Over the last week, I have read all 236 pages of this thread. I am so glad I found it - and so grateful to everyone who posted on it so regularly for so long, being so supportive.. even though those words of support were for other posters before, it felt like support for myself.
I had been on the pill for about 10 years. In December I got engaged and I started to think "I've been being pumped full of these synthetic hormones long before I met my fiance and since.. what if I'm a totally different person without them, and I/we only find out years down the line?" so we talked about it and considered it and I decided I'd stop taking the pill for a few months, just to see how it went - and with the hope of increasing my libido somewhat! (Taking other precautions too as really really don't want to get pregnant).
I took my last pill on the 3rd March. Had withdrawal bleed as normal. And then my next two periods came exactly on time.. quite unexpected but I thought this was a good thing, meant my hormones weren't too out of whack. But towards the end of April/early May I have been hit by the worst period of depression I have ever experienced. It started off feeling a little low, as I often have done throughout my life - but normally passes within a week or so, so I didn't think much of it. Then the depersonalisation came, the doubts about my love for my fiancé, which in turn became overwhelming anxiety - racing and uncontrollable thoughts, hysterical crying fits, disrupted sleep, pounding heartrate that started in the morning and lasted through the day, a feeling of heaviness and emptiness in my chest. About two weeks ago I was so nauseas and had no appetite whatsoever, which of course made me feel more weak and nauseas.
In the last week the physical symptoms have alleviated somewhat but the ROCD and constant analysing of my feelings of love toward my partner remain, and it is making me so sad. Throughout my day at work I think of him constantly, wondering "is this the way I always used to think of him? Did I actually want to smile just then when he messaged me, or am I forcing it? Why don't I have the urge to send him a super cute gif like I always used to?" I find myself feeling desperately clingy and needy for him when I'm not with him, as for the last few weeks he is the only person or thing that made me feel grounded and normal, but then sometimes when I am on my way home to him I make myself anxious because I worry about not feeling that brief blip of happiness upon seeing him when I get home. I've told him all about how I'm feeling and feel so guilty for it but he is just so supportive and strong.
This week I had a moment of glorious clarity as I was driving home from work - I was listening to music and felt like myself and I cried and just wanted to get to him and tell him I really really do love him so much. It felt so lovely, and I made it and I did but the feeling was gone as soon as it came - and then I tell myself it wasn't real and I was forcing it because I just want to feel that way again. I feel like I am abusing him because it is such emotional whiplash.
After that good point on Tuesday, it's been so up and down. I felt less depressed on Wednesday and Thursday, and actually was able to think about wedding stuff without major anxiety, but on Friday the ROCD crept back in and by last night when we went out for dinner I felt like my fiancé was a stranger sitting across the table from me. This feeling was alleviated as soon as we were home, and it was just me and him again, but I still don't feel like myself.
Now that my physical symptoms have passed mostly, and all I'm left with are the ROCD and depersonalisation, I worry that it can't be down to the hormones.. but I KNOW that I just don't feel like myself. Sometimes when we kiss or are cuddling, I feel like he is doing that to someone else and I can only observe it... If I don't feel like I am present, how on earth can I feel the love the way I always did?
My period is due again in five days so I am intrigued to see if it starts right on time again. The last month has been so stressful I think that may impact on it, but if it doesn't I'll love to see if I have any change in mood. Here's hoping.. and here's hoping that I'm able to be one of those "success stories" down the line, to leave hope for other lost and scared people who search for answers and find this thread.
If you've read all this, thank you.
K x
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I am so glad I found this forum. I’m not sure how old the last post is (today is 8/22/23) and I’m not sure if anyone still even visits this page but I have to say how much this website has saved me. Literally. This has been the worst experience of my entire life, and I felt completely alone in all of it, I felt like I was losing my mind. I felt like I needed to be checked into a facility. I thought my life was over. I just wish I found this forum sooner, but I’m glad I found it at all. Reading it at my lowest points, on my worst days, seeing other women experiencing the exact same things that were at the time the darkest parts of my brain that I thought couldn’t be caused by hormones, saved me.
I came off of my birth control (Vestura/Gianvi) after 10 years (age 16-26) in late February/early March of 2023 (I don’t remember exactly when-I wish I made note of it). I was fine all of March, and most of April, but sometime in May/June I started to feel very unlike myself. As SO many women here have shared, I started to feel like I had suddenly fallen out of love with my husband. We’ve been together for almost 11 years and have been married for 2.5. He was my first boyfriend and is the only person I’ve ever been with. I went on birth control less than a year into our relationship and had been on it without a break ever since. I decided to come off because I had been on it for so long that I wanted to see what I was like without it, I wanted to know my own brain and body without this drug, and we are married so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I got pregnant. Over the years of our relationship, there would sometimes be periods where I wouldn’t doubt him or our relationship necessarily, but I would get sort of self conscious about the fact that he is the only person I’ve ever been with, I guess because of the way society makes high school relationships sound, and tells you that you have to date X number of people before you find the right one. Those thoughts would sometimes make me think that the first person I’ve ever been with might not be the right one for me, or that I was “missing something,” but I have always been so happy with him and love him so much that I was always able to push those thoughts aside because inside I knew how much I loved him and that he was the one for me. It’s always been him. I cannot imagine my life without him. And eventually the doubts went away, until about 2-3 months after I came off my birth control. My life became a painful nightmare. I felt indifferent towards him, I would look at our wedding photos and not recognize the person I saw. I felt like a different person. I felt nothing, like the photos were of someone else. I questioned everything: whether every ounce of love I ever felt for him was real since I had been on birth control almost our entire relationship, whether I still loved him, whether I had outgrown him, whether we were too different, whether I could love him forever, whether I would miss him if he was no longer in my life, it was just constant. And I knew that he had never experienced any type of feelings like that about me, that he has never once doubted that I’m the person he wants to spend his life with, so the guilt and shame from even having those feelings at all was overwhelming. I never told him about it because I didn’t know how to. I just kept thinking, what if I were in his position? How would it feel to have the person I’m married to suddenly tell me they weren’t sure if they loved me anymore? I hyper focused on the fact that words can’t be taken back once said. I couldn’t put those ideas into his head in case they weren’t real and were just temporary (which turned out to be the case). So I suffered in silence alone. I felt like my brain didn’t belong to me, like I wasn’t real and neither was anyone around me, like all of my memories of my life were a movie I had seen before and not my actual life, like I was viewing the world through someone else’s eyes. It was horrible. I didn’t eat for days, I woke up every morning with crippling, debilitating anxiety (it was always worst in the mornings), I cried constantly, I had suicidal thoughts, I had the all-around worst few weeks of my entire life.
I unfortunately didn’t know what was causing my feelings or where they were coming from until some time last month. I thought that a hormonal imbalance couldn’t cause something like feeling like you’re falling out of love with a partner. I thought maybe I was just going to feel moody or something. I can’t believe how wrong I was. I know I can’t blame myself for not knowing then what I do now, but I dug a bit of a hole for myself before I knew, and it has been the most unbearable and painful experience of my life trying to forgive myself, begin to repair the emotional and mental damage this has caused me, and move on.
I’m sharing my experience because I hope in the off chance someone sees it and needs it the way I did, it can help. You are NOT alone, I promise, even though it feels like you are, and you will feel like yourself again!!! You will. I promise. It will take time, and there is nothing you can do but wait it out, but it will eventually get better. You just have to hold on. You do love your partner, it’s not you, it’s the hormones, it’s not your fault, and you WILL feel like you again. I once saw someone on here say that you just have to ride the rollercoaster until it stops, and that helped me a ton. I took a supplement from CVS called “PMS & menstrual support” and I think it helped me also. Good luck everyone, and thank you for reading this far if you have! I had no idea I was going to experience something like this when I decided to come off of my pill, but if I can help even one person the way you all helped me I’ll be happy. I am still not 100% myself (I have only had 3 periods since I came off and my cycle has been 40+ days in length each time, so I know my hormones are still out of whack) but I am better than I was.
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