The psychological toll of prolonged surveillance, stalking, harassment, and betrayal doesn’t just leave bruises on the psyche — it reshapes the nervous system.
The covert operations I endured — from stalking and surveillance to gaslighting and betrayal by those within organizing spaces — fundamentally rewired how I processed safety, memory, and identity.
This wasn’t abstract. It was physiological, neurological, and existential.
As Frantz Fanon once wrote:
“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.”
This captures a psychological reality that many survivors of complex trauma know intimately: safety and acceptance are often conditioned on self-erasure.
CPTSD develops in environments where survival requires the constant suppression of one’s identity. Whether in colonized societies or movement spaces that replicate domination, individuals learn to perform acceptability — adopting the language, values, or behaviors of those in power to avoid punishment. This coerced compliance doesn’t just distort identity; it reshapes the nervous system.
Internalized oppression is a trauma response. The chronic stress of needing to meet external standards for safety leads to shame, dissociation, and emotional dysregulation — all hallmarks of CPTSD. Fanon’s words illuminate how trauma is not just personal but structural, rooted in systems that demand conformity while denying dignity.
And what happens when the same dynamics of control and domination — once enforced by the state — are internalized and deployed by those claiming to dismantle it?
Many of the symptoms I now live with reflect Complex PTSD (CPTSD) — a condition that arises from chronic, repeated trauma, rather than a single traumatic event. It names what I lived: not a breakdown, but a long-term, adaptive survival response to systemic and interpersonal violence.
How trauma lodged itself in my body
Hyperarousal: My amygdala became hypersensitive. Rest was nearly impossible. I was always on alert — waiting for the next threat, the next betrayal.
Flashbacks, memory lapses: My hippocampus — crucial for memory — was compromised. Timelines blurred. Trust in my own recollections faded. This is a strategy of psychological warfare: make the survivor doubt their own mind.
Emotional dysregulation: My prefrontal cortex, responsible for reason and decision-making, faltered. Manipulation and overwhelm became easier for others to exploit.
Dissociation and disconnection: Sometimes, I didn’t feel like I was in my body. I couldn’t tell what I felt, or why. Trauma scrambled my ability to sense myself — a neurological detachment called interoception dysfunction.
As Audre Lorde once warned:
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
But within so many of our spaces, the master’s tools weren’t just present — they were disguised as strategy, as discipline, as ‘accountability.’
The inner war became harder than the external one
There were times I didn’t feel safe in the United States — let alone my own home. People knew that. But that truth was inconvenient in case.
CPTSD doesn’t just affect mood or memory. It alters perception, relationships, even belief systems:
Distorted self-perception: I began to internalize worthlessness, a sense that I was “too much,” or “not enough,” or just broken.
Loss of belief systems: I lost faith in movements. In solidarity. In the idea that organizing could be anything but a new form of control.
Relationship ruptures: Trust eroded. I learned to expect betrayal from every direction — not from paranoia, but from experience.
This is what Silvia Federici meant when she said:
“The body has been for women in capitalist society what the factory has been for male waged workers: the primary ground of their exploitation.”
But in this moment, our pain wasn’t even commodified for capital. It was leveraged for power — to build false narratives, to cover up abuse, to keep certain people in control.
We weren’t safe. And it wasn’t a coincidence.
I wasn’t the only one facing danger. Across the city, women — especially unhoused women — were being stalked, abducted, and assaulted, sometimes by police. These weren’t isolated incidents. They were systemic atrocities, happening in the shadows while the media looked away.
When corporate Democrats control the narrative, our stories get buried. Edited out. Erased.
“Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.”
But radicalization must come with discernment. We can’t afford to romanticize the Left when it reenacts the very violence we claim to oppose.
What I experienced wasn’t just the fallout of organizing gone wrong.
It was state-like violence, enacted by institutions and individuals embedded in radical spaces. It was betrayal disguised as solidarity. Surveillance repackaged as structure. Control masquerading as care.
Not just to name trauma, but to disarm the cycles that create it — even within our own ranks.
As you read this, know that what I’ve described isn’t rare. Many of us live with the weight of CPTSD, shaped by trauma that isn’t simply interpersonal, but systemic. This is the toll of gaslighting, structural abandonment, and harm that festers behind activist rhetoric.
We deserve spaces where healing is not held hostage to power.
Where being believed is not conditional.
Where accountability means liberation — not exile.
Resources
Complex PTSD and Neurobiology of Trauma
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery
Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman (1992)
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Book-Club-Study-Guide_compressed.pdf
Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
When The Body Says No - The Hidden Cost of Stress
Political Betrayal, Surveillance, and Internalized State Violence
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon_Frantz_Black_Skin_White_Masks_1986.pdf
Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" on JSTOR
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
sister_outsider_audrey_lorde_ib_pdf_packet.pdf
Mariame Kaba
Her writings on transformative justice and prison abolition offer alternatives to carceral logics embedded in activist culture.
Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba | The Nation
Silvia Federici
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation – by Silvia Federici - The Labor Community Strategy Center
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
The Avery Review | Organizing Against Abandonment: Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Latest Movement Offering <i>Abolition Geography</i>
Movement Harm, Gaslighting, and Activist Spaces as Sites of Control
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha – writer, disability and transformative justice practioner
Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love
I Hope We Choose Love | Arsenal Pulp Press
"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" (INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence)
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex on JSTOR
Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis
Mutual Aid | The Anarchist Library
Sources for Surveillance, State Harm, and Stalking
Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness Analyzes how surveillance is racialized and woven into everyday life — and how these logics show up even in “liberatory” contexts.
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness on JSTOR
Christian Parenti, The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror
A deep look into surveillance histories and their sociopolitical functions. (PDF) The Soft Cage: Surveillance From Slavery to the War on Terror
Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families
While not directly about CPTSD, her work shows how systems rooted in surveillance, control, and state power traumatize under the guise of “protection.” (PDF) Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare Systems Destroy Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
