On the pain of empathetic failure - mainly for therapists

Empathy

Many womb twin survivors have a problem with empathy - too much or too little.  I came across this material today among my computer files on healing,  and I think I may include it in the new book, but here is a taster:

Definitions of empathy

Empathy is bothering to guess the inner experience of another with the help of intuitively obtained information. Empathy is trying to see into the mind of the other. Empathy is the desire to know and understand the nature of the interior world of the other person.

There can be no empathy if there is no desire to reach out to the other. There can be no empathy if there is no wish to create emotional intimacy with the other. There cannot be empathy without love. There cannot be love without empathy.

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....

A healing path (4) relationships - unworthiness

If there is one thing that this work demonstrates most clearly, it is that the Dream of the Womb is  kept alive by a series of personal decisions.  These decisions come together into a kind of complex, which neatly describes the feelings that are there in the Dream, yet are acted out in born life.

Take for example a general feeling of "Unworthiness."

Narcissus: the urge to merge

The sole survivor of a monozygotic twin may seek to merge with other people, for that is their model of relationship. Bee says she has always wanted someone totally merged with her, but that degree of merging just doesn't happen in born life, naturally enough. To keep the Dream alive, all relationships go through a cycle:

1. Encounter
2. Rapid development of intimacy
3. Desire for constant contact, 24/7
4. Over - dependent and demanding behavior intrudes into the other person's private space,
5. The other person is soon drained of empathy and energy and cannot maintain the relationship any longer.
6. The other person asks for a complete separation
7. The relationship ends permanently
   

Womb twin survivors in relationship: a new movie uploaded today

I am making movies at the moment : here is one of them.

Chapter 20:A problem with relationships

Truly to understand what being a womb twin survivor can do to your relationships, you have to take a look at the very first relationship you ever had.  If you are a womb twin survivor, that first relationship was not with your parents, it was with your womb twin. ¹  You came to birth with a template, already hard-wired into your brain, about what happens when you reach out to another living being.  Depending on what that was like for you, your assumptions about every relationship since then have been based on your Dream of the Womb. All your life, you have re-enacted whatever style of relationship you had in the womb with your womb twin, in every close and intimate relationship. 

Loneliness and isolation

If you are a womb twin survivor, in your Dream of the Womb there is a feeling of aloneness that is vague and all-pervading.  It finds expression in all your relationships in born life. 

I fear rejection

This was the second most popular statement, according to the Womb Twin research analysis.  When compared with the fear of abandonment it was found that 168 respondents agreed strongly with both statements. 

The term “rejection” has two meanings, both of which are suggestive of the Dream of the Womb.  The medical term refers to an immune response to a tissue, so that the tissue fails to survive.  The social term is to dismiss someone as a failure.  Your womb twin was indeed unable to remain in the womb with you and failed to survive.  In the mysterious muddle of pre-birth memories that make up your Dream of the Womb, there is no time or place and certainly no sense of who you are.  It would be quite natural to assume that you are dismissed as a failure, for you carry a dim memory of your twin rejecting you - that is, ceasing to relate to you.  Perhaps the assumption and the memory have become conflated in your mind.  In born life, if a dear friend ceases to relate to you, that may trigger a memory of that original rejection.  There are many ways to prevent yourself from being rejected:  a common one is to work hard to create and carefully maintain close and intimate relationships with others.  Another strategy is simply to remain alone, for then one cannot be rejected.  The fear of rejection is so strong in some womb twin survivors that they readily feel unsafe in the company of other people.  They are so fearful and withdrawn that their parents and friends may experience a sense of helpless frustration in trying to reach them and simply give up.  From the womb twin survivor’s point of view, that would be rejection.  

Being different can create a sense of not being found acceptable, which is another word for rejected.  Some womb twin survivors find it very hard to be found acceptable to others and may try, a little bit too hard perhaps, to make people love them.  A fear of commitment can arise out of the dread of close, intimate  loving relationships coming to an end with subsequent feelings of rejection.  A fear of commitment brings loneliness, so the Dream of the Womb is realized once again.  Some womb twin survivors test close relationships because of their fear of rejection.  They insist upon being un-cooperative, unhelpful and inconsiderate toward others.  They badly need to discover just how much the other person is prepared to accept.  This tendency to test intimate relationships to destruction keeps the Dream alive. Having exhausted everyone’s patience, they will be left alone, rejected and friendless.

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