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RE: You Are Responsible For Your Own Anxiety // PTSD // Journal
I suffered from anxiety for all of my teens and most of my adult life. I finally opted for medication, which helped me tremendously. I always just lived with the anxiety--I still functioned, kept down a job, had a few friends, etc, but I never really felt full relief until the Zoloft. I know many people are opposed to medications for mental health issues, and I'm not recommending it for you, but for me it was life-changing.
I don't really like the idea of "trigger warnings," which is where I thought this post was going. I agree that you have to desensitize yourself to the things that make you anxious, and those feelings should not be ignored by others, but the world also shouldn't bend to the whims of the anxious.
Personally I've tried many medications for both anxiety and depression over the years. Prozac, welbutrin, lexapro, klonopin, xanax, marijuana. I was desperate for relief, but I've found in my research that medications for my particular source of anxiety (PTSD) are generally ineffective or may cause more problems. They'd provide temporary relief but I'd eventually backslide, as I wasn't dealing with the core issue causing the anxiety. I wouldn't consider myself depressed anymore, and my anxiety about things like people has definitely gone down, as I addressed why I had that anxiety in the first place. But I also know people who have lingering anxiety that is more of a body thing, or a part of their physiology. (From what I've seen.) It just depends.
Trigger warnings are ultimately ineffective. Triggers are personal, for one, and a certain phrase or scent can trigger someone. That's impossible to really avoid unless you know that person's individual composition. Secondly, avoiding what hurts you emotionally is never really going to be the solution.