@BallinBrick
It's fine to have different emails for both your PlayStation and EA account. It sounds like there might be something going on with your EA account. Can you try logging into Help.EA.com using the PlayStation login option so when you login, it re-syncs your PlayStation credentials to the EA account to see if this clears it up? Once you sign in, try power cycling the console and restart the game.
If it fails again, I recommend reinstalling the game to the internal drive and ensure all updates are designated to the internal drive. I've seen performance issues where data is being pulled from both the internal and external drive because files are on both, or an external hard drive is causing compatibility issues with the game. It's possible that specific profile data was corrupted during installation or a patch.
Let me know what happens.