The narcissistic womb twin survivor (3) ideal love

The criterion today is one left from yesterday that has the strongest connection to the loss of a twin:

(2)  is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.


The question of IDEAL LOVE


There is within the narcissistic womb twin survivor a constant yearning for the lost half of themselves.

http://www.narcissismfree.com/the-narcissus-myth.php

The falsely contructed illusion is one of perfection where the narcissist is unable to perceive that he has any flaws, however the world around him and the people in it are all deeply flawed. He seeks out perfection in others to find his ideal love or true match. Although he may initially believe he has found his perfect partner, he is quickly disappointed when the partner begins to invite him to see another perspective that isn't based on his image of perfection. [more from this site]

There have been countless attempts to explain why this yearning exists, and why  it is so all-consuming.  It seems to be love for oneself, but in this case the self is in the mirror, in every way reversed.  Yet to keep gazing upon this mirror image of himself Narcissus ignored everyone else, including the Nymph, Echo, who loved him deeply, focused only on this life-long, self-imposed task and in the end died alone and unfulfilled.

Echo and Narcissus (a poem)

My small experience of identical (MZ) womb twin survivors shows that they are deeply concerned about themselves, as if they have a deep sense of weakness, inadequacy and failure that they must constantly seek to overcome. The only answer is to be reunited with their lost other half. This is the ideal relationship that would make them whole again. Narcissism is therefore a perfectly reasonable, but misplaced attempt to replace the irreplaceable.  It is futile, but nevertheless the yearning remains, even until death.

[There is more about this in my latest book, Womb Twin Survivors]

The amniotic sac: bags in the midst of hoarding

So. Clutter. Hoarding.  So much of this is about bags and containers generally.  This is a quote from a hoarder:


I collect bags (sacs) because I am worried I might need one and be out of them.  I can't throw them away.  Sacs are so symbolic,  I am horrified when someone throws an empty bag out and I sometimes rescue them to avoid the anxiety.  


I have had a small insight recently about hoarding  (over half of the people who complete the questionnaire give the strongest response to the statement:


"At least one room in my home (including a shed or garage) is completely full of stuff."

I have been observing an extreme hoarder for five years now. He goes out every day, puts things into bags or boxes, carries them home and NEVER looks at them again.  His whole house is full of bags  and boxes of stuff.  It's the containers that matter, not the stuff inside.

Now I am beginning to find a slight connection with identical twinning, but it's not that clear and I have been mystified as I think: if hoarding is to do with being a womb twin survivor, then what if the bags are the amniotic sacs? What if the identical twin developed in a separate sac? That happens in about a third of twin pregnancies that make it to birth, but we don't know how many lost twins are created in that configuration.  If this is the hoarding scenario and if this is how you were in the womb, then we truly do have a bag that was once half of you - you would be bonded for life to that bag!


Is this the hoarding scenario?

I am working with someone who is learning how to teach others to overcome hoarding. If we can find the true reason why people do this, then we can help them to heal. That would be wonderful! So if you are a hoarder, please make contact, as we need all the stories we can get! 

Identical twins developing: amazing movie clip

When you see what can happen, how identical twins can have very different life paths, then you can see how one may die and the other survive, to be born alone and always missing their "other half".

A book about twins - when there was only one left

In Gent for the Twin Research conference in 2007 Abigail Progrebin, an identical twin writing a book about being a twin, thrust a microphone under my nose and asked me about my work with womb twin survivors.   I spoke, as is my wont, volubly and off the top of my head.  When the book, One and the Same, was finally published, there was the interview, in its entirety, as a substantial part of chapter eight.

Asked about the book and  this same interview in particular, Abigail said:

 I always try to let people speak for themselves and let readers decide for themselves. With this in utero twin loss I felt like I would lay this out there. I’m not sure what I think and let’s see what others think. This was really new territory as there’s no science at all to support a hunch that if you started as a twin pregnancy and ended up as a singleton that it’s going to have some kind of psychological impact somewhere down the line. But there is, and thanks to Althea Hayton it’s much more organized now, this body of anecdotal testimony from people. There’s no way to quantify whether they’re affected by it. There are a number of people in my life that say, how can you trace this? At the same time, it’s this ineffable intimacy that you have with your twin. You can’t quite describe that closeness.


More here


Its always good to get a bit of support with this - thank you Abigail! 


Read more about this book

Twin research - new article on the wombtwin survivors site

Twins are unusual. They are interesting because they are so rare. They have always been a favourite subject of myths, folk tales and drama. Identical twins in particular are objects of great fascination and their similarity has caused us to ponder the deepest questions about the nature of human identity. (1) Few people are indifferent to witnessing the birth of twins. The womb, which is clearly designed to carry one baby, manages to carries two, and they are both born alive. Of course the twins we see are always in pairs. They are often, if not always, together. They seem to be bonded by a connection that goes back to their time together in the womb. A lone twin is a sad sight, for in the public eye this person surely is no longer a twin, because twins come in twos, we all know that.


A short history of twins

The scientific study of twins and twinning, as far as we know, is relatively recent when compared to other branches of obstetrics. One of the first publications to consider in detail the biological nature of twinning in humans was published in 1883.(2) It was written by Francis Galton, who was one of those remarkable nineteenth century English thinkers who laid the basis for almost all the later theories on twinning - that is, until the development of ultrasound and artificial methods of reproduction a hundred years later. He gathered his material by “sending circulars of inquiry to persons who were either twins themselves or near relations of twins.” He wanted to discover if the obvious similarity between twins was due to “trifling accidental circumstances” or something much more profound and as yet unnoticed and un-remarked.

Galton was aware from animal studies that twins arise out of two very different events. One is where two or more are born, each developing from a separate ovum. The other is caused by the development of “two germinal spots” in the same ovum, each of which becomes baby. Galton noticed that if the ovum divides, the twins are wrapped in the same membrane – the chorion - and invariably of the same sex. He was puzzled that all twins were not alike, and that boy/girl twins in particular were never alike. He also noticed the phenomenon of the Alpa and Beta twin in many twin pairs but, lacking our modern vocabulary, he described them thus:

The one was the more vigorous, fearless, energetic; the other was gentle, clinging, and timid; or the one was more ardent, the other more calm and placid; or again, the one was the more independent, original, and selfcontained; the other the more generous, hasty, and vivacious. In short, the difference was that of intensity or energy in one or other of its protean forms; it did not extend more deeply into the structure of the characters. (3)


Galton was the first to name the Nature - Nurture debate as such, and saw that twins who were very alike in their youth “…continue their lives, keeping time like two watches, hardly to be thrown out of accord except by some physical jar.” It was clear to Galton and others at that time, following the publication in 1858 of Darwin’s Origin of Species, that these twins had similar genes. The science of genetics - and its dark twin eugenics - was developing rapidly......[more]

Cojoined identical twin survivor

A terrible wound on her chest and a profound sense of something missing... why Holly will always be scarred by the loss of her Siamese twin.  She has a sense of something missing; an imaginary friend; feels different ------ anything familiar here?

Read about it here

Saying goodbye to your lost twin

In his new book A clear blue sky, the Hon. Timothy Knatchbull, whose identical twin and other members of his family were blown up, he says that the book is designed to say goodbye to his identical twin, Nick.

Read a moving account of his journey here.

He has moved on. Like all surviving twins he can heal, and this entails a journey through the pain into a recognition of being the fortunate survivor.

The identical twin bond is different

There has been some interest in the idea of finding surrogate twin to help the healing. As a fraternal twin survivor I have been taught by identical twin survivors that being an identical wombtwin survivor is very different from my experience.

Here is a quote from a young woman who found out that she was conceived as an identical twin. She quickly came to understand how this had been at work in her life;

I'm comfortable with the idea that her death was the will of God, that she's in a better place and is happier for it, and that she's still able to watch over me. I'm definitely protective of my twin and of my image of her. I identity with her. I don't like people brushing her off as a manifestation of my imagination, or as being something that's “only within the realm of possibility but not terribly likely.” I love her, regardless of what a short time she lived or that no one else was aware of her but me. That doesn't make her any less real or any less my twin and my sister.

I've always been searching for someone to share with at a level that everyone else just falls short of reaching. It's like I've always been looking for that special twin intimacy, but never really finding it - at least, not in one person. I've resigned myself to looking for different things in different people, rather than expecting to find absolutely everything that I need emotionally, in one package. I'm probably overly-open and empathise too easily, share too readily, because I'm always looking for that connection that sub-consciously, I feel I would have had with my twin.

Comments welcomed!

The identical twin bond

On the wombtwin forum [take a look here] there has been some discussion about the twin bond, formed in the womb. Now there does seem to be some research that says that the identical twin bond is stronger than the fraternal twin bond, in that separated identical twins, meeting for the first time after a lifetime, are bonded to each other within seconds, whereas separated fraternal twins sometimes meet as strangers, and occasionally fall in love and want to marry each other, which causes a lot of legal problems. The bond is strong, but not the same as with an identical twin.

As a surviving fraternal twin myself, this is something I have neglected in my work with wombtwin survivors. We need new ways to help lone identical twins.

A good suggestion is the surrogate twin. This is an idea that came to be from the USA. It seems that if two lone surviving identical twins of the same sex adopt one another, this is healing for them both. This is not a homosexual relationship: this is a spiritual connection and is made for the sole purpose of supporting one another through the healing process.

Here is a little quote from a story in The Silent Cry;

Together my adopted twin and I are growing into our individuality
so that someday we will be soul friends, more so than twins.

Do any readers want to comment on this?
Has anyone tried this idea? Did it work or not?