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Multiple Personalities Devil

By Sophie Jones

Media Drum has obtained a signed waiver from Jennifer identifying herself as a victim of sexual abuse.

**EXCLUSIVE**

THIS WOMAN with multiple personalities went undiagnosed for EIGHT YEARS after suffering terrifying blackouts and ending up in a psychiatric hospital.

PhD engineering student Jennifer Dumaresq (33) from Denver, Colorado, has come to terms with her rare dissociative identity disorder.

Jennifer says she and her other selves - including young women and a mysterious male known only as "The Devil" - are far from the “scary monster” portrayed in films like Fight Club and Split.

She has limited memories of her life before age 18 and has complex PTSD from childhood sexual abuse which began when she was a toddler.

At first, she felt out of control and had no idea why she was missing days at a time, often waking up to discover self-harming marks on her body and empty bottles of pills.

When she finally got a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID) previously known as multiple personality disorder, Jennifer was able to cooperate with her other selves, known as “alters” and has now worked in aerospace engineering for a decade.

Her psychiatric treatment costs $20,000 (£15,700) a year which is a huge burden but Jennifer says it has helped her enormously and she has come a long way since she first became aware of the blackouts and amnesia.

“My memories of my life really start at around the age of 18 when I moved to the USA [from Canada] for school on my own, she said.

“Things were OK for a couple of years, but then I started experiencing frightening episodes of amnesia.

“I would go to turn in my homework on what I thought was Monday, and be told that it was actually Wednesday, and I would have absolutely no memory of the past two days.

“It was like time just jumped. I started experiencing horrifying flashbacks and constant panic-attack level anxiety.

“I couldn’t sleep because of nightmares. I resorted to taking 30 minute naps during the day on campus.

“I would find self-inflicted injuries on my body that I had no memory of doing, wake up to empty bottles of pills that I had no memory of taking.

“I had no awareness that I had alternate identities and that they were taking over during my blackouts.”

Jennifer feared she had psychosis and, because of the stigma associated with mental illness, tried to manage without professional help before the situation spiralled out of control.

“A few years went by and I started having these episodes where suddenly I felt like a man, or a small child, or an angry teenager,” she said.

“I thought it was psychosis, and there is so much stigma around that that I kept it a secret.

“Things continued to go downhill, and eventually I found myself in psychiatric hospitals for months at a time.

“None of the treatment they prescribed worked, I was only getting worse.

“Eventually I ended up in a residential facility that specialized in trauma.

“After a month or so of being there, I finally blurted out to my therapist, ‘Sometimes I feel like different people’.

“Her response was, ‘I know you do’, and that’s when she explained that they had diagnosed me with DID and what that meant.”

Jennifer then had to relocate to find a psychologist she could see regularly who knew how to treat the disorder.

“It has been extremely difficult to get treatment and I have been misdiagnosed many times,” she said.

“It took eight years for me to receive a correct diagnosis.

“After receiving the correct diagnosis of DID at the residential facility, it was basically impossible to find an outpatient therapist and psychiatrist who knew how to treat it.

“Some that I met didn’t even believe that the diagnosis was a real disorder.

“I ended up moving across the country to find a specialist.

“Unfortunately in the US, therapists don’t have to take insurance and most specialists do not.

“So, treatment is also a huge financial drain, costing around $20,000 per year.

“However, in the past three years that I have been receiving specialist treatment, my symptoms have improved beyond what I ever thought was possible.

“Life is so much better now and treatment has been worth every penny.”

Jennifer said each of her main alters, short for “alternate states of consciousness”, have a purpose and they can work together as a team.

“Each of us has had a very specific role in our survival,” she said.

"Some of us hold no memory or emotions of the trauma we experienced.

“When it comes to managing everyday life – school, work, taking care of the house, etc – one of these alters is out.

“So we’re able to be high functioning in the world.

“We hold advanced degrees in engineering and have been working in the aerospace field for the past 10 years.”

Jennifer said her main alters, in no particular order, are herself as Jen, Anna (19), Jess (33) who is non-binary, Paisley (22) who is female, Rowan (22) who is female, Steven (38) who works as a "master protector" in times of danger, and a mysterious male alter called "The Devil".

"He has a frightening name because he used to be an alter who internally tormented other alters," said Jennifer.

"However, now he is one of our strongest protectors.

"When memories or emotions become too intense, he blocks them internally so that we can no longer experience them.

"It really is like the memories just 'vanish' from your mind and you can no longer feel the emotions."
Jennifer said her relationships with her alters vary enormously.

"My relationships with Anna and Jess are like sisterhood," she said.

"We talk frequently, decide on daily life things together, and support each other when one is struggling.

"We can switch fairly easily with each other, so we manage who is more in control depending on what the situation needs, but we are all usually around together.

"My relationship with the Devil is very different.

"We don’t talk at all and I have no ability to communicate with him when I want to, but he can communicate with me whenever he wants to.

"He comes out the most in therapy and tends to cut me off before I get into processing memories that might seem dangerous.

"It’s a good thing, but I wish I was able to communicate with him easier."

Jennifer said the process of “switching” from one alter to another has also become less scary now she understands her condition better.

“Our experience of switching has changed over the years,” she said.

“Initially, we had minimal communication between us. We would use sticky notes around the house and leave videos on our phone to communicate.

“So when I switched in these days, I would experience a blackout and have no memory of what occurred when I was gone.

“It really was like time just jumped. A lot of the time I wouldn’t even notice it, unless I suddenly found myself in a different location.

“These days, we have excellent internal communication between us and multiple of us are able to be present at once.

“Switching is more like a slow shift, with one of us more in control at a given moment than the others.

“We rarely experience amnesia these days, unless it is a really bad trigger, so life is much easier to coordinate. It really is like working with a team.

“We have seven well-rounded alters, which are called 'Apparently Normal Parts' in the theory of structural dissociation that describes DID, who manage everything in our day to day life.

“We also have a number of ‘fragment alters’, otherwise known as 'Emotional Parts', who are still distinct, but are very limited in function.

“They all hold memories of trauma, and most of them hold one specific aspect of one specific memory of trauma.

“They are unable to function in everyday life. We do not know how many of these alters we have, and don’t find it important to our healing to count.

“Of the seven main alters, we are all very distinct and we all have names that we’ve chosen to distinguish ourselves from one another (growing up, we all responded to 'Jen').

“We look different internally, we have totally different opinions and outlooks on the world, different hobbies, different ways of reacting to things.

“It’s like a group of friends: you are all different people, but you also still hold some commonalities with one another.

“There used to be many of us who struggled with self-harm, suicide attempts, anorexia and alcoholism, but have learned healthier ways to cope now.

“So I would not say we have any harmful alters.

“We all have our strengths. Some of us are very empathetic, others very assertive, others very intellectual.”

Jennifer and her alters have been educating people about DID on social media in the hope of diminishing the stigma brought about by ignorance and sensationalist fiction.

“Many people with DID hold high functioning jobs and responsibilities and are wonderful parents," she said.

“Because of how DID is portrayed in the media, when I got my diagnosis, I thought that my life was over.

“Now that I am healing, I see that my DID is actually a strength.

“We started documenting our experiences when we experienced a lot of amnesia, so it was almost a journal for us so that we could piece together what happened throughout the day.

“What it turned into was a wonderful community of support.

“We don’t know anyone in real life with DID, but online we have met so many others who share our experiences.

“We post so that others can relate and know that they are not alone.

“We also want to show the realities of DID and that we are not some scary monster that the media likes to portray us as.”

FACT BOX
Main alters in no particular order:

Jen, 33, female
Anna, 19, female, helps manage daily life and social situations. Loves cooking, especially Italian food
Jess, 33, non-binary, very assertive and helps with work/school and situations where confidence is needed, loves heavy metal and lifting weights
Paisley, 22, female, used to have very maladaptive coping mechanisms but now helps deal with dysregulation in healthy ways, loves finding new music and going to concerts
Rowan, 22, female, owned her own side-business as a wedding florist before
Steven, 38, male, has the role of “master protector” of the system
The Devil, age unknown, male
Various child and teen alters with ages ranging from 4 to 15 and various genders that appear to be stuck in the year they experienced trauma