The Digital Trauma Recovery Wing of the Cyber ICU – diagnostic of oversaturation distress

21 hours ago

10 min read

>>THIS IS MY 9/11

There is a diagnosis that doesn’t exist in the DSM. At least not yet. I’m in the cyber trauma recovery wing of the digital ICU, working my way through recuperating from oversaturation distress type 1 and type 2.

I haven’t written on this blog in a year. I meant to start in fall 2025, but a loss delayed me. A year of progress destroyed. There’s something I still have a hard time coming to terms with.

An anxiety pulses through me as soon as I open my laptop or phone or enter social media. I get lost, confused, fall into a whirlpool of analysis paralysis.

When you go online, does it make you feel good? Are you having a good time when you post? Ideally it should feel fun and cool and awesome and gorgeous – not like a dredge or a chore. When it starts to feel like a hassle, log off and go away.

So this belated post is a bit of a eulogy.

A grievance.

A digital crisis.

In my book Cyberhorny I’ve written at length about this digitally earned anxiety (oversaturation distress) as symptomatic of the overwhelm caused by too much screen time, too many devices, psychic fragmentation from the bloating of many online identities, an overload of information and a short circuiting of dopamine. The treatment is simple – going offline. So I did. Particularly with instagram and the specific account I used for my art, writing, and personal life. Intermittent reinforcement is the dance the algorithm does to make us keep coming back with slop, fluff, depth, drivel, and drama. I thought logging out as a detox would be medicinal.

But when I tried to log back in, I had to perform an autopsy on my digital self. I wept over that “your account has been suspended” screenshot like a despondent necrophile.

On October 17, 2025 my personal/art/book ig account

@nastyavalentine was deleted out of nowhere. Served with this unprompted kiss of death. At that point in time there are two important things to note:

1. I wasn’t logging in or posting often. After an overload of screen time for years on end, I preferred to stay away. When I would post, I would only post content pertaining to my book, or tame drivel longing to be a tradwife. There was no lustful nudes or promo of OF page in sight. There was going to the erotic museum where a signing of my book took place, snippets of said book, and random ephemera of memes, cat pics, video games, wholesome content. With the (lack of) frequency of posting, it came as a shock to see it deleted. IG/Meta had been using AI filters to flag accounts and I figured it mistakenly got caught in a ban wave, but any appeal on my part got ignored. If they had given me legitimate warnings or content flagging or “we have to take down this post” etc I would have of course complied; however the account was suspended in bad faith all of a sudden and not given any chance to plead my case with a fellow human being.

2. There were much more critical health and family concerns going on in my life fall 2025, so an account getting deleted wasn’t on the top list of priorities.

So I didn’t really care at first. Dismissed it. Whatever. Digital ash in a digital urn.

However, as time went on, months and months later, I found myself increasingly distressed, angry, and heartbroken by @nastyavalentine ‘s nonsensical deletion. I’ve had that account since 2013. 12 years of memories, accomplishments, connections severed just like that. My massive archive of posts and stories and chats exclusive to that account, from school and work and art and life, gone. My platform for presenting Cyberhorny, gone. My publishers and collaborators who also lost income when the account I’d use to promote our work was gone.

One day I logged in, tucked and cozy, the next day it was gone. Literally, out of nowhere, given no explanation as to why. The reason cited on the screenshot was “sexual solicitation” – I read the TOS up and down and none of my content ever solicited. I politely asked many times which piece of content was flagged, for as I’ve mentioned I hadn’t been posting nsfw stuff beyond my book title, and by their very own terms this did not fall under the solicitation category. My posts always had integrity and elegance, even when writing about Cyberhorny themes. I only ever messaged friends and professional collaborators. When I inquired to Meta, I was denied an explanation. When my legal rep inquired, they were denied an explanation as well. I was (and continue to be) aghast.

I would find myself referencing a memory or a post with the urge to pull it up from the feed or archive, only to touch nothing. A ghost. A void. Where at first was numb, I would go on to become more and more crestfallen and discouraged. Still, I didn't want to give up hope.

My lawyer had sent Meta several demand letters to reinstate it, which were responded to months later with vague statements like “this account is permanently suspended”. Like yes we know... but why?? Every time I would try to contact an actual human being at Meta, I would only reach an AI chatbot unable to process nuance. I got my new account meta verified – this did nothing besides I guess protect it from deletion? Idk. Is this the scam of how they get you to sign up for this blue ticked nonsense, intimidation and fear tactics? By fighting rather than accepting the loss, was I digging my digital grave deeper?

I couldn’t help but wonder.

My lawyer said there were many cases like this where an account was caught in the AI ban wave, but my case was unusual in that they took so long to respond and gave no concrete reason – “acting in bad faith”. Around 90% of accounts ( that posted much lewder content than I ever dared, mind you ) would get reinstated – so what the fuck happened with mine? If my account was deleted for ‘Cyberhorny’ or for me being sexy, then what is going on with the millions of other accounts that are run by hot girls or sex educators. Ok. Many such cases. Maybe its not that deep and I just got unlucky.

>>I SAW THE THEORY IN THE PORN AND JACKED UNTIL I SET IT FREE

Cyberhorny is at heart a book about education, theory, and analysis. It is a work of art and information, not a pornographic piece of lewdness. The content I’ve posted on my personal accounts about the book was to share cybersex education, in ways that were always compliant with the guidelines. I reported accounts with underage models, men who commented under their posts with fire emojis or comments like “can’t wait til she turns 18” ; “no it’s better when they’re under 18 ;))))” and Meta/IG without fail responded to my reports with “we see nothing wrong”. Adult pedophiles can openly lust after children on instagram and yet adult educators on the same platform are forbidden from teaching about digital sexuality.

Ironic isn’t it? A book dissecting the digital experience banned from the internet that gave birth to it. The child of an estranged mother, exiled by the ban hammer of big father.

@nastyavalentine was banned for much less than other accounts get away with. The most nerve-racking, irritating, heartbreaking thing – there was no certain reason given for why my account was banned. A digital drive by. Batman’s parents. The wrong place at the wrong time. The invisible nonsense wriggling under the skin. This uncertainty rolled through me and transfigured into neurosis. The more time went on, the more neurotic I’ve become. Once things in my health and family situation settled down, and I could pull focus back into my own sphere, I realized months later that, fuck, nastyavalentine is gone. She was such a big part of me, bigger than any of my other accounts.

>>NASTYA VALENTINE IS JUST TRYING TO GET SOME STRANGE TO DECOMPENSATE THE NEUROSIS OF LOSS AND PAIN

“What is it with u and 9/11” -my friends asking about my love life

A sneaky link saw my small blue hello kitty phone in the bathroom (the one I read when I’m on the toilet so I don’t have to bring one of the other ones in there and exert more energy carrying a device) and asked why I have a second phone.

When people come to my house they ask me why I have so many phones. Because storage things. Because device bans. Because the camgirl’s dilemma. Because there were many @nastyavalentines, only they had different names, aesthetics, follower counts, identities. The OG nastya didn’t have a massive following. But she had an organic reach, a community, a book, a product, an identity, and she thought she was safe because her posts followed the guidelines.

So yeah, she is gone. Of course I’d like her to return, but how? Are you going to give me 4000$USD to have a hacker (*coughMetaworkercough*) to magically mystically mysteriously reinstate me without the urgency of a subpoena? I know they still have my data lol. It feels helpless going up against this huge company that can get away with whatever they want. What I’ve been feeling heavily this year is latent grief. I’ve cried, full on sobbing ugly crying pathetic bitter tears. I’ve become avoidant af with an aversion to digital contact.

I flinch when I see my phones sometimes. Which ban notification is coming next, just for existing? Maybe from a bookstore that urges my collaborators to remove any material with me or my work in it because it makes them uncomfortable. Yes it’s funny and charming and drama and gossip and tea to be the writer of banned books, and controversy is very classy these days, but the deletions and banning have made me shy, withdrawn even. An existential crisis of where I’m even allowed to exist.

WHERE????

It’s made me cry.

It’s made me numb.

It’s made me procrastinate.

It’s made me hesitant to share my creative gifts with the world. It’s made me question my creativity and wonder if my gifts are actually curses. I am not just full of soup, I am also full of shame. And also soup.

What also cursed me deeply was that at that point in time, fall 2025, in spite of shitty personal things and life events occurring, I was simultaneously excited to start writing for Cyberhorny and making content again – something I hadn’t felt in years.

Repetition compulsion: from 2020-2024 I documented almost all moments of my life on various fragments of the internet, like knuckles the echidna shattering the master emerald. The exhaustion eventually wore me down and I needed to disappear. Prognosis: acute oversaturation distress. Going dark was the treatment – I was in the digital ICU of the cyber trauma wing all of 2024 and most of 2025, and towards the fall of 2025 recovery was imminent. I’m no stranger to getting accounts banned on insta and tiktok; OF models with 5-10 promo pages know what I’m talking about. However, the particular deletion of my personal stuck a knife in the wound. All of my skittishness returned even worse than before, along with a side of melancholy. I lost a year of progress from the tragic murder of @nastyavalentine and it really is my 9/11.

This isn’t a loss of a partial digital ego that occurred w other banned accounts — this is a loss of a major part of my identity and upbringing in the digital world. It is the paradox of performing an autopsy on yourself. When I want to reference something that only existed in her archives, and I come up empty. There is a void inside me only getting my personal reinstated could fill.

How to rebuild after digital ego death?

How to integrate?

Something needs to resolve. I spray perfume, collect lingerie, shower indulgently, go to therapy, take Xanax more often than I used to. Rare days of taking it during the day have become common. A new normal, LA’s oppressive humidity, has become the backdrop for my suffering. I numb myself with tv, kratom, online shopping. There’s something in this wet sticky humidity that plasters me to the couch. Demoralized, demotivated, disassociated. Biting my disgusting nails and killing, murdering time. When I get off the couch, I pace around this apartment unable to sleep at night. During this time I watch all of Lost. Most of 24. Criminal Minds. Dr House. TV shows from before the social media age as a salve for my discomfort. I scream and my subconscious ignores me. Sleepless and trying not to fall apart as my cyber cells disintegrate. I collect excuses to delay creative projects. Stress resolves with action, but I can’t take action, so the stress compounds. Jack Bauer could NEVER deal with what I deal with on a daily basis. Dr. Gregory House MD would be STUMPED.

>> DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS, GO!!!

I used to have a trick that helped me with anxiety: when the rush would start up, I would mentally and physically turn my panic into euphoria. This helped me with social anxiety, romantic anxiety, public speaking.

This magic trick doesn’t work for cyber anxiety,

that dazed, dissociated feeling of oversaturation distress type 1; overwhelmed,

that demented, hopeless feeling of oversaturation distress type 2; melancholic.

Several accounts banned suspended deleted, deplatformed after years of hard work and memories – @nastyavalentine was just the final nail in the coffin. But there were other nails. Venues that claim to lift marginalized voices banning my content and material for being inappropriate, judging my book by its cover literally, and oppressing a marginalized voice lol. Venues that reject my content and presence, only to months later market themselves as for example “the bookstore for horny ppl”.

So here on this website I have a platform to share my thoughts and experiences, publish the voices of fellow artists I respect, and allow a freedom of expression that won’t be banned.

How the hell am I gonna promote my banned book? By taking it out and presenting it to the corporeal world. Talking about it with real human people in person because word of mouth is sexy. Putting stickers with QR codes all over LA’s walls poles and boards. Performing at readings, real world social events, bringing cyberhorny into my anti-cyber life. Cultivating a community.

Still –

I don’t entirely feel safe. When going online, the state of fight or flight persists. Something like a trauma response, something like a wound. Confusion, agitation, fear.If you have ever experienced this type of oversaturation distress you may be entitled to compensation. But you may never get it. So you have to make your own compensation.

Isn’t that fucked up?

I’d like to present into evidence these articles of compensation:

EXHIBITS A-Z:

RIP: these damaging falsehoods. there was absolutely no solicitation on my account, I checked their guidelines and all my content was within posting rights. additionally, I was not given correct info to access any of my content at all after suspension, and my phone number did not receive proper codes