the Dream you are closest to your lost twin. You are in the Dream because you want to be there. This is a deliberate choice. In the Dream you are not alone. As you recreate the Dream you pretend to be a zombie: dead yet alive. But this is not true, this is just a Dream, formed out of love and longing.

Be prepared to leave the Dream
It's your choice - to live the life you have been given - a great gift!- or to go on living the Dream.

How would you choose?

Wolfgang Priklopil- wombtwin survivor?

On reading an article about Natascha Kampusch, it struck me that I may have some useful ideas about Wolfgang Priklopil. This story sounded oddly familiar.

The mystery of why Natascha Kampusch was held captive for more than eight years in a cellar owned by Wolfgang Priklopil will never be fully solved, since within hours of Natascha's dramatic escape on August 23d 2006, Priklopil threw himself under a train, was decapitated and died.

I believe the idea is worth exploring that Priklopil was a wombtwin survivor. In keeping a young girl close to him, in the cellar of his house, he may have been re-living his Dream of the Womb. Natasha could have been his lost twin, restored to him and held close in secret.

In my new anthology of wombtwin survivor stories, due to be published on 30th June 2008 under the title "A Silent Cry," survivors of an opposite-sex fraternal twin pregnancy have described how they have sought after their lost twin sibling in other opposite-sex relationships.

The "Dream of the Womb" is a jumbled and incoherent complex of vague pre-birth memories, which are re-enacted constantly until fully interpreted and understood. Wombtwin survivors can become over-dependent on their "surrogate twin" - be this a parent, friend, spouse, partner or indeed captive.

In the case of Priklopil and his captive, is there any evidence that this may be true? Is it possible that the eight-year drama, lived out in a tiny cellar, was a re-enactment of Priklopil's Dream of the Womb?

Firstly, they are remarkably alike, and despite the age difference, they could pass for fraternal twins.Secondly, Priklopil had a difficult but highly-dependent relationship with both his mother and Natascha. This paradoxical kind of relationship - " I hate you - don't leave me" - is common among wombtwin survivors.

Thirdly, he had no other women except Natasha and his mother in his life - this is a sign that the fantasy world in which he lived was more important than any adult sexual relationship. Once Natasha got to be an adult at 18, it all changed. Natasha herself has said that it seemed as if "her master" didn't not want to "leave the womb" and be adult himself.

But Natascha did want to leave: truly born again, she is now fully in the world and taking it by storm, by all accounts. The man who was once her " Master" (was he the Alpha twin to her Beta twin in their secret, shared fantasy world?) is now revealed for who he truly was: a weak, anxious perfectionist, totally dependent on his captive little girl, whom he abused terribly and yet could not live without.

If this is a correct interpretation, then in Priklopil's Dream of the womb is his tiny Beta female twin who did not manage to survive. In the womb, he - the larger, stronger Alpha twin - dominated over his little sister, took away her space, her oxygen and her nourishment until she just faded away and died. There are strong echoes here of a dark cellar in Austria.

Tragically, there is a strange kind of redemptive justice in the end of this tragic story, for he, who was once the dominant one, is now cast aside and dead, while she, the once-submissive captive, is now triumphant and very much alive.

References

Hayton A (Ed) "A silent cry: wombtwin survivors tell their stories", Wren Publications 2008 (to be published June 30th)

Boklage CE. (1995) "Frequency and survival probability of natural twin conceptions." In Keith LG, Papiernik E, Keith DM, Luke B (Eds.). "Multiple Pregnancy: Epidemiology, Gestation & Perinatal Outcome" (Parthenon Publishers, New York) pp. 41–50.

Constant, secret, seething resentment

Now this has come to light as "Resentment syndrome" : an interesting aspect of the Dream of the Womb and the need to keep that dream alive, for therein lies the lost twin. [ article here to maybe read later]

Resentment. That sense of some Great Wrong having been done to you.
Constant. That feeling that underlies every waking moment and some dreams as well.
Seething. Restless, always active, always moving, always seeking out a target.
Secret. Hidden, discrete, a little shameful but very real.

Anyone with resentment syndrome directs an incredible amount of energy towards the every day practice of feeling resentment:

• one can resent some past hurt or something taken away.
• one can resent the fact that something is unfair or unjust
• one can resent someone who just doesn't understand how you feel
• one can resent the fact that the world is made how it is, filled with pain and suffering

resentment feels powerful because it is angry and hurt and feels very much like self preservation.
resentment feels honourable because one must protect one's rights
resentment feels absolutely authentic because the feelings are so very real

what if:

What is something truly was taken; what if there was a life and death struggle? What if the weakest one did go to the wall? What if your life came at the cost of another life? What if survivor guilt is holding you back?

It seems to me that, for the survivor of an identical twin pair, resentment is probably the only way to express those feelings in born life.

Natural enough - but what a waste of good life energy. The healing is to let go of resentment and begin to live a fuller life. Forgiveness: that does it.

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.

A new anthology

Well a dream is being realised: at last I have been able to gather together some of the stories told to me by wombtwin survivors, into a new anthology, to be called "A silent Cry." These surviving twins describe the nature of their vanished twin; they talk about their feelings of loss and loneliness. The incidence of vanishing twin phenomenon is so high, that the substance of these stories is common enough. The most astonishing aspect of this book is that it will probably become tedious to read, as the stories are so consistent. Again and again, people describe that feeling of something missing; of searching; of feeling incomplete without their twin soul.

I am almost half way through collating the stories. I have received 350 forms altogether, many of them with a story attached. Some people don't want their story used, so that is of course respected. The other stories have been anonymised, so we know nothing of these individuals except their age and gender.

What stands out is the story of the Dream of the Womb, told again and again: a loss experienced before birth which leaves a vague, mysterious but indelible impression.

Today, a new idea: that children create for themselves the parents they need to keep alive their Dream of the Womb.

This is the idea: ( comments welcomed.)

A child is filled with angry resentment and directs it to one or both parents: “You made me this way!!” The child finds one or both parents inaccessible, rejecting and cold. The child withdraws into a secret, private world where the pain of isolation and emotional neglect is made bearable. Only by complete withdrawal from the parents can the child survive emotionally.

Meanwhile, the parents, faced with their child’s total withdrawal, find their child inaccessible, rejecting and cold. The parents withdraw into their own world and only when they are completely separate from the child is the emotional pain made bearable.

So on both sides of this family divide each party feels the same: rejected, unwanted and unloved. The parents see the child’s coldness towards them and they withdraw, feeling hurt and unloved. The child sees the parents' withdrawal and so the child withdraws still further, feeling hurt and neglected.

The pain that lies between them never leaves, never heals. The child lives in pain and the parents die in pain. The parents take their pain to the grave. For the surviving child, the death of the parents is a relief from this constant, unnamed, family pain.

This is a terrible tragedy. It is a travesty of what families are for: where is unconditional love, forgiveness and reconciliation in this situation?

But wait! Here is the same mother trying to reach her child, who will not meet her eyes, but is withdrawn and evidently in pain.

The child is saying: “What is there for me in this family?’
The mother is saying: "There is unconditional love forever, whatever you do and wherever you go.”

Here surely is healing! Here is the answer! Let us pour love on this situation and the family relationships can heal and grow!

But there is to be no healing in this family. Notice the child’s distainful silence and withdrawl. The love remains unacknowledged and the pain un-healed.

“YOU made me this way!’ cries the child, and the parents hold each other and weep.

We are told we must believe this child.

We are told that parents are vital to a child's emotional well-being. We are told that the quality of love between the parents and the child is to be unconditional if it is to enable the child to grow. The social policy of this country is built on a single idea: that family life fosters the growth of children and by fostering family life we help to make better citizens. We are told that emotional intelligence is about empathy and the ability to make good connections with people. We are told that children learn emotional intelligence from their parents.

This is wrong. Parents do not make their children. Parents deal in the best way they can with the children they are given.

Children are born, not made. In our desperate search for explanations for why so many families break down as love dies a silent and painful death, we have been grasping at straws. In a procrustean effort to fit our psychological theories to the facts, we still choose to believe, along with Freud, Winnicott and all the others, that the root of neurosis lies in the primary relationships made in the first vital weeks and months of life. This means what when children withdraw into silence and begin a painful path to self-destruction through eating disorders, addictions, self-harm, unplanned pregnancy, impossible relationships and all the rest, that we can blame the parents.

This is wrong, parents do not make their children. What moulds our children is their life in the womb.

For the surviving identical twin, the primal relationship was not with Mum and Dad, but with their inaccessible, cold and unresponsive other half: their twin. After a brief period of live interaction, one twin begins to die. The twin becomes withdrawn, goes cold and inaccessible and in time goes away completely. This tragedy is being re-enacted in familes all over the world.

Wombtwin survivors create the parents they need to keep their Dream alive.

I wonder: if this was generally understood, could this secret and mysterious pain be healed at last? I do hope so.