The Lost Twin, the Eternal Longing and Searching Without Knowing What For
Franziska Ursula Stalder is a Swiss trauma-informed coach, hypnotherapist and spiritual mentor. Through her practice FeritaS, a holistic wellbeing space near Bern, she guides children, adolescents and adults back to inner connection, safety and clarity using hypnotherapy, mental coaching, systemic constellations and gentle energy-based therapies.
A deep sense of longing, loneliness, or not fully belonging can remain even when life looks successful and connected from the outside. For some, exploring the possibility of a lost twin can bring a new perspective on identity, relationships, emotional patterns, and the search for meaning.
Do you know this feeling? You function, you perform, you are successful, you are surrounded by people, and yet this quiet question remains, "Why do I feel lonely? Where is the meaning?"
I knew this feeling
This deep longing. A loneliness that is there, no matter how many people are around me. A feeling of, "Am I in the right place?" I don't belong here. Searching for something, and I didn't know what for. Plus the question, "Do they need me here?"
Only through my son and the resulting systemic and mediumistic trainings was I allowed to understand that I started in my mother's womb as a triplet. Only I came into this world. My son experienced the same. He also had a lost twin in my womb. Through this realization, my life suddenly made sense, and I found meaning through working through it.
Around one in ten people are not alone in the mother's womb at the beginning of pregnancy. If twins are in the uterus and one dies, it can be a huge shock for the survivor, who is later no longer conscious. This may shape the lives of those affected. Tormenting longing, loneliness, inexplicable guilt, and unhappy relationships can be the result.
Lost twins or multiples may say goodbye during the first weeks of pregnancy and therefore may not be detected via ultrasound. After birth, a veil of forgetting falls over everything we experienced before, but the body does not forget.
Perhaps you were not alone at the beginning in your mother's womb. You can feel your brother or sister. You hear his or her heart beating, and you move together and play in the oceans of amniotic fluid. One day, the other stops growing. His heart gets weaker, and he dies. Then you are alone.
This is also how the book Das Drama im Mutterleib by Austermann describes it, which at that time gave me words for my feelings. A hole remains in the soul. Today, I also accompany people who had to experience the same fate, from longing, guilt, grief, and loneliness towards themselves, peace, and joy of life.
How it shows up in life and why we don't fully arrive
My experience shows that people affected by this early experience often have not fully arrived here in their bodies. Something still pulls the soul home because the connection to the twin or multiples has not been clarified.
In my work, I experience that this early experience can show up in very different patterns, for example, as great restlessness, which is often associated in the outside world with labels like colicky baby, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or as a search for limits and extremes. Not as a diagnosis or medical cause, but as an expression of a system that has not yet been allowed to fully arrive here because a part is missing. We are always searching, but we don't know what for.
Our children are never the problem, they are our mirror
My son showed me that. He always hid behind. He didn't want to show himself. In daycare and kindergarten, he didn't find his place. He therefore acted as an entertainer, as the class clown. He let everything be done to him until he couldn't do it anymore and exploded emotionally. Emotional regulation was a challenge.
Here lies the most important key to my work. The challenges that show up with children, especially children up to about 14 or 15 years old, can be approached so simply through the parents. The children are never the problem. They are our mirror.
In my case, for example, I had already experienced the same phenomenon, knew nothing about it, and through looking at my son, I was able to discover this story, heal myself, and lead myself out of the deep longing and eternal searching. By looking at myself, I was allowed to bring healing not only to him, but also to myself.
That is exactly what I experience in my accompaniment. When parents come into their own connection, into their own self-love and embodiment, the children also find their place, all by themselves.
Your Lotus Path: Where this topic belongs
At feritas.ch, this path is anchored in my Lotus Path. Self-love means you don't have to earn your right to exist. You are allowed to be here. Whole. Even without your twin.
Vitality means your nervous system is allowed to learn that it is safe to fully arrive in the body. Connection means you are allowed to live closeness without losing yourself.
It's not about getting rid of the twin. It's about giving him his rightful place in love.
An open heart for research
Since lost twins may leave so early, they may not be detected on ultrasound. Perhaps examinations of the placenta after birth could provide more insight here. I am open to studies on this if a doctor or gynecologist would like to support me.
If you recognize yourself in these lines, I want to tell you, you are not broken. You just loved very early and lost very early, and you are allowed to fully arrive here now.
Read more from Franziska Ursula Stalder
Franziska Ursula Stalder, Holistic Trauma-Informed Coach & Hypnotherapist
Franziska Stalder is a trauma-informed coach, hypnotherapist and spiritual mentor from Switzerland. As the founder of FeritaS, a practice for holistic wellbeing near Bern, she supports children, adolescents and adults who feel overwhelmed, disconnected or shaped by early stress and trauma. After years of working with families and deep training in hypnotherapy, mental coaching and systemic work, she developed a gentle yet powerful way to guide people back to inner safety, self-trust and clarity. She believes that every person already carries the key to their own development and helps activate the inner resources needed for their true potential to unfold. Her mission is healing through love and reconnection.
