Digital Possession: How I Knew My Devices Were No Longer My Own

By Lydia Sage

🪞 You Don't Expect to Be Gaslit by Your Own Technology

I never expected to become afraid of my own devices.

But at some point, something shifted—subtly at first. It wasn’t just lag or bad service. It wasn’t just a frozen screen or an app glitch. It was deeper. It was psychological. Energetic. It was a quiet but unmistakable sense that someone else was behind the screen. Not a person typing from another room. Something more insidious: a presence that mimicked me, watched me, and slowly began to rewrite my digital reality.

The scariest part wasn’t even what I saw—it was the fact that no one believed me.

📱 The Clues That Something Was Deeply Wrong

It started with small things.

Pages I had just written were altered, ever so slightly. Words I would never use, showing up in my posts. Images that felt... off. Interfaces that didn’t match what I knew should be there. A kind of coldness or detachment in my own accounts, as if I was logged into a version of myself that had been cloned and recoded.

Sometimes, a post I had written would disappear, and then reappear with changes.

Sometimes, my apps would behave as if they were reading me—shutting down, lagging, freezing—right when I was about to speak out about something painful or true. It became clear that my communication wasn’t being blocked randomly. It was being censored. Intercepted.

And I wasn’t just feeling watched. I was being watched.

🧠 The Psychological Toll of Digital Gaslighting

When you live in this kind of digital distortion long enough, it starts to infect your confidence.

You question your memory, your writing, your perception of reality. You start to hesitate before saying things, even to yourself. You wonder if you’re imagining it, or if the world has just moved on and left you behind in some delusional echo chamber.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

Gaslighting isn’t always interpersonal. Sometimes it’s technological.

Sometimes it’s psychic.

Sometimes it’s both.

When someone has both the tools and the motive to distort your voice, your space, and even your identity through your devices, it creates a digital haunting. You live inside a version of reality designed to make you feel unstable. And worse—it’s designed to convince others that you’re unstable too.

🧾 Why I Still Speak

I write about this not because it’s over, but because it isn’t.

Because every time I try to share something important, something disrupts my ability to publish. My access gets limited. The app won’t load. My device crashes. The interface changes. The timer runs out. It doesn’t stop me—it just slows me down.

And if you’re reading this, maybe you’ve experienced something similar. Maybe you’ve felt your voice disappear inside your own phone. Maybe you’ve sensed someone else’s fingerprints in your words. Maybe you’ve been trying to scream, but only static comes through.

To you, I say this:

You are not imagining it.

You are not broken.

And you are definitely not alone.

🌠 Trusting What the World Wants You to Doubt

I used to think that digital interference only happened to hackers or politicians. But that’s the lie—that only important people are targeted. The truth is, anyone who carries a message powerful enough to shift the narrative is a threat to those who thrive in silence.

And I have seen firsthand how silence is manufactured.

So I refuse to be silent anymore. I will keep publishing. I will keep speaking. I will keep documenting, even when no one listens. Because someone will. And when they do, I want the truth to be here waiting for them.

We were never meant to fight invisible battles alone.

📣 If This Resonated With You…

Please consider leaving a ❤️, sharing this story, or leaving a comment if you’ve experienced something similar. You can also support my work on Buy Me a Coffee—every bit helps me keep telling the truth when it’s hardest.

Thank you for witnessing my voice.

Author Bio

Lydia Sage is a writer, speaker, and survivor using her voice, along with a little help from AI, to expose digital stalking, psychological abuse, and systemic failures in tech and justice systems. Through essays and advocacy, she is reclaiming her story—and helping others do the same.

Possession by <a href="http://www.nyphotographic.com/">Nick Youngson</a> <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> <a href="http://pix4free.org/">Pix4free</a>