"All Of Me" is the Dissociative Identity Disorder documentary we did with Sunday Night Live on 7 (Australia!)
We are very grateful to the team to allow us to tell our story and show it in such a positive, optimistic light.
10/09/2017:
In many ways, Jessica Mayer appears to be a normal, happy 25-year-old woman. She’s a newlywed and juggles full-time work and university.
In many ways, Jessica Mayer is a normal, happy 25-year-old woman. But Jess shares her life with four other people, her 'alters', who live inside her mind and body. Melissa Doyle travelled to Wales to meet them all.
But Jess shares her mind and body with four other people - four different identities who live inside her.
She has a condition known as dissociative identity disorder (DID) and calls the personalities her ‘alters’.
All of the identities are male: There’s Jake, a Hollywood actor; Jamie, a doctor; Ollie, a 14-year-old schoolboy; and Ed, a hairdresser.
“Jake has got these beautiful bright royal blue eyes and has got this brilliant Hollywood white smile and he is very good looking,” Jess tells Melissa Doyle in a Sunday Night interview.
“Ed is very artsy, he’s very creative. Ollie is a bit of a moody teenager. Jamie is very intelligent, he is very charming.”
Each identity has their own quirks - Jake has a perfect American accent, Jamie wears prescriptions glasses and Ed is left-handed.
What’s more, any one of the alters can appear at any time.
The alters are like an extended family, each has their own relationship with the others.
Gaz has been with Jess for nine years, and has learned the signals Jess sends when she’s about to switch to one of her male alters.
“If I notice that she’s switching when we are being intimate in any manner, then everything gets stopped and pulled back because I don’t know if Jake’s going to come out, I don’t know if Ollie’s going to come out, so everything gets pulled back.”
During the interview, Jake made an appearance.
Jess has a friendly relationship with all her alters, but the one who has always caused her anxiety is Ed.
“With Ed over the years I would have self-harm scar marks, maybe my arms, wrists, legs, thighs, mainly on the thighs,” Jess said.
“It has taken me years to get to a point where I understand how to manage him now, and it actually wasn’t until my diagnostician said to me, ‘You need to stop calling Ed a bad alter, he is not a bad alter, he is just misunderstood’.”
But while each character is very real in the inner world, on the outside there are many who struggle to understand DID.
Gaz couldn't be more supportive of his wife.
“You need to actually meet someone who has the condition to really understand it properly,” Gaz said.
Jess believes most people are afraid of people with her condition because of the way it is often portrayed in movies.
“It’s not about these Hollywood tropes and it’s not about the axe-wielding murderer around the corner,” Jess added.
“The likelihood is that people with mental health issues are more likely to be victims than perpetrators.”