Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The 20 faces of Kim BY ‘RIA’
A mum stuck in 1997, a depressed gay man and an anorexic teenage girl... just three of the multiple split personalities that haunt this woman
DAWN is stuck in 1997, searching for a daughter she believes was taken away. Bonny had the strength to fight for her child through the courts, while Ken is a depressed gay man of 21.
Ria Pratt is 12 or 13 and is thought to have been abused. Judy is a 15-yearold anorexic and is often a bit cheeky.
Patricia, in her 50s, is strict and sensible.
You’d struggle to find a more disparate group. But, astonishingly, all these people are one woman – Kim Noble.
Her mind is shattered with at least 20 different alter egos fighting for attention.
And she never knows when she will experience a switch.
When that occurs the new personality that takes over is entirely unaware of what has happened before.
Kim, 56, has dissociative identity disorder and currently calls herself Patricia, the most dominant of her personalities. Her daughter Aimee, 20, believes this is the “strictest” of all her mum’s characters.
Speaking in her Patricia identity, Kim says: “I don’t know these personalities as people. I can’t have a conversation with them, which is a shame as I would never be lonely then.”
She has taken up painting in an effort to get to know the various people living in her mind.
But her multiple identities often make life unpredictable.
“I could be shopping and all of a sudden there’s a switch,” she says.
“The person that took over might not bother to complete the shopping.
“One day there was a switch as I was filling the car with petrol. So I just drove off without paying.
“The next time I went back they had my registration number. They weren’t happy but I just paid it.”
When she was dating, Kim was often accused of cheating.
Sometimes she would open the door to a man who acted as if they had been together for years but she had absolutely no idea who he was.
The south Londoner adds: “In my younger days I could go out with somebody and another personality would go out with another person and I would get accused of two-timing, which I was not. It got complicated.
“I’ve had guys turn up and I’ve said ‘I don’t know who you are’.
“There was one guy who talked to me like I had been out with him for the last two years.”
Unsurprisingly, Kim has now decided to give up on romance – it’s just too complicated.
And it can be tough for Aimee as some of the personalities don’t recognise they have a daughter.
Judy, Kim’s 15-year-old alter ego, is a bad influence, seeing Aimee as a friend and encouraging her to get piercings.
But it was another personality, Dawn, who gave birth to Aimee.
Dawn believes she has a daughter called Sky who was taken away and that Aimee is one of Sky’s friends.
This may be because Aimee was removed by social services until Kim began a legal fight to get her back.
This was masterminded by her Bonny personality.
She won – and after being observed in a mother-and-baby unit for months Kim was allowed, with support, to take her daughter home. Her personality switches four or five times a day, a change that can last from five minutes to several days. It takes place without warning and she has no notion of what happened before.
A switch always takes place in the morning when a personality Kim calls Spirit of the Water has a shower.
She explains: “I never shower myself but I don’t smell so I know she does have a shower.”
Another switch usually takes place at mealtimes when anorexic Judy emerges, a personality that inhabits Kim’s tiny frame and is convinced she is overweight. She often finds size 14 clothes at her house.
Stress or lack of sleep can increase the number of switches, as can painting – a sign, Kim believes, that a personality wants to come out an express itself.
She began painting at the suggestio of her therapist about 12 years ago an says it helps her feel close to all th identities that inhabit her.
Kim says she knows “who ha been out” by the artwork tha appears overnight, identified b the specific styles of the 13 per sonalities who now paint.
Abi is one of her favourites an usually pictures people from behind
“She’s the most realistic,” says Kim again speaking as Patricia. “I can’t ge anything in proportion like her.”
Anorexic teenager Judy paints face while a fragmentary personalit referred to as Anon does more texture
pieces. Ria, on the other hand, paints very differently. Childlike but disturbing, her pieces often depict abuse using bold bright colours.
Her painting showing two figures chained to a wall and shouting for help is one of the least chilling of her “weird” output, according to Kim.
The work of Judy, as well as two other personalities, is on show this week at Zebra One Art Gallery in London alongside paintings by Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon with some of the proceeds going to a mental health charity.
Kim was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder 15 years ago after being referred to mental health services, aged 14, due to memory lapses and erratic behaviour. It is now believed her personalities are the product of some childhood trauma, possibly abuse, that caused her mind to fragment as a coping mechanism.
Kim’s Patricia personality has no idea what that trauma was and insists it certainly didn’t happen to her.
Now she has therapy, without medication, with her therapist treating each of the personalities individually to try and help them cope with what has happened in the past.
“Dissociative identity disorder happens to protect the body,” she says.
“When you accept it you have to think why did you get it? You have to start opening up to the possibilities of what the body has been through.
“There was some trauma. I have no memory of it. I’m one of the lucky ones.
“When I was first told about my diagnosis I found it very scary.
“I felt that I had another person inside me who was actually watching me. I was thinking: How can somebody be inside me?
“It feels a bit creepy, a bit weird. You go to the toilet and does that mean someone is watching me?”
Only three or four of the other personalities have accepted they have the identity disorder, a concept that for some it is too difficult to grasp.
Before she had therapy and began painting, Kim’s Patricia identity would disappear for longer – sometimes weeks.
But while having multiple personalities could make her feel distressed, Kim – or at least the Patricia part of her – remains surprisingly upbeat.
She laughs that she can always “blame one of the others” if she is caught smoking.
And she was pleased to be told by her therapist that most of her other personalities have a good sense of humour too. However, she says some people can treat her differently because of a lack of understanding.
She adds: “They just don’t know who they are coming to see.
“They think I have 15 heads and then I will put another one on in a minute and put the other one in a carrier bag.
“People read about dissociative identity disorder and multiple personalities and find it a bit freaky.
“But once people have met us they realise we are just like everyone else.”
With Art in Mind opens at Zebra One Art Gallery in Hampstead, North London, today and runs to the end of the year. A proportion of sales will go to the Mental Health Foundation.