Hello, So over the past few weeks I've noticed that I've been purposely reading or looking at things that make me feel incredibly anxious, whether this be researching quite heavy topics or sticking around for TV shows that have themes that make my anxiety bad. For example one of my biggest anxiety triggers are hospital-related and disease-related things. Sometimes I find myself watching medical TV shows or reading medical articles/twitter threads/websites that go into detail about medical stuff. I always end up in an absolute state - anxiety attacks, insomnia, nightmares, general nasty anxiety symptoms, thinking I'm going to get cancer or something and have to go through extensive treatments or die - but still every time I manage to go back to looking at the things that trigger me for HOURS. Like, today, I found a manga about radiologists. I didn't enjoy it much, and started feeling anxiety symptoms on the first mention of cancer, but continued to read it for hours afterward despite how awful it made me feel. I'm wondering if anyone else does this, and if anyone knows why I'm doing this. It's really miserable every time I do it, but I somehow find myself doing it every day. I'm trying to calm.myself down with my comfort manga right now.
Hi Mya
To answer your question, Most people will generally avoid things that trigger their anxiety / depression off.
But exposure therapy (exposing yourself to your fears & triggers) has been proven to very effective when treating such illnesses.. however the thought of exposure therapy does tend to put a lot of people off.