Stress Center Peer Support

i have depression symptoms and have had these for awhile but then things started to get bad. i was having these crazy 'episodes' and couldn't figure out what could possibly cause me to freak out and want to kill myself or cut my wrists or bang my head against the wall repeatedly. i opened up to a woman i know about how i was feeling and she told me that she too had felt like that when she was taking birth control but didn't correlate for about seven years. she would have really hard times during her cycle at the same time every month. eventually she stopped taking birth control and these bouts of dark darkness disappeared. a few years later she took a plan b pill which is essentially a large dose of the hormones you get from birth control. she had this same darkness come over her a month after she took the pill. i then realized that the time i had cut my wrists was one month after i took a plan b (i was able to figure this out because i got a hold of my records from my doctor and had a record of a plane ticket from the place i was visiting where i ended up cutting my wrists) cutting my wrists is not something i had never had a problem with. i then was able to track a few other of the episodes with times in my birth control cycle. i no longer take birth control in the form of hormones because the hormones caused an extreme response in me that triggered much more depression and anxiety than i could handle. i bruised myself more than once and hurt myself physically and mentally. i still feel down and get anxious but i have not had that overwhelming feeling of wanting to inflict pain on myself since i have been off of the pill and plan b.

i meant to write that i had never cut my wrists or thought about cutting my wrists prior to this one episode.

WOW! I've had a feeling for a long time that b/c pills are not good for women. It seems I just keep getting more and more confirmation of that. Thanks for your story and Im glad that while you may not be totally out of the woods (that's what I gathered) it doesn't sound as if you don't intend to harm yourself anymore. Keep up the good fight.

i just wish these side effects were talked about more with the pill. i think a lot of people experience these things but maybe don't make the connection because it isn't a commonly talked about side effect.. the dark side of the pill, i mean.