Okay, ladies, how do you deal with hormones?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I recently got the go-ahead to go off DepoProvera and onto the pill. I’m fairly happy with the change, except for a couple of things:

  1. I still haven’t started bleeding yet and it’s the third month in (though that’s not what I’m worried about right now).

  2. THE EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER.

Jeez, I mean, I think I recall having mood swings on the pill before being on Depo, but I don’t remember it being like this.

Here’s an example: last night I was watching my husband watch TV. I don’t really like TV all that much - I feel like it sucks away too much precious time - time that I could be spending walking in the sun, reading, rolling around in bed with my husband, etc. But my husband loves TV. He gets hypnotized by it, so much so that if he happens to be walking by a TV and a show comes on, even if it’s a show he hates, he’ll stand there, transfixed for up to a half hour. Anyway, so I’m watching my husband watch TV. I’m thinking “We haven’t had sex for like a week and a half. Oh, my God. A week and a half.” Which is a normal thought, I suppose. But it lost its normality when all of a sudden, it veered off into: “A week and a half. Oh, no! I must be so fat that he doesn’t want to have sex with me. He’s probably completely repulsed. No wonder he doesn’t want to have sex - he’s not attracted to me anymore! So now he’d rather watch TV than have sex, or even talk to me!” So I ask my husband if he still finds me attractive. He blinks, then says, “What??! Of course I do!” Then I start crying and asking why he likes watching TV more than he likes having sex with me. He patiently explains to me that we’ve both been ridiculously busy these last weeks. Both of our cars conked out at the same time, we’ve had to work on his immigration papers, we’ve both had other work-related things to do. So it makes sense that we just haven’t had time to have sex, and now we’re just sitting on the couch, unwinding after dinner. See? I know this intellectually, but…

You can see where this is going, right? So, three hours later, he manages to calm me down and we fall asleep. This morning, he goes to work like normal, and I shower. By the time I get out of the shower I have once again convinced myself that I must be so repulsive my husband doesn’t want to have sex with me. For a while, I sat here, diligently reminding myself that we’ve both been busy and exhausted, this isn’t a reflection on how he feels about me, and that perhaps the best solution is to simply limit our TV watching time. But part of me is just not buying it. This part of me doesn’t exist or lies dormant for three weeks out of a 28 day pill cycle. But it sure the hell is awake now. And it’s telling me I’m unattractive to my husband. It’s also making me cry at insurance commercials, and get vaguely irritated when people can’t read my mind.

So, I’m hoping someone can tell me: WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED HERE? Ladies, what do you do when this kind of stuff happens to you? Do you warn your SO to run for cover, then flip out, eat a pint of ice cream, what?? Throw me a friggin bone here. I haven’t had to deal with hormones like this for a good three years, and now I find myself sobbing for no reason and thinking, “Hmmm, that soy sauce looks awful tasty. I wonder what it tastes like on chocolate.” HELP!!!

2

IAMAD, but one will be past shortly=)

I would say that you are feeling the swings particularly strongly because you havent had them for 3 years…

I get a bit weepy for a few days just before, like watching the mammoth wall painting scene in Ice Age will get me crying, or things like that. I can have a bit of a hot temper as well…and food cravings.

I try to deal with being weepy, and mrAru tries not to get me peeved and I make sure to have lowcarb mint chocolate chip icecream or low carb chocolate candy on hand, along with garlic-herb cream cheese [i NEED it stuffed into celery] a bit of brie, and plenty of nuts [macadamias, almonds, cashews and pumpkin seeds] and I take a good vitamin as well as coQ-10 to deal with craving issues

3

IANAD either, but I have been a little bit hormonally unbalanced at times. (And I think Aveguy at work just had a sudden urge to roll his eyes and he doesn’t know why. A little bit? Heh.)

The thing is, it’s so hard to talk yourself out of it, and you just can’t reason with wierd emotions like that. You can only sit on them a bit until reinforcements show up. But sometimes if you can distract yourself away form them long enough, they lose power to nag at you when you remember them again.

One thing that helped me was a bit of aromatherapy. I have a Green Tea hand lotion that I love, and I use when I need a bit of distraction from my thoughts. Hand lotion works well for me because rubbing it into my hands gets me doing something besides sitting there brooding.

So, consider scented candles, inscense, hand or foot lotion, or even just a little cinnamon in a pan of water on the stove. Do you have any fruit? Oranges, or apples or whatever would work too. I love the scent of oranges on my hands from peeling an orange. It’s nice. The smell helps calm my mood.

Good luck to you.

4

I don’t have any solutions for you, but will share my own experience.

The pill didn’t bother me. Not the Triphasil I was taking. I didn’t notice anything different. but when I was switched to Orthotricyclin or however you spell it…

forget it. I was a nutcase. and it wasn’t the crying kind of nut case either. It was more like the violent kind.

Like the littlest thing anyone said set me off and I wanted to rip someone’s head off.

Heh.

After three months, it went away. So maybe your pills are too strong? sometimes that happens. Or just talk to your doc about it next time you go and see what he/she suggests.

5

Overlyverbose, I was with you all the way up til the soy sauce/chocolate combo - which just sounds like a bad idea (…to me!).

Seriously though, I get the same way, but I haven’t noticed it being much different since I’ve been on the pill. If anything, it’s probably gotten better. I’ve been on the pill for several years now though, so I may just be forgetting what it was like when I first started it.

Like Ave, I have a hard time talking myself out of it. Even if things are going perfectly fine in my life, it won’t feel that way no matter what I say to myself. And if my SO tries “talking me out of it” he’ll get an earload!

Give it some time - I feel for you. (and for me, and for whoever has to deal with us) :wink:

(sorry if this post is poorly worded, it’s late and I can’t sleep)

6

I’ve been going through this myself recently, having just come of the Depo, and onto nothing else. Just me and the natural hormones my body produces. And good God its awful. I become a total emotional wreck. I will cry at anything, I will rage at anyone who even pisses me off slightly.

How do I deal with it? Chocolate, and salty things. Mainly salty things. Crisps and the like you perverts! And luckily, I know, intellectually that its only going to last a day or so, that gets me through. I tend to sit at my desk, playing loud music through my earphones, which the rest of my office takes as a sign I don’t want to be disturbed. Oh, and I tend to stomp.

7

I can relate to this 100%. I’ve tried Ortho Tricyclen, Mircette, Nuvaring, and Yasmin. All of them gave me the exact same symptoms, and the firm belief that I was no longer attractive to my partner. It was ridiculous. One day I’d be a raging psycho beast, and the next I’d be weeping over the fact I hadn’t had sex with my fiance in a week. Hmmm - think my violent mood swings may have had anything to do with it?

Unfortunately, the only thing that made a difference for me was stopping the pills. I have a clotting disorder, and taking the pill caused me to have a DVT, which could lead to a fatal pulmonary emobolism and a host of other fun things. The best thing I can suggest is to wait it out for three months, and if the symptoms haven’t abated, see your doctor to switch pills. If no pill works, there are always other methods of birth control.

8

You see? I’m the opposite. On the pill - pretty much like being on mild prozac, level not swingy. Off the pill - crying at traffic lights and wondering if chocolate is good on french fries (actually not as bad as it sounds).

But what sent me to hell was fertility drugs. Raving psycho mondobitch. I didn’t even realize it, I just thought the world was populated by really stupid people that had to be shown the errors of their ways. My boss finally sat me down and asked, as delicately as he could, how long I was planning to keep up the fertility treatments. (This of course sent me into a 20 minute diatribe about the stupidity of doctors and men in general.) Then my boss told me that I was making my co-workers cry. (This of course made me bawl like a baby.) All that and never did get pregnant.

What works best for me is calcium. Specifically yoghurt is very calming for me when hormones start making me climb the walls. Good Luck. I hope yours settle down soon.

9

Thank you so much for all the suggestions! I’m just glad to know that, while I do appear to be going insane, it might not last for too terribly long. I suppose that, given my options, I would rather be slightly insane. When I was on Depo I felt like I was stuck in a huge emotional black hole, capable only of feeling anger. Now I’ve got the happiness, but along with it comes this weird Jeckel & Hyde personality that, fortunately, only surfaces for a few days per month.

My husband was so sweet to me last night - he came home and said we were outlawing TV for the night. He rubbed my back, made me dinner, and generally took care of me a lot. Of course, it made me cry because he was so sweet. :rolleyes: Poor guy doesn’t deal well with tears of any sort.

10

I hide, but when I’m on the pill (right now I’m on Mircette, second month, so far it’s wonderful!) I only get bitchy for a couple of days. Off the pill, it’s closer to a week. So I hide as much as I can and once my period starts I’m fine.

You might want to try a different pill or two before you give up on pills altogether, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had problems with horrible headaches during my periods on two previous ones before the Mircette. So far, I’m not getting the headaches. knocking wood furiously

I won’t try Depo because of the three-months-in-your-system thing. Also, because I had a good friend who got pregnant on it, though I know no BC is absolute. But mostly because I don’t want to find out what three months of hormonal bitchiness might be like.

11

I have just recently changed brands and feel a whole shit load better than I did. I was on a UK brand called Diannette when I moved over to the states (it was recommended for my PCOS) but I was warned that it could make me a “little depressed”. Holy crap there were a few months back there where I almost quit my job because I was so down. Everyone at work stayed the hell out of my way and I would quite often go home everynight and bawl like a baby and eat everything I could get my hands on. It was so bad that I considered anti-depressants. However I was due for my annual check-up ( I now live in the US) and as the brand is not available over here I had to change. I am now on Yasmin and amazingly I feel so much better. Change brands if you aren’t happy is the best advice I can give.