A Twin Dies (Part 1)

The subject of what happens when a twin dies has come up in conversation several times recently; so let me explore the topic.  The loss of any family member to physical death is traumatic, and when that happens to be your twin, it may exponentially impact your wellbeing throughout life.  That pertains to both a fraternal or identical twin.  You came to the planet to work out some particular relationship dynamic and suddenly one of you is gone.  You feel all alone, and you feel traumatized.  Perhaps the feeling of abandonment and aloneness was the spiritual development and growth you wished to experience in this lifetime.  Perhaps the death of your twin set that energetic dynamic into motion.  Life happens for a reason.  Remember that those who die are never gone; they are just not visible to most of us in the human realm.  They are still energetically in our lives.  Everyone belongs in the family system whether they are alive or deceased.  There are many emotional family system dynamics at work when a twin dies.  I will explain them one by one in three blog posts.

Emotional Expression

An individual may have experienced a twin die at any time in the womb, at birth, or during childhood.   It may have happened later in life but I will focus on childhood.  When a twin dies in the womb, it may or may not have been recognized consciously by the family system.  Many pregnancies have more than one fetus developing and a twin dies without anyone consciously knowing about it.  However, the body of the surviving twin will have some way of remembering that close sibling that shared the womb. There are other situations where a twin dies in the womb and the parents know, but they never tell the surviving twin.  The individual will know in their body one way or another.

Epigenetics

When a twin dies, you experience some sort of emotional response.  Sometimes the trauma is great and yet the emotional response is so repressed.  It can become the unconscious catalyst for a lifetime of unhealthy emotional response patterns or strategies.  Remember that E-motions are energy in motion.  When I refer to something being energetic, I’m talking about an emotional impact.  Any emotional expression, or lack thereof, is being stored or imprinted in the cells of the body.  The expression of your emotion, whether happy and joyous or heavy and negative, epigenetically switches the gene markers off and on, impacting the expression of your genes.

The DNA structure isn’t shifting, however the epigenetic expression shifts continually.  It can bring up instantaneous unwellness or instantaneous healing.  It may also have a slow or delayed long-term effect on your wellbeing. The longer you carry heavy emotions in the cells of your body, the heavier they get over time.  As you enter adulthood and advance toward adult maturity, these cellular imprints may begin impacting your life and wellbeing in many different ways that may not always serve you well.  They may manifest as chronic conditions, illnesses, mental health issues, relationship problems, spiritual confusion, or other life challenges or obstacles.

The symptoms are presenting themselves to get your attention to let you know that something needs to change.  They are a universal wake up call.  Be sure you are listening to them and interpreting their meaning.

This epigenetic emotional inheritance may be passed from generation to generation.  In situations where a twin dies, it’s important to look back into your family system to understand who else lost someone close.  Who else was abandoned?  Who died too early?  Who felt guilty?  Who was left alone?  The surviving twin needs to find a healthy adult way to process the unresolved emotions that linger from the trauma. They need to express their emotions around the death of their twin so they can go on in life thriving rather than just surviving.

Survivor Guilt

The surviving twin may experience survivor guilt.  The twin who survives when another dies will frequently carry survivor guilt.  Survivor guilt will often manifest as emotional distancing or an emotional shut down.  It’s like an individual who goes to war and sees so many die around them.  They come away wishing they had died too or they wonder why they survived when so many others didn’t.  They come out of the war and suppress the horrific emotional experiences in their body.  “I will share it with you.  I will die emotionally inside.”  “I will follow you.  I will be emotionally drawn to the dead.”  They leave the war and begin to die energetically.  They withdraw from life.  They are quiet and they are emotionally distant.  The heightened long-term fears they experienced shut down their use of language.  The surviving twin asks, “Why did I live and you die?”  They no longer feel worthy or able to take in life fully.  There world may contract and become small. The surviving twin says unconsciously, “I will share this with you. I will die emotionally inside.” “I will follow you. I will be emotionally drawn to the dead.” “I will remember you by not living my life fully.”

When a Twin Dies Young

Early emotional trauma is locked into the surviving twin’s body because they have no way of processing it.  Until any child is about two years old the mother acts as an emotional barometer for them.  The mother’s hippocampus processes memory and her amygdala processes the emotional aspects of life until those regions of the child’s forebrain are fully developed.  What mother feels, the child feels. The amygdala is generally considered to be involved in fear responses.  The whole memory of early childhood trauma isn’t there for recall because that region of the brain was not fully developed.  When the hippocampus doesn’t kick in to record the memory of threats and stressors, the body remembers.  I will get into many examples of this in my next post.  It’s important to discuss the relationship the surviving twin had with their mother at the time that a twin dies, if it was really early in life, and look at what followed that time period.  That has a huge impact on a child’s emotional wellness.

One explicit emotional response that comes to mind is the child may lose trust in the parents’ ability to protect.  “You didn’t keep my twin safe.  My life is in jeopardy.  I may not survive.”  Inner fears begin to grow.

The young body of the surviving child feels mother’s emotional devastation over the loss of her child.  The younger you are, the greater the impact.  For a toddler or baby, the impact is immense.  A mother frequently suppresses much of her grief, often thinking this is the best thing she can do for her other children.  Mother may also be very busy with many young children and there just isn’t time to grief adequately.  However, suppressing the emotion of grief is detrimental to the wellbeing of everyone.  If children and adults are provided with the opportunity to openly express their grief, and they are able to talk openly about the child that dies, then everyone will be less likely to emotionally carry unresolved trauma in their bodies.

Ritual and Ceremony

Ritual and ceremony, such as funerals or celebrations of life, allow us to address our inner pain and grief amongst loved ones.   Many small children don’t get to attend family death rites and their loved one just disappears from their life without much explanation or fanfare.  This is highly traumatizing.  They may fear that they will just disappear too.  They may fear that their mother and father will disappear too. As mother charges on stoically in life, she holds her suppressed grief in her body, and so too will any surviving child.  The child merges with mother to “share or carry her pain.”  The unconscious is responding for survival purposes.  “If mother is okay than I will be okay.”

Merging and Rejecting Parents

If the surviving twin is a boy, he will likely grow up too close to mother energetically.  He will remain in his mother’s energetic boundary.  He won’t develop a strong sense of self.  He may have difficulty moving energetically toward his father.  He may not feel seen by his father.  The boy subversively merges with his father to show his love and loyalty, and to remain connected even if it is not physically happening.  In merging with both parents, the boy may reject both mother and father.  What you reject in your parents will show up in your life continually in relationships.  Often it will be one of the parent’s most negative traits. A boy may struggle as a man in adulthood if he is energetically too close to mother and distanced from father.  He will need to do boundary work to establish a strong sense of Self. A boy’s way energetically to his father is through intentional action by his mother to lead him there.  In adulthood, it is not necessary for the mother to do anything. It is the responsibility of the man in adulthood to turn toward his father to find wellbeing. If the twin is a girl, she will still need to do boundary work to establish a strong sense of self.  It is important for her to turn towards her mother for emotional wellbeing. Men and women stand strong in life when they are firmly planted in the energetic circle of the same gender parent.

Template for Life

The relationship with mother sets up our template for life.  If mother was sad, we will be sad.  If mother was depressed, we will be depressed.  If we don’t feel seen by mother, we will not feel seen in life.  If we are overwhelmed with mother’s emotional neediness, life will feel overwhelming.  If mother didn’t express her emotions, we won’t express our emotions.  It’s said that how we respond to mother is the way we respond in a group.  If you energetically or physically separated or disconnected with mother, you will feel disconnected in any group.

It is inevitable that mother energetically changes with the death of any child.  Mother may be there physically, but she may be emotionally unavailable.  If you look back into your mother’s family system, you will likely see a similar emotional pattern occurring one generation after another.  For whatever reason, mothers will tend not to be emotionally present to their children in this family system.

This is the first energetic dynamic that will need to shift through healing work.  Healing occurs when we can develop compassion for the emotional journey of mother.  It’s not about forgiving mother.  It’s about forgiving oneself for putting distance between yourself and mother.  When you are ready you say to mother, “I understand.”  It’s about letting go of the need to take care of mother.  The child thrives when they take from the parent – not when they give to the parent.  You will begin to heal when you release yourself from any energetic entanglement you have been carrying or sharing with your mother.  The surviving child sacrifices itself energetically, “I can see you struggling mother, I will carry this pain for you.”  The child, the small one, suffers when they attempt to carry the fate of a parent, the big one.  Both family members are weakened. The surviving twin will struggle in life if they are attempting to share or carry the fate of their deceased twin.

Healing Journey

This healing includes developing a strong healthy boundary with others including mother.  It involves learning about your character style of abandonment or inundation that is revealed every time you are triggered emotionally.  You learn to reduce its impact in your daily life.  It’s about learning to self-nurture, self-soothe, and self-parent as a healthy adult.  It’s about stepping away from the one narrow perception of life experienced by the child and embracing the greater family system and energy field that surrounds you and flows through you. It is important for the surviving twin to acknowledge that they did survive. It was the fate of their twin to die.

Adults can expect no more from their parents.  What they didn’t get from their parent they need to find for themselves as adults.  Accepting your fate in life – that you were born a twin and that your twin died – comes when you allow yourself to be emotionally open and vulnerable.  Say “YES” to life. Accept that your mother did the best that she could.  Accept that your father did the best that he could. Accept that your mother and father were the perfect parents for you.  It’s about creating and carrying a new inner image about your life and childhood. Trauma that is felt in relationship, such as when a twin dies, is in turn healed through relationship.  The surviving twin honours their dead twin by living life fully, by stepping fully into life. These energetic soul shifts may move slowly or rather quickly, depending on how willing you are to change your way of being in the world by stepping into your healing journey.

Check out my next post for the many emotional holding patterns developed by the surviving twin in childhood that may be holding them back in life.