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This is the BBC. This

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Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:13

Welcome to Seriously from BBC

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Radio 4. I'm Vanessa Casulay.

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This podcast finds the world's best audio

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documentaries and puts them all

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in one place. OK,

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right. Why don't you introduce yourself? Give us your age

0:27

as well. I

0:31

start most interviews like this. What's

0:33

your name? Who are you? My

0:36

name is Danny and I'm 20. For

0:39

Danny, who are you is a complex question.

0:43

Because Danny is just one of more than 200 personalities,

0:46

or alters, who

0:48

inhabit this small green-eyed figure sitting next

0:51

to me. I

0:54

believe that my brain has picked

0:57

out the alter that they believe, well,

0:59

that it believes is most

1:01

capable of handling this right now, and

1:04

in a way I feel honoured. But

1:07

Danny, it seems, was just here to

1:09

organise logistics and deal with

1:11

meeting me. Ten minutes

1:13

into the recording, he starts to

1:16

feel someone else hoping to get some airtime. Sorry,

1:19

my brain is not working. I

1:24

know I'm shaking, but it's not me who's shaking. We

1:27

pause while Danny works out what's happening.

1:30

He thinks he's about to switch, become

1:32

someone else. I'm not sure

1:35

yet. I'm going to look

1:37

through their playlists, because we have separate

1:39

playlists. He plays a

1:41

track he knows is a favourite of one of

1:43

the people he can sense coming through. OK,

1:46

so one of Mikey's triggers is the song

1:48

Brother by Gerard Way, which

1:51

I'm going to be trying because I can

1:53

feel somebody pushing front and I can't figure

1:55

out if it's Mikey or Joe. Jump

1:58

boost. Hi.

2:17

Hello. Hiya. Who's this? Mikey.

2:20

Hello Mikey. Do

2:23

you need me to go through what's happening? If

2:25

that's okay. Yeah. So should I stop recording for

2:28

a minute? If that's okay. Yeah. We

2:32

go for a walk and then I do

2:34

the rest of the recording with Mikey.

2:37

Hi, I'm Mikey. So

2:40

when we were around around 13,

2:43

so we had an old host called Dan

2:45

who he's not our host anymore, but

2:49

he was experiencing gaps in

2:51

his memory and he

2:53

thought that this kind of thing was normal. But

2:57

he started receiving messages

3:00

on like on our notes app on our phone. At

3:04

first it started out to

3:06

be from like there was no

3:08

name signed off, but slowly this guy

3:12

called Jack started like putting his name into

3:14

it. Dan

3:16

at this point was already leading quite

3:18

a complicated existence as a young trans

3:21

person, born female, but identifying

3:23

as a young man. Now

3:26

there was someone in his phone sending him messages.

3:30

Slowly over time Jack

3:32

started to like do

3:35

things like talk to people at school and he

3:37

would like do

3:39

our schoolwork and he used

3:41

to chase our bullies down the halls of

3:44

water bottles. Dan

3:46

only knew about Jack. When

3:48

others told him about things Jack had done or

3:51

Jack sent notes or drew cats on

3:53

things. But Dan

3:55

told no one about Jack. He

3:57

was convinced he'd be sectioned. And

3:59

it was It kind of went from there. He

4:01

introduced himself to a friend that

4:04

we still have now over text. Not

4:06

in the best way. He kind of

4:08

just said, this isn't Dan, but

4:11

I think they were assuming that something like that was

4:13

going on because they were like, oh, is this Jack?

4:17

Danny and Mikey and Jack are part

4:19

of what they call a system, a

4:22

modern term for a much older

4:24

phenomenon, which you've probably heard of

4:26

as multiple personality disorder. Their

4:29

TikTok account is part of an explosion

4:32

of interest in a condition that provokes

4:34

questions for us all about

4:36

identity, memory and the nature of

4:39

our realities. I'm

4:42

Lucy Proctor, and this is the story

4:44

of three people from three different eras

4:47

who switch between different

4:49

personalities. My

4:54

name's Melanie Goodwin, and

4:57

I co-founded an organisation for

4:59

people with dissociative identity disorder

5:02

and colleagues, friends, allies, therapists,

5:04

because I live with dissociative

5:07

identity disorder. The condition

5:09

has had many names, historical

5:11

neurosis, multiple personality disorder,

5:13

split personality disorder, and

5:15

from 1994 onwards,

5:18

dissociative identity disorder, or

5:20

DID. The vast

5:22

majority of people who are diagnosed

5:25

with DID are female. It's

5:27

not clear why. Melanie,

5:29

now in her 70s, has

5:31

gone through extensive therapy to get to where

5:33

she is now, able to

5:36

train for a sprint triathlon. I

5:38

have never had enough internal cooperation

5:40

to do anything like that, and

5:42

for me to be able

5:45

to join in a group and stay

5:47

grounded and do what I'm being asked

5:49

to do and to train over six

5:51

months to do a very, very small

5:53

triathlon is like a little

5:55

miracle, my own personal little miracle. It's

5:58

been a decades-long journey. and

6:00

it started in her 30s. I

6:04

was experiencing the world

6:06

as what I considered absolutely

6:08

very normal and ordinary. Melanie

6:11

thought everyone lost time or found themselves

6:13

in places and situations with no idea

6:15

how they'd got there. Then

6:18

a family member died and

6:20

Melanie's chaotic but familiar world

6:22

fell apart. The

6:24

dissociative barriers in my brain that kept

6:27

our two worlds so separate began to

6:29

break down because the person was somebody

6:31

I had to protect as a child

6:33

and the brain did its own thing

6:36

and went into, oh right

6:38

now's the time for memories

6:41

to start surfacing. So for

6:43

the next seven years I

6:46

walked around in trauma land. She

6:49

begins to become aware of other people

6:51

in her brain which she calls parts.

6:55

I am what we call co-conscious. So

6:59

in all honesty I could never

7:01

say I wasn't present as

7:03

an adult but it's

7:06

like being pressed back inside to the back

7:08

of your body. You can't change anything and

7:11

you don't have any input. I

7:13

witnessed what was happening and the different

7:15

parts talking and I

7:18

could feel my brain, it sounds extraordinary but I

7:20

could feel my brain being used in a completely

7:22

different way to how I used it and

7:25

I would hear a totally different use of

7:27

language coming from my mouth. It's

7:30

the 90s and Melanie has

7:32

no access to the internet to

7:34

research her increasingly strange life. I

7:37

worked in a library and a book came across

7:39

the counter called The Flock and

7:41

I picked it up and read it from cover to cover. The

7:43

story is very very different to mine but it was just, oh

7:46

goodness me, this just absolutely answered because

7:48

I couldn't understand why one moment I'd

7:50

be thinking of one thing and then

7:52

find myself doing something completely different and

7:55

then going off somewhere else and

7:57

this gave me a framework to begin

7:59

to. understand it, what I felt

8:01

was happening to me. And

8:03

I'd kept it to myself for about a year because

8:06

I just thought, oh goodness me, I'm just

8:09

trying to make life more complicated than it really

8:11

is, but actually deep down I knew that was

8:14

my reality. Books like

8:16

this in the 70s and 80s

8:18

and several films based on the

8:20

lives of people with multiple personalities

8:22

and their therapists had thrown DID

8:24

into the spotlight. Could

8:27

I speak with Eat

8:29

Black now? Eat Black?

8:33

No. Did

8:35

you enjoy the trip over today? And

8:38

these therapists, when they start mapping

8:40

out the many personalities in their

8:42

patients, find something shocking.

8:46

Often they eventually meet a

8:48

child personality. A

8:50

child subjected to severe, often

8:52

sexual abuse. The

8:55

therapists form a theory. If

8:59

a child experiences something horrific,

9:02

unbearable, their mind splits it

9:04

off from the rest of their life. Then

9:08

the mind parcels it up into

9:10

another child's experience and builds a

9:12

mental barrier between those two children

9:15

who both live in the same body. Up

9:18

until nearly 40, I had

9:21

no idea that I had had an abusive childhood. In

9:23

therapy, Melanie discovers she has a three-year-old part. I'm

9:29

so proud of our child parts who found

9:31

a way of making it. You know, I

9:34

think that innate

9:36

drive to stay alive is so, so important. We

9:38

see it all the time, don't we, in the

9:40

world situations. And it's there, I think, in most

9:43

of us as children. We just want to stay in life

9:47

and we find a way of managing it. It's

9:53

a challenging idea that you might have been

9:55

abused and not know about it. And

9:57

it meant that anyone diagnosed with DID in

10:00

the 1990s had to contend

10:02

not only with the condition, but also

10:05

with what were dubbed the memory wars. Because

10:09

for other clinicians and lawyers

10:11

for people accused of these newly remembered

10:13

crimes, these memories of

10:15

abuse, they're false. Fantasies

10:19

implanted by the therapists trying to help.

10:22

And I mean, there was a big drive then

10:24

with the false memory society. It's

10:26

still a controversial in some

10:29

places. It's still questioned. But

10:32

I think there was a time when

10:34

there was an overdrive to identify perhaps

10:37

multiple personality disorder as it was then known.

10:40

And I think therapists have to

10:42

be so careful and they really

10:44

are now to be absolutely ethical

10:47

how they work with people who

10:49

go to them for help. It has

10:52

to be client led, not therapist

10:54

led. But the

10:56

legacy of the memory wars has

10:58

stayed with dissociative identity disorder. Even

11:01

clinicians are on a spectrum from

11:03

those who specialize in DID to

11:06

those who don't really believe in it. Because

11:09

in the field of exploring other people's

11:11

minds, there's no hard evidence. There's

11:14

only the testimony of the patient, their

11:17

behavior and their response to

11:19

various treatments. I'm

11:21

Jess, I'm from Wales. And

11:25

I lived with a condition called Dissociative

11:27

Identity Disorder until I was 30

11:29

years old. It's

11:32

during drama at secondary school that Jess

11:35

has one of her first insights into

11:37

the truth about herself. Her

11:40

friends in class tell her she does a mean

11:42

American accent. Does it quite often in fact?

11:45

And I was adamant. I was like, I absolutely

11:47

do not do that. Like why would I be

11:49

doing that? And the one

11:51

time we had to be recorded. And

11:54

again, they were adamant that I had been doing it

11:56

all in American accent. And I was like, there is

11:58

no way. They showed me back. the

12:00

tape and actually when I watched the tape my

12:04

heart dropped and I felt really sick and

12:06

it just kind of like my

12:08

mind had connected that this was

12:10

Jake. So this was a an

12:13

altar called Jake that I remembered when

12:16

I was around about six years old almost

12:19

as an imaginary friend almost in that kind of

12:21

way that I kind of he

12:23

felt like a vague friend that I had grown

12:25

up with. And at

12:27

this time were you aware that you'd had

12:29

a traumatic past? Yeah so

12:31

again in part of everything that had gone on

12:34

and I don't know how things

12:36

started circulating but

12:38

again around about this time with the drama

12:40

class there was a bully in the class

12:42

who I was in maths

12:45

actually of all things and I remember

12:47

them announcing about the

12:49

person who had sexually abused

12:51

me so I

12:53

don't know how they found out I don't know but

12:56

it suddenly came back. Like

13:00

many people who suspect they have

13:02

DID Jess tries various NHS therapies

13:04

and doctors but she doesn't

13:07

find anyone who takes her completely

13:09

seriously or who has expertise. Amazingly

13:12

she heads off to university and

13:14

finishes a course in psychology. She's

13:17

now a trainee associate psychologist. All

13:19

this despite losing weeks or months

13:21

of time in chunks, finding

13:24

herself dressed in clothes and shoes she

13:26

didn't like, her grades all over the

13:28

place. Away

13:30

from home she says her parts felt

13:32

like they wanted to come out. By

13:36

this time people have formed

13:38

niche online forums for sexual trauma

13:40

survivors and Jess finds them. I'd

13:43

already kind of come to that conclusion before

13:45

coming to university that I probably had

13:47

something like this because I'd

13:49

come across a Wikipedia page about dissociation you

13:51

know kind of investigated it a bit more

13:54

and everything I read I was like this

13:56

is me this is exactly what I'm going

13:58

through. Back then. then, camera phones

14:00

had just started coming out and

14:03

so she begins to record herself or

14:05

themselves. So, I had

14:08

Jake who was just

14:11

a very sweet guy, he had the

14:13

best intentions, he was vegetarian

14:15

and kind of into meditation

14:17

and he was very gentle,

14:20

he had an American accent and

14:22

he was really into his acting and

14:24

drama and that kind of side.

14:27

And we had Jamie who

14:29

was very intelligent, logical, kind

14:31

of a posh English accent

14:34

I would say and then

14:37

there was Ed, originally I

14:39

was very frightened of Ed and I remember describing

14:41

him as a part that wanted to hurt me.

14:44

Finally there was Ollie who was a teenager, he

14:46

sort of grew up really, so originally he was

14:48

a child, I can't remember how old, I want

14:50

to say maybe about six or seven and

14:52

then kind of grew up alongside us.

14:55

Do you have any understanding of why

14:57

all of your parts apart from your

14:59

just part were male? I

15:02

have a sense of why they were

15:04

male. I

15:06

think when I was a six year old

15:08

girl understandably and I had gone

15:11

through sexual trauma, I had thought at the time

15:13

if I was a boy it wouldn't have happened

15:15

to me. Again, just seeing the

15:17

world through your six year old eyes, obviously I understand

15:20

that absolutely can happen and does happen to men but

15:22

from a six year old girl's point of view

15:26

if I was a boy I wouldn't

15:28

have been abused. It was essentially my

15:30

way of thinking. Her

15:33

worried course tutors helped Jess access

15:35

the main specialist centre for dissociative

15:37

identity disorder in the UK. I

15:40

got the diagnosis within three hours, three and a

15:42

half hours maybe and then it was

15:44

like a what next, how do I fix it? And

15:47

there was, well there's nobody

15:49

near you that sort of does

15:51

this work. So it's the early

15:53

2010s, you've had a

15:55

diagnosis but you don't really have access

15:58

to any support. these five

16:00

parts that you've become relatively

16:03

familiar with, what's your next

16:05

step? Well,

16:08

I had seen in

16:10

all my research, again, in all my kind

16:13

of looking online to try and find answers.

16:15

I come across a couple of communities that

16:17

were really helpful. And then I also came

16:19

across a really small YouTuber who just gave

16:21

me a bit of hope that

16:24

my life wasn't all going to be doom and gloom. And

16:26

they seemed to live really happily as

16:29

multiple. And at

16:31

the time, I couldn't wrap my head around

16:33

that because the prospect felt so frightening and

16:35

feeling so out of control was so terrifying.

16:37

But they did give me hope that things were going to

16:40

get better. And so when I had my diagnosis, I thought,

16:42

if I can help one other

16:44

person not feel so alone, I'm

16:47

going to make a video as well and just

16:49

put myself out there. And that was, I guess,

16:51

the beginning of things. Jess

16:53

would go on to be one of

16:55

the world's most well-known and well-liked DID

16:58

YouTubers, with a following that peaked

17:00

at hundreds of thousands. Her

17:02

channel, called Multiplicity and Me, was

17:04

bright and colourful. Her video is

17:06

one or two hours long, about

17:09

things like busting myths and later

17:11

domestic life, kids, husband, to-do list.

17:14

Today I'll be running you through some of the advice

17:16

and guidance of what to do if you feel that

17:18

you may have something like DID. All

17:21

hosted by one of her five

17:23

personalities, or alters. Whenever we're stressed,

17:26

anxious or overwhelmed, going into our

17:28

safe space allows us to ground

17:30

ourselves and sit with that emotion.

17:32

Yo, puzzles and pieces fam, it's Oli

17:35

from Multiplicity and Me. Channel

17:37

dedicated to ending the stigma, of course, of

17:39

DID. And

17:42

once DID YouTubers became a thing, it

17:45

wasn't long before switch videos

17:47

became sought-after content. usually

18:00

changing the way they spoke and their mannerisms,

18:03

but what turned up on my social media

18:05

timeline and what brought me into this

18:07

world. I

18:10

tell you what, there was a really

18:12

random video that appeared and

18:14

that has gone viral. I think it had just

18:16

hit the algorithm at, you know, right place, right

18:18

time kind of thing. And

18:20

it was of this person who

18:23

switched on camera. That was the whole premise

18:25

was. And I

18:28

know every experience is different, but I think when I

18:30

looked at that, I thought, oh, that's not how it

18:32

is for me. You know, it was a very obvious

18:34

switch. It was, you know, quite

18:38

a dramatic switch. So I think

18:40

I just kind of wanted to counteract that. And

18:42

I put out my own video, which again was

18:44

the same title as theirs, which was like switch

18:46

caught on camera. And it was kind

18:48

of just saying, actually for us, it's

18:51

absolutely hidden, very anticlimactic. Actually

18:53

it's quite boring. There,

18:58

did you see it? Let's try again. Guys,

19:05

are you putting the kettle on? Yeah,

19:07

I'll put it on there for you. What

19:09

did this small group of

19:11

YouTubers think when these more

19:13

dramatic switch videos started coming

19:15

through? Did you talk

19:18

about it together? Yeah, I think we, again,

19:20

we got a sense that we didn't want to be judgmental

19:22

of other people because we barely

19:25

knew ourselves, quite frankly. I think it was

19:27

such a new experience for us to all

19:29

be talking about anyway. We didn't want to

19:31

tread on any toes, but I think the

19:33

overall essence was that it also wasn't what

19:35

they experienced. DID YouTube

19:37

split. Other content

19:40

creators went towards those more fantastical

19:42

videos, looking for clicks and more

19:44

revenue. Jess carried

19:46

on doing more down-to-earth content,

19:49

warning against self-diagnosis. Although

19:51

looking back, she thinks at times she was

19:53

a little too invested in all these altars.

19:56

She made money too, though, and used

19:58

it to finally fund the special. therapy

20:00

she'd wanted for so long. And

20:03

in September 2022 she

20:05

posted her last and one of her

20:07

most famous videos titled Our

20:10

Final Fusion Journey, No

20:12

More DID. So basically

20:14

I'm happy to report that I

20:17

would consider myself now as like

20:20

in Final Fusion and if

20:22

you don't know Final Fusion is basically

20:24

kind of like end stage recovery for

20:26

DID and it kind of means that

20:29

all of you get reconnected

20:31

into just one, one

20:33

being. And signed off for

20:36

now from her Multiplicity and Me

20:38

channel. And don't forget whether or

20:40

not you have DID, each part

20:42

of you deserves self-love, self-care and

20:44

compassion. Thank you guys,

20:47

bye! One of

20:49

the fans of Jess's Multiplicity and Me

20:51

YouTube channel was Mikey. Multiplicity

20:54

and Me were amazing. I remember when we

20:56

were, when we were 16 and we

20:59

would put our headphones on and I could,

21:01

I could feel, you know, when you

21:03

go to an aquarium and let you press your nose

21:05

against the screen and you're like I want to know

21:08

everything about this, this is so cool. It was like

21:10

in that way but I don't know

21:12

how to take this in and like this is so

21:14

amazing that there is someone else like this. I feel

21:18

so much less alone. I'm sure

21:21

she'd be really pleased to hear that.

21:25

Mikey, Danny and the rest of the

21:27

system grew up with YouTubers like Jess,

21:29

acting as kind of cool older cousins. But

21:32

they're from the TikTok generation and

21:35

TikTok with its fast pace and

21:37

focus on imagery, makeup and short

21:39

grabby videos is different to

21:41

YouTube. Yeah, so show me

21:43

your account on TikTok. Okay, so

21:48

okay, so this is my account

21:50

on TikTok. We have 48.3k followers

21:54

which is amazing. Quite a lot. A lot,

21:58

it's astounding really. We

22:00

have had a few that have got

22:02

like if I scroll down there was

22:04

one At

22:07

some point if I can

22:09

find where it is. That'd be amazing that

22:11

had 25.7

22:15

K likes and 279

22:18

comments and 3346

22:22

saves which is Terrifying

22:25

and also really really cool because it

22:27

was just us saying that we moved

22:29

and We asked

22:31

our friend if they wanted if

22:33

they wanted to give different people a hug before we

22:35

left and another thing is people Watch

22:38

that video and they're like, oh You

22:40

did all of these switches in this amount of time.

22:43

You must be faking when in reality this took us

22:45

about two days to film So

22:47

it's there's a lot of misconceptions about that video.

22:50

I just wanted to clear up Another

22:52

switch video led to death threats. They

22:55

were basically saying that like we

22:57

deserve to be lobotomized or Sorry,

23:00

I've just seen your face. Yeah like

23:03

stuff like lobotomizing or Threatening

23:06

to kill us people like somehow

23:08

leaking our address and our location

23:11

Mikey steers clear of making switch

23:13

content now They're

23:16

homeless staying in a hostel so can't easily access mental

23:19

health services They're desperate for

23:21

a formal diagnosis of DID but at

23:23

the moment they're trying to work themselves out

23:26

all on their own To

23:32

help keep track of all their alters or parts they use an

23:34

app made for people with DID Kind

23:38

of a graphic Different

23:41

colors as well, which is really cool. So we've had Danny for 50 and

23:43

well 1051 days But 50 days 23 hours. We've had Ren. We've had Frank.

23:45

We've had Gerard Dalin I

23:49

don't know who who that is. Some people

23:51

don't leave their name It's

23:55

all just so complicated Some

24:01

people worry, don't they, that the

24:03

internet and seeing those kinds of

24:05

videos might put an idea into

24:07

your head or encourage you to

24:10

go along with an idea about DID that

24:13

isn't necessarily true. Have

24:15

you worried about that yourself? I

24:19

definitely have. It

24:23

has become extremely debilitating because we worry

24:25

that we are putting things on the

24:27

internet and we're not being

24:29

truthful about it. We go

24:32

through these really bad episodes of

24:34

denial and we

24:36

struggle to see that

24:39

we are existent

24:41

at all. But

24:44

also, there

24:47

have been a lot of people who fake

24:51

DID on the internet. I'm not going to

24:53

deny that because I'm not

24:55

going to point any fingers because I'm only

24:57

going off people who have come out and

25:00

said, I did this and it was bad.

25:03

But I also think that it

25:05

has massively grown

25:07

the stigma around DID. It went

25:10

from DID being this terrifying

25:13

thing and all these people are going to

25:15

come out and then kill you and turn

25:17

into monsters to, oh,

25:20

nobody has this, this isn't real and everybody

25:22

takes us as a joke. I

25:24

asked Mikey about Final Fusion. They're

25:27

wary of that option and want

25:29

to try for something more like what Melanie

25:31

from earlier in the programme has achieved, what

25:33

they call in the community functional

25:36

multiplicity. I've

25:40

grown to love all of these people, all

25:42

of these parts of myself so

25:46

much and I

25:49

don't think I could cope with us all being

25:51

one because I don't think I

25:53

could ever view myself as that

25:55

little girl who was

25:58

supposed to be a person of the same age.