I was pseudopsychotic from 2017 until 2022 due to ongoing trafficking trauma.
I partially repressed the experiences of being trafficked (I have DID, so my alters tried to fill me in, but I thought they were psychotic internal voices) but they came through as these hyper-real cognitive experiences (these dream like, caricature thoughts) with random frightening themes that mirrored what I was repressing.
The neurological effects of ongoing memory repression for current day trauma completely broke down my ability to think and focus. I could not think on a fundamental level. My brain had turned into a nightmarish cartoon of strongly associated negative ideas. I could not think inside my head without the speech in my mind's eye distorting into something I hadn't thought or, frequently, into an inversion of what I was trying to think. I destroyed my life with reckless self harm and acting out because I thought my brain would always be broken like That. It wasn't that I was afraid of being psychotic. I couldn't think. I couldn't control my thoughts or my body. I was constantly pacing and random fucking things would constantly set me off onto a barely coherent rage about pedophiles and unreal things I didn't even believe, and then I'd be fine and almost normal again a minute later, and then ten minutes later my thoughts would fall apart and some weird idea or consistent thing would trigger me and I'd go into an incoherent rage again.
I almost succeeded in killing myself because I couldn't cope with how I'd become this hyperactive wreck that couldn't control or hang on to the most basic elements of cognition. I could barely remember what was happening around me to the extent that I could barely hold conversations. I really related to the problems of people with dementia and amnesia from a TBI.
When they put me on antipsychotics (my providers never thought I was psychotic even though I kept trying to get them to realize I was, they were trying to fix my sleep - I could only sleep one to two hours a day for five years), my distorted thoughts straightened out into horrific flashbacks, complete with level ten (beyond labor pains) pain from flashbacks of me getting trafficked and gang raped over and over again, where my brain would recreate the feelings of being drugged so severely I couldn't even stand up. These flashbacks would cycle for hours. Everyday. It turned my memory photographic during the flashbacks, like I could see every wrinkle on my abuser's faces and every leaf on the tree outside the window. I wanted to kill myself all over again, because now I knew it was real and I was spending my days essentially getting trafficked in my flashbacks all over again.
The crazy thoughts that I knew couldn't be real suddenly made sense, let me give you an example:
(actual rape flashback example, don't read if easily triggered)
Let's say someone had an old plate with an old time caricature of a face on a sun in the background. During my breakdown, I'd go into a rage when encountering that old time face drawing style, or faces drawn on moons. I'd get this crazy idea that my abuser implanted that I must hate this moon as a scheme to control my mind, and he says something about how he controls if I live or die now and it gets him off.
So it turns out that was me misremembering a guy raping me in a place where I could see an illustration of this style on a moon face while he was talking about getting off on control. When I could only partially remember it, it latched onto concepts I encountered (like people mentioning mind control tropes) that partially reactivated the memory, but not enough for me to really remember it. So it would mix with present day stimuli and thoughts. I eventually had a complete flashback of this incident and my previous issues with going FUCKING INSANE AND THINKING PEOPLE WANTED TO MIND CONTROL ME WITH BADLY DRAWN MOONS (like I knew it was a crazy idea that someone wanted to turn moons into a trauma symbol to control me, but I kept getting this strong forceful feeling, like that was true on an irrational emotional level, so I thought those were delusions) finally made sense. I also stopped going insane around moons after I experienced and processed the REAL trauma and never thought people were mind controlling me with moons again.
None of this was true psychosis though, even though it was severely debilitating and prevented me from even having friends or dating for five years because I just couldn't hold a conversation with my mind breaking like that. I was actively involved in treatment with two psychiatrists and two therapists during the entire five years. They felt that I was not psychotic, and that my severe cognitive issues were due to ongoing trauma.
The trafficking situation stopped then I was never "psychotic" again. I stopped taking antipsychotics in 2022 because all they did was severely trigger my PTSD. My brain was back to normal and has stayed normal since 2023.
This is a complex post. There is nothing wrong with people who have psychosis, or for being mistaken about reality for any reason. And that is not to say people have not gone through severe psychological abuse and brainwashing where people did attempt to control them in abstract psychological ways - I have certainly experienced that, just not in the memory I gave an example of, that was me mixing elements of one trauma into a new partially remembered and only partially true trauma memory. But I had a very strange experience where I thought I was psychotic, and so did other people and they were incredibly cruel about it, and then I wasn't even psychotic, this is apparently what happens when you are being repeatedly stun gunned by a gang of rapists that is threatening to kill your mom for five straight years. I was trafficked for longer than I should have been because I thought it was all in my head and that people can just get repeated black eyes, stun gun burns, and bite marks all over their body because of the mysterious machinations of the human body.
