Problematic life

Well, So. After a while of having a pause in my therapy, we've now decided to start it up again. I am on higher doses of medications and starting a new one tomorrow. (I had to wait a few days before the local chemist had this particular medicine in)

The real problem in my therapy is that I have bipolar illness. So, each time I am doing my therapy, I am being exposed to what I fear the most - rats. Or as in my case - i haven't even started on the rats yet, but merely been exposed to relatives to rats. (mice, squirrels, house-mouse etc)

When I get exposed, it triggers my psychotic part of the bipolar illness. Or it just triggers extreme lows. The psychotic part is that I constantly hallucinate rats. They're everywhere, I see them, I hear them, I smell them. It's a very very scary place to be, for a rat-phobic person.

So, in order for me to get out of this phobia, I have to do so much more, and it's extremely tiresome and hard for me, to get anywhere at all in therapy. Lucky me for having an absolutely star for a therapist, and a doctor who works close to her in every part of the way.

So, now I am going to start it up again. I am starting by having a photo of a real horrible mouse on my wall next to the computer. I hate hate hate watching it, but I have to expose myself to it.

But I am really not at the rat-stage yet. An old friend posted a photo of a rat the other day, on facebook and I had a total panic attack and then had to lay down and wanting to die for hours. I have now blocked this person, I don't need that in my life at the moment, specially not as this person knows about my phobia but couldn't make sure (by using filters) that I didn't have to see this.

My bipolar illness is a day-to-day hardship. I know all the things that people say about bipolars, and when I found this bipolar bingo photo, I thought nothing could describe it better - or, not how I actually feel or anything, but the way people react to it. And with my phobia it's just bipolar + 1. Life is tough, but I am living it.