About 3 years ago, I was raped. Before then, I didn’t have any mental health concerns, but after the experience I was diagnosed with anxiety that was induced by the trauma. I was not diagnosed with PTSD, but I did occasionally reexperience the event in dreams and flashbacks. I was doing an ok job with getting back on track with my life. I started taking medication that seemed to help me deal with the anxiety.

While I felt like I was doing well, in the past year I’ve realized that certain triggers seem to put me back at square one. If I watch a movie or tv show that reminds me of my experience, I lose days to lying in bed and being unable to function. I feel like there’s no way to escape the inevitability of someone saying or doing something that causes me to reexperience my trauma. So my question is: how do you deal with triggers? Especially when they can be something small like a song or a phrase?