My Account
The topsy turvy and at times chaotic life of Lisa Palmer is something that, at the age of 56, she is well used to, having lived with multiple personality disorder (now called disassociated identity disorder, DID) since she was 14.
Bright, talented, and with a lively sense of humour, Lisa has seven children, 19 grandchildren and a loving husband, Jim. She also has 12 alters (distinct, alternate identities she experiences).
Lisa is a survivor, too, having escaped an abusive relationship and many other experiences that left her bruised.
The causes of DID are complex, but the Mental Health Foundation says there is agreement that chronic ongoing trauma in childhood is the leading contributor.
“The first time I was aware of serious disassociating, I woke up in high school in Whangarei and wondered why the teacher was calling me Lisa,” Lisa says. “Others thought I was quirky, and no one knew what was really going on, so I just carried on with my life. I always had a sense of humour about it.”
Another way that Lisa describes it, is ‘Groundhog Day’. She wakes up and everything is new. Big chunks of time are missing, creating surprise when she notices things such as a different hairstyle when she looks in the mirror.
“I don’t carry emotional baggage from one day to the next, and if there is, I switch out. I have used humour and got so good at winging my way through life, because if I didn’t I’d be a mess.”
Her 12 alters are all named, and all very different. They include a child, a teenager and one male.
Lisa says her children have gone through counselling and say they couldn’t rely on her when it came to running the household.
“They became very independent and self-sufficient,” she says.
There are lighter moments too – one afternoon when some of the alters felt like having a drink, Jim came home to find party debris and Lisa in the middle of it, unsure what happened.
Recently, she found herself painting, and says that one of the alters decided there would be an exhibition. Each alter made 3-5 works.
Estuary Arts Centre manager Kim Boyd says she was excited to meet Lisa, and her therapist, Ōrewa clinical psychologist Helga McIlrath.
“Lisa and Co are being so brave putting themselves out there to share their art and their DID,” Kim says. “In order for society to understand mental health conditions we need to engage with people who live with those conditions. This exhibition puts DID in front of us and gives insight into their world.”
Lisa has had several counsellors before, but when all her kids left home and she moved to the Coast four years ago, she began seeing Helga, who specialises in trauma and has been a psychologist for 20 years.
Helga has helped a number of people with DID and says this diagnosis can still be extremely controversial – there are some who don’t believe it exists.
“When I sit with someone and see it happening in front of me and learn how it impacts their life, and their family’s life, it is clear,” she says. It can cause chaos because of memory lapses.”
The Mental Health Foundation describes DID as “quite rare”, however Helga says it might be more prevalent than people realise, possibly more common than Schizophrenia, and only slightly less than Bipolar Disorder.
She says it is important to understand that the alters are not different people, but different parts of the same person.
“By the time they come to therapy most have already named them, but I talk about them as parts of the person, not separate beings,” Helga says.
For Lisa, life carries on as usual, but she says she is getting more clarity since seeing Helga.
“We are working together as a team much better and I don’t have so much time missing,” she says. “Helga pointed out that from the exhibition, everyone will know all about me. But I don’t know any other life and I’m not embarrassed by it. The art made it more real for me – it was just so neat to see that all of that, and all super different, came from inside me.”
Lisa and Co – Creative life with DID, is on at Estuary Arts Centre in Ōrewa from July 5-30.
