Woman with 25 different male and female personalities explains what they see in the mirror
Warning: This article contains discussion of mental health which some readers may find distressing.
A woman who has dissociative identity disorder has opened up about what it's like to live with the condition, including what her personalities see when they look in the mirror, what it's like sharing a body with a 'persecutor' alter and how 'confusing' it feels to switch between her different states.
When she was around 19 years old, Bo Hooper was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID). In her case, this mental health problem presents as ‘lots of memory loss’ as well as lots of ‘issues with time’. And perhaps most uniquely, she experiences ‘other personalities’ which can come forward.
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While they aren’t the ‘biggest thing’ she suffers with day-to-day, Bo believes she has between 20 and 30 alters with 10 main ones that front most often.
Speaking with LADbible Stories for an episode of Honesty Box on YouTube, she opened up about her life with DID as she explained more about the alters.
Each of them bears their own personality, accent and gender, with ages ranging from children to adults, and while one ‘persecutor alter’ would try to ‘hurt’ her, others do ‘nice’ things for her.
What is DID?
Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, DID is when a person has intense changes in their identity.
Mind explains: “Different aspects of your identity can be called states. You may feel like different identity states are in control at different times. Different states may have different thoughts and behaviour.”
A doctor may diagnose someone with a specific dissociative disorder if they dissociate regularly, the experiences are very distressing, and it affects everyday life.
Bo regularly works with a therapist but requires a specialist to get down to the root issues. She is confident that with the right treatment, DID is curable.
She explained: “It’s a trauma disorder, so it also comes with a lot of PTSD and flashbacks and things as well.”
'She struggles with seeing that I'm an adult'
Bo points out that she doesn’t know for definite what all of her alters see in the mirror, just what they’ve ‘expressed in videos’ when the moment has been recorded.
“But I know that one of our male parts, he has said a lot in past, ‘I look like Bo, like, looking in the mirror. I don't like it. I look like Bo,’” she explains.
As for her six-year-old personality, ‘Layla’: “She struggles with seeing that I'm an adult. She looks in the mirror; she sees that we have a chest and we have curves and we're taller and all this sort of stuff. And she still thinks she's a six-year-old child and gets freaked out at that. So she has to have like, giant clothing that makes her feel small.”
And then there’s one alter who particularly ‘hates’ women with tattoos.
“She hates dyed hair, she hates piercings, she hates all these things and I've got a full tattoo sleeve,” Bo explains. “She gets quite annoyed that she's sharing a body because this isn't how she would want to present.”
Bo also went on to describe what it's like when she switches between different alters, likening it to ‘kind of like falling asleep’ and similar to a loss of consciousness 'if you fainted’.
Watch Bo's full episode of Honesty Box below:
“But instead of me face-planting a table, I get up and walk away and do something else instead. It's always really confusing,” she explains.
“It's always really jarring to come back, especially if they have like, done anything like, undressed or done any makeup or anything like that. It's jarring to come back and suddenly you're wearing something else.”
Bo says this is something you ‘slowly get used to’ and begin to ‘recognise the signs of’.
One ‘persecutor alter’ has tried to ‘hurt’ Bo, which is ‘out of fear’ and ‘internal pain or trauma’. While ‘the kids’ often buy toys or ‘Tracy’ buys a ‘lot of alcohol’.
DID is an often deeply misunderstood condition, with Bo keen to break the stigma and dispel any harmful myths and misconceptions.
"The biggest one I think is that we're killers. That we're gonna hurt you. That we're axe-wielding murderers. But then lately my biggest pet peeve is that we're all copying TikTok," she said.
"That we are all 14 and just doing it for attention. I was diagnosed before TikTok existed. No, I'm not doing this for TikTok. I see it in every space. I see it with disabilities."
If you're experiencing distressing thoughts and feelings, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is there to support you. They're open from 5pm–midnight, 365 days a year. Their national number is 0800 58 58 58 and they also have a webchat service if you're not comfortable talking on the phone.
Topics: Mental Health, Originals
Jess Battison