I used to not be afraid of any dogs, as a little kid I was playing with my neighbors german sheperds that were twice my size without any fear.
3 years ago I got a dog myself, the first year was fine.
Then he got attacked by an unleashed staffie, he left out the most horrifying scream I ever heard, the leg that was bitten got infected and doubled in size, he couldn't stand on it for 2 weeks, and couldn't even poop without loosing balance and falling if I didn't help. it kinda traumatized me, after that he got into a few other scary altercations with other dogs, and now I basically tense up and panic whenever I see a bigger dog(mastiffs, large bulldogs, malinois, german sheperds, rotts, basically any dog that have any kind of destructive power), if the other dog is unleashed and less than 10 meters away I'll just carry my dog.
I took him to multiple trainers. The last one basically told me that nothing was wrong with my dog(or that it was +/- fixed), that he wasn't traumatized, and that my dog only was in conflict with other dogs because I was anxious/tensing up, and that I was stressing too much which was causing my dog and the other dogs to tense up, I think he's right, the last time I saw him we walked him unleashed with 6 (nice) other dogs and it was fine.
But I'm still really scared when we run into other dogs.
Now most of the time I play in our yard with him, we only take short leashed walks when there isn't many people outside and not everyday. The last time we had an unleashed walk in nature another unleashed scary dog ran at me from 50 meters away and jumped on me/growled at me, I'm scared of going back.
I notice that now I tense up around big dogs even when my dog isn't there, which basically had NEVER ever happened before my dog was attacked.
How can I go back to normal and avoid going into fight or flight mode whenever we cross path with any big dog?