I feel all the time, from one part of my mind, that anyone behind me is following me and is going to hurt me. I feel constantly under threat. Although I know in my rational mind that I'm not. Not any more. But the world still feels a hostile place. Apart from a number of 'safe' people in my life.

When I was a teenager, well, every day for nearly 10 years, I was constantly under attack and threat through bullying. They would follow me everywhere, throw things at me, [including a wooden chair one maths lesson when I was 16]chase me, laugh at me, call me names, flick ink over me, thump a chalky board rubber on my back, hide my possessions... This was every day. I am not exaggerating. And it was a gang of 20 plus girls. All in my year.

Then we have my home situation. A paranoid father who had resentment against women. A depressed father who was constantly irritable and hostile and scared of the world and of other people. A father who threatened regularly to have me put in a home for bad children, put in a strait jacket, make me sleep in the shed. And also abused my mother. Domestic violence. Which I was a witness of. Threats from mum to take me to a refuge. But this, like my father's unsafe threats, was never carried out. So I felt very insecure, unsafe and under threat.

Except that I dissociated back then, and only now, as I'm learning how to feel and feel safe with all the feelings that were discouraged and attacked, I am feeling the threat in the present. Where it isn't really there.

I understand that this is a form of paranoia, but related to PTSD and hyper-vigilance. I have tried to read articles on the connection between PTSD and psychosis, as it seems there is a connection, but they are all ones you have to subscribe to to read.

My reading points to the possibility of my having what are known as 'secondary delusions'.

Would you say that I was suffering from psychosis?