Jessica Mayer talks in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’. We want to share with you. We’d like to show you.
She’s not referring to her husband or her children. She’s referring to the “family in her mind”.
She has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and is hoping to dismantle some of the stigma around mental illness and the fear and judgment and uncertainty typically triggered by the misused phrase ‘split personalities’.
She is Jess, 25, from Windsor in the UK.
She is also Ollie, a 14-year-old student in the same town. “He wants to grow up and be a dinosaur,” she told Channel Seven’s Sunday Night.
She is Jamie, a doctor with a “posh accent” who is “intelligent and charming”. He’s 27.
There is Eddie, a 29-year-old punk-rock hairdresser. “He’s very artsy, very creative.”
And finally Jake, a 25-year-old Californian pop-star who ‘lives’ in Hollywood. “Jake is about five-foot six and he’s very slim and lean and muscular. He’s got this American white smile and he’s very good looking,” she said.
The personalities – or ‘Alters’ as Mayer calls them – interact in her mind “like a family”. It’s her own inner world where Jamie and Jake are brothers; Eddie and Jamie are partners; and Ollie is their son.
There is an outer world, too. Mayer and her husband have been together for 10 years. He says “more the merrier”, referring to her various personalities, and maintains a bisexual relationship with both Jess and Eddie.
“Forget about the axe murderer around the corner,” Mayer said, referencing the way ‘split personalities’ can be portrayed in pop culture. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”
Jess started to display some of the signs of a switch during our interview. #SN7 pic.twitter.com/2wgLqe7G8j
— sunday night (@sundaynighton7) September 10, 2017
Top Comments
She was also part of a documentary they aired on abc2 called diaries of a broken mind. Fascinating viewing