Breaking Up with Birth Control Pills- My Experience as an Empath

Apr 11

How it all Began

Like many women, I went on the beloved pill at age 15 to stop the slew of debilitating symptoms I experienced each month; I had horrible migraines, paralyzing cramps, and long heavy periods. Because of these symptoms, my mom and I saw my doctor where I was quickly prescribed what seemed like the miracle pill. The doctor told me if I take this pill, all my symptoms will go away.

”Whaaaat!? That’s it!? Sign me up!” I thought.

However, FOURTEEN years later and deep into my holistic wellness journey, I finally realized... this shit’s not good for me.

Fourteen years!?

I think what blows my mind the most is that through all the excruciating doctor appointments growing up, never once did the doctor ask me: what are you eating?

Do you think the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for breakfast (there’s protein in there right?), bologna sandwiches on white bread with a Hi-C juice box and Little Debbie Snack Cake for lunch, with either McDonald’s, buttered noodles, or pepperoni pizza for dinner had something to do with my acne and cramps? Hmmmmm....

Never was I once told or educated on what synthetic hormones are or what they can do to my body. Never was I once told that the birth control pill depletes essential nutrients from my body (which then leads to greater cramps and mood swings). And never was I once taught while growing up about the mind-body connection and how I can make a few simple, natural changes that can completely change everything.

It’s taken HUNDREDS of hours of researching online, meditating, mindful eating, tracking my cycle with different apps, complaining to my loved ones, and just getting older to figure this stuff out.

So based off my personal experiences, my intention is to help you make an informed decision for yourself. Through this journey I experienced many red flags, which unfortunately I thought were just normal… and so did any of the doctors I talked to. Please read on to learn the many side effects I experienced from the pill, what doctors don’t tell you about the pill, what happened when I officially quit the pill, and my genuine hopes for the future.

Signs I Knew I Needed to Leave

My boyfriend tracked my mood and noticed a pattern.
Now I suppose this may bother some women, but I thought it was super adorable and insightful. It started in 2015 when I lived in a country called Macedonia. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer there and dated a lovely young man. He came to me one day and said he noticed a pattern in my behavior. He said he noticed that for one day a month, “there’s just something off”. He noticed I was a little more impatient, quicker to react, and distant.
It turns out, he tracked this “odd day” every month for several months and found a pattern. He noticed that my “odd day” almost always happened on day 14 or 15 of my cycle.
I found this super interesting considering days 14 or 15 are often when women ovulate and want to attract their mates. Yet for me, it was the exact opposite- I wanted space and to be left alone. When I told my doctor about it they said, “Hm. Interesting”. And they wrote me a prescription for a different brand of birth control pills. No questions asked, nor did they even look at me. This was red flag number one….
I had INTENSE food cravings.
Must. Eat. ALL. Cheese. And. Carbs. NOWWWW.
Again, I just thought this was a normal part of being a woman with PMS symptoms. Turns out, PMS is COMMON but not NORMAL. These food cravings were my body telling me I had estrogen dominance from the synthetic hormones in the birth control pills.
I had horrible bloating.
A week before my period my stomach formed into a balloon. Not just my stomach, but the rest of my body felt more ‘swollen’ and I retained more water. This is another sign of estrogen dominance caused by the birth control pills.
My personality slowly changed and I became more reclusive.
I started to reflect on the vibrant and more extroverted Abby that occurred through much of my life. I remembered how people called me ‘the guru’ because of how mindful and present I often was. And now suddenly my mind became more clouded with negative thoughts and judgements towards others. I thought my reclusiveness was just a part of getting older. But now after being off of the pill for almost 2 years, I see how the synthetic hormones rewired my entire body and mind for the worst.
I had alcohol intolerance.
I haven’t had much desire to drink alcohol post college, but on the rare occasion when I had a few drinks, I noticed aggressive thoughts or feelings toward my partner. I delivered these thoughts very poorly as they were backed by feelings of anger and irritability. I value peaceful and thoughtful communication so this was a major red flag for me. What happened to the Abby that didn’t give a fuck about anything?
Also, it turns out in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the liver is associated with anger. This made so much sense to me as my liver was already working hard to process the synthetic hormones. Then you add the damage alcohol does to your liver and now it’s working extra hard. Alcohol also raises estrogen levels, contributing more and more to the estrogen dominance I experienced from the pill.
I had pimples on my butt.
I lived in Hawaii when this appeared so I thought it was from the humid climate. The pimples remained for two years despite trying a bunch of natural remedies, exfoliating, not exfoliating, showering more, showering less, getting natural vitamin d etc. Nothing seemed to work. However, within one month of going off the pill, the pimples went away 100% and never returned.
Yaaay sexy, smooth butt.
I had puffy, heavy eyes each morning.
This was also something I thought was from living in Hawaii. I got at least 8 hours of sleep every night, yet when I woke up, my eyes always felt heavy. I thought this was from the humid climate. I mentioned it to my roommate at the time who told me the eyes are associated with the liver in Traditional Chinese Medicine. This again made so much sense that my liver was working too hard to process the synthetic hormones pumping through my body.
I got melasma.
I hadn’t heard of this condition until I visited my mom in Minnesota. Turns out long term hormonal birth control use along with sun exposure can cause hyperpigmentation. Darker patches of skin commonly appear above the lip, upper cheeks, forehead, and bridge of the nose. I took this photo while at the beach in Hawaii and you can definitely see it in the classic spots (above my lip, below left eye, across bridge of nose, and along my forehead/hairline). I’m still struggling to fade this.

9. I had skin conditions such as eczema, perioral dermatitis, chalazions, and dandruff.

Your skin is a window into your internal health. In other words, what manifests outwardly on your skin lets you know the state of your health and what your body needs more of or less of. In today’s society we’re quick to try topical remedies and products, however, so many of your ailments can be healed by what food you choose to put in your body.

I can write a whole separate article on my repeated experience of perioral dermatitis and chalazions. This includes how doctors prescribed me unnecessary antibiotics and mysterious eye drops with zero proof of it helping my current condition. Doctors told me I had an untreatable condition and that they have no idea how these conditions happen. Luckily I awakened to not listening to the doctor. Instead, I spent late nights googling the crap out of my skin stuff, and then finally made the connection and figured out how to treat it naturally.

One part of the puzzle was hormonal birth control negatively affects your gut microbiome. Because of this, my immune system was compromised, which made me more susceptible to these skin conditions. (I talk more about the gut-skin-brain connection below).

10. I got fibrocystic breasts.

That dreaded moment happened when I found a lump on my breast. Intuitively I felt it was nothing major, but I had a doctor visit coming up anyway so I asked. She touched the lump and said, “come back if it persists”. That was it. No explanation or consideration into what it could be. I researched it and realized I had the classic signs of fibrocystic breasts (only appears a week or two before my period and is a rope-like texture felt on both sides near the armpit). This was ANOTHER sign of estrogen dominance from the pill.

11. I had lower libido.

This one is just plain sad to me. Our sexual energy is sacred. Therefore taking a pill that alters a part of my divine temple feels deeply wrong to me. Although I originally went on the pill for my menstrual cycle problems, it became a major perk to not have to worry about pregnancy. But what the heck is the point of taking the pill if it makes me have less desire for my mate while increasing irritability? This was another huge, huge red flag for me. Not to mention a disservice to my goddess within.

12. I got pimples on my chin.

This was my first introduction into “face mapping” in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Face mapping gives you an idea as to what specifically is going on inside the body based on WHERE the pimples appear on your face. For example, pimples along the chin and jawline are often related to a hormone imbalance, or pimples on the forehead can mean testosterone imbalance. This ideology is supported by both modern and ancient practices.

What Doctors Don’t Tell you About the Pill

It depletes essential nutrients.
Food today has significantly less nutritional value compared to 100 years ago. This is from pollution, soil depletion, use of pesticides, and certain modern farming practices. Therefore, many of us already lack essential minerals and vitamins. So if you take the birth control pill, it can deplete your body even further.

Specifically, hormonal birth control depletes B vitamins, antioxidants, selenium, and zinc. For those of us who use a holistic approach, we see how lack of vitamins relates to a whole host of issues such as hormonal imbalance, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and chronic illness to name a few.
It can make you gain weight.
I personally enjoyed the extra 10 pounds, but I know that’s not the case for many women. Plus many doctors are advised to not tell the patient that the pill can make you gain weight because it makes the patient less likely to take the prescription. Not cool.
You aren’t ovulating. Therefore the part of your brain that connects you to your ovaries gets shut off.
The pill alters your brain by shutting off the pathway from your brain to your ovaries. This then alters the natural function of the reproductive system.
The period you get each month isn’t actually a real period.
I’ve always loved and celebrated my period each month. While coming off the pill, I was amazed to learn that all those years I wasn’t actually getting a period. Instead, it’s called a withdrawal bleed. This is the body’s reaction to withdrawing from medication.
It alters your brain structure.
Early studies identified structural and functional changes in areas involved in affective and cognitive processing, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus. Specifically, a study found that women on hormonal birth control had a smaller hypothalamus compared to non-users. The hypothalamus helps regulate appetite, body temperature, and emotions. It also serves as a link between the nervous system and endocrine system (the system that produces hormones).
It affects your mate selection.
If you choose your partner before taking the pill, your attraction towards your partner may change and vise versa. Studies found that women are usually attracted to the scent of men who are genetically different from them. However this study found that women on the pill were more attracted to those who are genetically similar to them.

Another study found that women who went on or off the pill during a relationship were less sexually satisfied than women who were either consistently on the pill or had never been on it (1).
It negatively affects your gut.
Luckily modern medicine is getting on board with what’s been known for thousands of years. Hippocrates himself said over 2,000 years ago that all disease starts in the gut.

Studies show the pill can affect gut permeability and certain immune inflammatory responses along with affecting healthy gut bacteria. For example, hormonal birth control can cause intestinal hyperpermeability (also known as leaky gut). This then sets the foundation for food sensitivities, skin conditions, and autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s Disease. Not to mention the altered gut bacteria can make you more susceptible to getting yeast infections.
It can damage DNA along with altering the liver on a genetic level.
We still have much to learn about the long term effects of hormonal birth control on the body, but this is one finding (2).

What Happened When I Finally Called it Quits

When I read back on my symptoms, I notice a pattern. I see that I constantly wrote off symptoms as a normal part of being a woman or aging. But trust me girl it’s NOT. As I said earlier, these difficulties we experience as women are COMMON but not NORMAL. There are sooo many things in this world we don’t have control over and it’s up to us to find a balance between letting go and taking action. So when it comes to my health and well-being, I see many opportunities I can take to assist my precious body in the healing process. The transition was difficult for me, and if you are currently transitioning off of birth control or thinking about it, I will write another article on what helped me (and what didn’t help me) through this.

I had extreme fatigue for the first time in my life.
This started around 3-6 months post-pill. For the first time in my life it was difficult to get out of bed. I noticed I was super wide awake at midnight, yet I felt heavy and lethargic when it was time to wake up around 7 or 8 am. I had just moved to Montana from Hawaii so I figured my body was struggling to adapt. However, as I dove deeper into a newer term called Post Birth Control Syndrome, I realized my adrenal glands were way out of whack. Through resting, proper nutrition, and movement I brought this into balance.
I had mood fluctuations.
When you go off the pill, your body re-learns how to make its own hormones again. Each month for 20 months I noticed something different in my body. I noticed my irritable day shifting anywhere from day 7 to 14 and then the second half of my cycle I felt more down and lower energy. I am finally feeling like myself again where I don’t have as much fluctuation. I am finally returning to my Abby-ness of feeling a content, pleasant, and joyful appreciation for this miraculous life.
I had severely painful periods.
I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. And I have such deep sympathy and empathy for women who have conditions such as endometriosis or adenomyosis where you need to alter your schedule and life around your pain.

It first happened around month 4 post-pill. My period came on quickly and suddenly. I was perfectly fine and ready to go to the gym and then suddenly I was on the bathroom floor vomiting, I had diarrhea, and I experienced severe discomfort in my low back and abdomen. My body was contracting and I thought I was having a miscarriage. I thought I needed to go to the ER but I could barely even move or speak. It lasted 2 hours and my temperature fluctuated from excessive heat with sweating to then shivering cold sweat where I couldn’t get my body warm.

On a side note, while backpacking solo through South East Asia for 8 months, I got food poisoning on average once a month. I found myself on concrete floor bathrooms infested with rats with a giant hole in the ground and praying to a god that I didn’t know was there or not and wondering if I would die. Yet those nights in Asia don’t even come close to this period pain.

It turns out hormonal birth control suppresses prostaglandins, which reduces pain. This can be helpful for women who take the pill for painful periods, but for me, the suppressed prostaglandins flooded back with a vengeance post-pill.
I had hair loss.
This sucked. Around months 4-7 post-pill I noticed larger amounts of hair coming off my head in the shower or when I brushed my hair. This can happen during intense hormone fluctuations like post-pill or post pregnancy. Excess testosterone can also be at the root of this.
I had irregular periods.
There were times when I went off the pill in the past and didn’t have this problem. But for some reason this time my body took much longer to go back to normal. My cycles fluctuated from 34-46 days long (the first day you bleed is considered day 1 and anywhere from 22 days to 34 days can be considered normal if it’s consistent).
I had an androgen rebound.
When you stop taking the pill, your body can create excess androgens (male hormones). For me, this manifested in pimples on my upper back. I had never experienced this in my life. The pimples stayed for at least 2 months and then I tried putting fresh spearmint leaves in my water every day for a month and then it went away. This is likely because spearmint can help keep testosterone levels in check.
My fibrocystic breasts and sore boobs slowly went away.
Through proper nutrition and lifestyle I was able to remedy the excess estrogen.
I had a higher sex drive.
Goddess energy is back full power ;)
My food cravings went away.
By working hard to get my hormones back to balance I no longer get intense food cravings.
I gained deep respect for my body.
I’ve learned so frickin’ much about the human body through this process. Therefore, I made a vow to honor and respect my divine feminine. I do this by adding intentional words to daily meditations that focus on putting my health first, along with advancing my yoga studies, and sharing my story so that other humans can be informed. I hope the pain I went through can save someone else from this pain.
I learned more about hormones then I ever could’ve imagined.
I’m so incredibly grateful for the slower pace of life during the pandemic. This allowed me to work less and dive deeper into my inner workings. And I really hope that some of what I discovered over these 2 years can help you in some way on your journey.
I don’t have any more bloating or water retention.
Again, I brought my hormones into balance by assessing each and every day what my body needed- energetically, physically, emotionally, and nutritionally. I’ll write a post in the future about how I balanced my hormones naturally.
I have super soft skin.
I never put on lotion, yet my skin is the most amazing it’s ever felt (despite living in dry Montana). I attribute this to being mindful of my nutritional needs.
I started ovulating for the first time.
Ovulation day is now my favorite day of the month. I look forward to experiencing the changes in my body and connecting with this sacred time. I wish someone would’ve taught me that you can only get pregnant for 6ish days of the month and that I don’t need to take synthetic hormones each day to prevent pregnancy. However, I trust I was meant to go on this journey for a reason.
I learned how to track my cycle, mood, symptoms, and basal body temperature for natural birth control.
This method isn’t for everyone. For me, the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) is sooo interesting and exciting. It takes diligence and consistency. What I learn each month about my body based off my temperature, mood, thoughts, feelings, how my skin feels etc is so frickin’ empowering because I never learned this stuff growing up. I deeply love my body and I want to continue to honor and provide it what it needs.

My Hopes for the Future

I hope for more informed consent from doctors and pharmaceutical companies.
I wish someone would’ve taught me that you can only get pregnant for 6ish days of the month and that I don’t need to take synthetic hormones each day to prevent pregnancy. I wish when I was 14 and struggling with horribly long and painful periods that someone would’ve suggested food and lifestyle options to help me get back into balance. And I wish I would’ve gone to doctors that were able to see the connection between the pill and the symptoms it created in my body.

But none of these things happened. So I truly believe I embarked this difficult journey for a reason. And I see one of those reasons is to share some of my story in hopes this will find the right person.
I hope for doctors to take patients’ concerns and negative experiences seriously.
When I told doctors about my concerns and experiences they said to me, “it’s all in your head”, or “you only look at the negative”, or “well there are plenty of women who don’t experience this…”

In addition to those experiences, my last appointment was spent listening to the doctor talk for 20 minutes on how I should go on the IUD because, “it’s shown that the synthetic hormones in the IUD only circulate in the uterus, rather than throughout the whole body like the pill”. He told me this after I expressed that I had no desire to ever be on hormones ever again. As I patiently waited for my time to speak, I finally said I was interested in the fertility awareness method. He then told me I had to book another appointment to talk about it and I later received a bill for $250……
I hope for women to unite and celebrate each other rather than be jealous of each other.
As women, we’re the carriers of life. We create and deliver humans. We’re powerful as f**k, and we’re also soft and tender. So I hope that as women we can see how similar we are in our struggles. I hope for jealousies and insecurities to stop getting in the way of LIFTING each other up. It’s time for the divine feminine to reunite and be genuinely happy for each others’ wins while feeling compassion for each others’ losses. I trust that humanity will get to this point.
I hope that you hire a doctor that listens to you and considers the whole picture.
I genuinely believe most doctors have good intentions. I see conventional doctors performing miracles and dealing with some CRAZY cases day to day. Each doctor can serve their purpose for different patients. For me, when it comes to everyday health and wellness and getting to the root of my conditions, I find that connecting with nutritionists, naturopathic doctors, holistic life coaches, yoga instructors, traditional chinese medicine practitioners, and searching the heck out of the internet are what allow me to live my best life.

The issue for many is the cost. These holistic practitioners who take thorough time to get to know your entire lifestyle and ask you questions that help you both understand your body may have to come out-of-pocket. However, I just discovered a naturopathic doctor in town who does a sliding scale and does take insurance- so they do exist.
I hope people (not just women on the pill) can understand that what we put in and around our body directly affects our well-being.
Whether it’s the music you choose to listen to, or the people you follow on social media, or the movies you watch, or the thoughts you have in your head, or the way you talk about others, or the laundry detergent you use- this all makes a difference. And to many of us sensitive souls, we FEEL those differences.

Whether you are on the pill and considering going off of it, or if you recently went off the pill and now your body is totally out of whack, I’ll soon write another article on remedies that helped me transition off the pill. This will also include my recipe for a super yummy detox liver tea to help you embrace that goddess within. This cozy drink has been a great coffee substitute and is so frickin’ delicious. I’ll also make a post on my Abby Lee Wellness Instagram page.

I hope this article finds you during a time when you needed it most. Let’s stay connected through Instagram, Facebook, or set up a free 20 minute consult to see if holistic life coaching or yoga is a good fit for you at this time.

In good health,
Abby Lee

Abby Nelson