Hi friends, welcome back to a new episode of the Awaken Together podcast.
I'm Kat and it'll be just me today.
I am going to be talking with you about a topic that is really, really prevalent in
my life and has been for the past year.
That's why I'm calling this episode Gas Lit by Birth Control.
So really this episode has been a full year in the making.
I decided to get off of hormonal birth control last June and I'd say the reasons were because
I'd heard a couple friends talk about their journey getting off of it, all the health
benefits that they experienced, just the shifts and the beauty that comes with just being
in sync with your natural rhythms and your body's internal cycles.
And just hearing all these sorts of things in the wellness world kind of piqued my interest.
And while I'm not looking to have kids anytime this year, anytime immediately in the near
future, and I wasn't obviously last year either, I decided to take this next step with Kyle,
with my husband, and just see what my body can do in terms of regulating itself and getting
these hormones out of my body, getting these synthetic things to give my body the best
fighting chance.
Kids are still something that we're talking about, but haven't locked in on a when or
a what, but that's something maybe down the line that I'll be ready to talk about later.
So a couple things that I experienced, I was on birth control for 15 years, not straight
the whole time.
I was on it for I think like three years in high school, and then I got off of it freshman
year of college because I was like, I am not going to have sex until I am with a serious
partner, until I have a boyfriend again, because I've just been burned by some guys and I was
feeling just not great about my choices and how they treated me after we had had sex.
And you know, it wasn't even one offs, which even if it was like, there's nothing wrong
with that.
But it just seemed to kind of change the relationship.
So I decided to get off of it and again, just see what my body would do.
And I didn't get my period for nine months.
So that was my first time getting off of it after having been on it for three years.
This was fresh or this was sophomore year of college, actually.
It was when I was next door neighbors with Kyle, we had just met.
And it was about May when we started like hooking up.
And I decided to get back on the pill.
But right around then is when I finally got my period after not getting it for nine months.
So kind of crazy.
I think that's just kind of how my body reacts to this sort of stuff.
Maybe a little preview of what's to come this past time.
So yeah, I got back on it.
It was 2011.
And so yeah, I'd been on it for 12 years since then.
So a really long freaking time.
I didn't really know what would happen when I got off it.
But I just, you know, I kind of took it into my own hands.
Also one other important thing for me to mention is my experience while being on the pill,
because I hear a lot of people say that they chose to get off the pill because they had
all sorts of awful side effects.
And that's just so crappy, right?
Because I feel like a lot of doctors have people get on the pill because of bad side
effects and kind of just acts like a bandaid rather than saying, oh, do the hard work of
changing your diet, changing your exercise, limiting environmental toxins, switching up
your beauty care routine.
Like, oh, well, here's this one size fits all thing.
And let's just get you on hormonal birth control.
And that'll clear your acne.
That'll make you lose weight.
That'll clear your headaches, like all sorts of crazy false promises that sometimes do
happen for people.
And sometimes it actually goes the other way and it just gets worse for me.
I guess I was maybe, maybe lucky, maybe not lucky because I stayed on it for so long.
But I had a pretty good experience on the hormonal birth control pill.
I felt really steady in my emotions.
I didn't have any acne.
I didn't have any cramps before like getting on the pill either.
I had like normal amounts.
I didn't have any issues with my period, with my skin.
So I wasn't getting on it to fix things.
But yeah, once I got on it, I felt just really steady and it went well.
The one side effect that I thought was a side effect, because about a year, I'd say after
being back on it, my sex drive just kind of dwindled and this was a new relationship,
right?
So Kyle was a bit frustrated and I was frustrated with myself too because I'm like, what is
going on?
Like, here's my partner who I love, who I'm very attracted to.
And I just didn't feel like doing it pretty much ever.
I would never get this spontaneous arousal that a lot of my friends would talk about.
And I just thought there was something wrong with me.
So I remember at one point I had gone to the doctor, which was my primary care, and I had
brought that up.
And she said, hey, like, I don't think this is normal.
I used to have like a healthy sex drive and now it's just kind of gone away.
And she kind of like said, she dismissed me.
You know, she said, oh no, like that doesn't happen on birth control.
So it wouldn't be the pill.
Maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's your relationship.
Maybe it's you.
And that felt like total shit because I was just questioning like, what?
This is me?
Is this maybe my partner?
Like, am I not attracted to him?
And it just stirred up a whole lot of things.
And I have since learned that, yes, hormonal birth control does very much affect sex drive
for a lot of people.
So thanks to that doctor.
So yeah, that was my experience.
It's unique to me as well.
Everything I'm going to be sharing in this episode is unique to me.
It's not going to be the same for everyone.
But most of the women who I have spoken to over the past year, as I've been going through
this journey, have experienced at least some of the same elements as me.
So let's take it all the way back to last June.
It was, I was at Electric Forest and I was contemplating like just finishing this cycle
and then like not refilling my prescription.
And that being kind of it.
So to my surprise, I actually lost my pill one day when I was there.
I couldn't find it for the life of me.
I knew it was somewhere, but I looked everywhere in my tent, in my fanny pack, in all the pockets
of my bags, and I just could not find it.
So I took this as a sign that it was just time for me to get off of it.
So that's what I did.
And after doing research and what I know now, it is recommended to complete the pack, complete
the cycle that you're on, just to give your body that sense of familiarity when it's not
expecting something.
You know, you just want to give yourself a leg up.
But I just did it.
I hadn't talked to my doctor.
I'd done some research online, but I just kind of did it and it was fine.
There was a couple days later, I had like a withdrawal bleed and there was some spotting
and some cramping for a couple days, but really everything was fine for a little while.
Also one thing that I think is really interesting that I've since learned is on hormonal birth
control, you actually do not have a period.
You're like, what?
Yes, I do bleed.
No, so period as in the sense of like a traditional cycle where you ovulate, you have your follicular
phase, you have your luteal phase and you get your period.
That doesn't happen.
Like none of those things happen.
So it's just like baseline, like one hormone, which is much more, not one hormone, just
like kind of flatlined.
And this is much more similar to the male hormone cycle from what I've learned.
And feel free to fact check me on any of this.
I'm not a doctor.
Clearly some doctors don't even know about this, but yeah, I'm just taking this in my
own hands to educate myself.
So yeah, fascinating thing.
When you bleed on your period, it's actually a withdrawal bleed, which is why there are
certain types of birth control that you don't get your period at all because there really
isn't a need to get your period when you are on the pill because you're not ovulating.
So just kind of crazy.
Thought I'd throw that out there.
So that's what happened back in June of last year.
Had that withdrawal bleed.
Everything was fine.
I felt pretty normal in July, but I didn't get my period.
And I was kind of expecting that because remember the last time I got off the birth control
pill all those years ago, I didn't get my period for nine months.
Now when I was in college, I was exercising a lot.
I was partying, not sleeping a lot.
And so at this phase in my life, I was sure that it wouldn't take nine months to get it
back because I was treating my body a lot better and just feeling better in my body.
So it didn't come in July, but I didn't really get worried.
By August, I started experiencing some hormonal changes.
There were some breakouts, but like nothing crazy.
No real difference in my appetite.
But my moods were way out of whack.
I attended one of my good friends' Red Tent Circles.
And a Red Tent Circle is a space where women, womb carriers are welcome to gather.
It goes back to many, many years ago when certain cultures would actually do this.
If you've read the book, I believe it's called The Red Tent.
I haven't read it, but I've kind of just learned about it through friends who have and who
shared with me about it.
But yeah, so my friend Courtney, she has these amazing circles.
If you're local in Denver, definitely check her out.
Her Instagram's The Well and The Wheel.
And these are really magical days where we just gather.
She is an herbalist.
She serves amazing different tea blends for depending where you are on your cycle, there's
a different tea blend to help support you through that phase and just make you feel
all yummy and they taste delicious.
So she was kind of educating us in this first Red Tent Circle.
And I learned just about the natural things that happen within each cycle of our cycles,
within each different segment of it.
So different moods that happen, different sensations in your body, your energy levels.
And I'd heard about this before, but this was the first time this was really broken
down for me.
And I think that in itself is pretty freaking wild.
Like we had health class, sure.
We learned about periods and sex and protection, but we didn't learn as women, as womb carriers,
what the heck happens in our bodies and why we feel certain ways throughout the month.
So I just learned so much and it brought up a lot for me because at this point I wasn't
cycling like normal and I just felt not healthy because of it.
I was putting all of these judgments on myself and having a hard time with that.
But also I was just feeling more depressed, more anxious, more hard on myself.
After running my own business for a year and a half and just really focusing on my self
care and guiding other people through their holistic health and healing journeys, I was
pretty taken aback when all of these old thoughts and feelings that felt kind of foreign at
this point were seeping back in.
And that was really, really freaky.
I remember like crying in this red tent circle and just sharing how I just didn't feel like
myself and I didn't know who this version of me off birth control was.
So that continued on through September and it all kind of came to a head in early October.
So last October Jen and I led one of our amazing witch retreats in St. Augustine, Florida.
And it was freaking incredible, but I was definitely PMSing and low energy through it.
And even like after I got back, it felt like PMDD, which if you're not familiar, I might
butcher it, but basically premenstrual depressive disorder is what I think it stands for.
And it's like PMS on crack basically.
And you get really, really down and just, yeah, people can dip into pretty dark places
during those times.
Some people have suicidal ideation, like really, really hard times.
And this happens to some women, some people monthly, and there are resources for this.
So I mean, if you're hearing about this and it resonates, I definitely recommend doing
some research, talking with your doctor about it because my friend Courtney, she's one of
those people who had that and identified it and sought out help and is doing so much better.
So there's help out there.
But it was interesting after being around so many women all weekend and just vibing
with everybody's hormones, there were some people on their periods, there were some people
not, I finally got my first period on October 13th after almost four months of not having
a period since I got off birth control.
And it was super light.
It was one day, I think, and then spotting.
And the reason I remember it was October 13th, I didn't just remember this, but I looked
back on my natural cycles birth control app.
I have been using that as well as the Oura ring to track my cycle and I've learned so
freaking much.
I cannot recommend these two tools more to anybody who's looking to take this next step
in getting off birth control.
Or even if you're not on birth control, it's taught me so much about my body, about my
temperature.
That's how it kind of tracks your cycle is your temperature.
And yeah, I just feel so much more in touch now.
But basically, I looked back, saw October 13th, and that's how I'm remembering all of
this.
So that was cool.
I was pretty stoked, finally had a period, it wasn't bad.
And then after that, I had some relief, right?
I was back in my follicular phase and I could actually identify where I was for the first
time.
So it continued this way through November.
And then my energy kind of started to dip at the end of November.
Then early December, I slipped again into like that PMDD depressive state just like I
had been in October.
And it was really, really hard.
I just remember like a lot of anxiety.
Like I wouldn't even touch weed at that time, because it would just give me crippling anxiety
when that wasn't my experience in the past.
And it's not my experience now.
Like I'll have an edible a week or something.
I have a Thursday night ritual with myself where I'll have an edible.
After work, Kyle has his men's group.
So it's just me at home, me and Minnie, and I'll put on like a Netflix show and just laugh.
And it's great.
And then I'll talk to Kyle about his men's group stuff when he gets home.
And it's lovely.
But I was not doing this at that time because it just felt like way too much.
So then in early December, my women's group that I'm a part of here in Denver, we decided
to have a group mushroom trip just with our circle.
And it was like super intentional.
And we cleared the space.
We all set intentions and we opened it up.
We pulled cards.
We shared our intentions.
It was really, really beautiful.
But thinking back to it, it was a really hard trip for me, like the hardest trip I've ever
had, which kind of makes sense with where I was hormonally, knowing all of this, right?
In hindsight, I remember thinking like a lot of anxiety thinking about Kyle coming back
because the guys, our husbands and partners, a lot of them, they were out together while
we were doing this.
And we knew that eventually they were going to come back.
But I just like got anxiety about seeing him, which then made me judge myself because I'm
like, why am I getting anxiety about seeing my partner?
And it was just crazy for me to think that.
And so then I excused myself from the group and I picked up my journal and I sat myself
down by the kitty litter, I remember.
And I just journaled.
And even looking back at my handwriting, it was chaotic.
I was like sobbing, writing and just feeling my feels, being with them.
Because if you've taken any plant medicine, you probably know that suppressing those feelings
doesn't work.
You have to kind of ride the wave and go with it.
So that's what I did.
And then this was actually really, really good fuel for Kyle and I's conversations.
And I also met with my therapist and we brought this up in couples therapy.
And so I'm really actually grateful for the experience, even though it was super hard
in the moment, because it brought up a lot of clarity down the line once I was able to
kind of sift through it.
So after that, I got my second period.
You can probably assume this is where it was going with those moods.
It was on December 13th.
Isn't that interesting?
Exactly two months after my first period off the pill.
So two months had gone by.
And again, it wasn't a bad period.
It was light.
It was maybe a day.
And then I started to feel better after.
But something interesting that I learned in all of my research of periods and cycling
and getting off birth control pill is that every month a different ovary ovulates and
bleeds.
And so what kind of looking back, I didn't realize this when I was going through it.
But now that I have the data in my natural cycles app from being hooked to the ordering,
by the way, they're not sponsoring me, but it would be great if they did.
Actually I gleamed that one of my ovaries wasn't ovulating, wasn't shedding, wasn't
bleeding because it was like that perfect 60 days.
No doctor has told me this, but this is kind of just what I've gathered.
And if you pay really close attention each month when you are ovulating, when you're
getting your period, you might even be able to feel which side it is.
There might just be a little bit more discomfort, a little bit more like stuff going on on that
side.
So fun little reflection for you there.
But yeah, so that was December.
And in December I started listening to the book Beyond the Pill by Dr. Jolene Brighton.
It had come recommended to me by a bunch of different sources.
And so I finally I decided to listen to it and I learned so freaking much.
Oh my gosh.
Did you know that oftentimes when people get off hormonal birth control, they will not
be attracted to their partner anymore?
So this is an extreme example, but and this wasn't the case for me luckily, but say someone
gets on hormonal birth control and then they meet their partner after that some at some
point.
What happens with your senses is they are actually affected and the pheromones, the
hormones that you smell and that you take in from your partner, they're kind of registered
in your brain a different way while on hormonal birth control because the hormones that you're
pumping into yourself, the synthetic ones, they affect that whole reading in the brain.
So say you're with the same partner, then you get off birth control pill that might
be affected and I'm not saying this to raise the alarms.
I'm saying this because the more you know, right?
And to validate people if this has happened to you and you're noticing a shift there,
like it's not your fault.
Here's one way like that it might be the cause of so.
So yeah, that was wild.
I reached out to my doctor after listening to the audio book, highly recommend it again,
and she recommended that I start taking a supplement.
She recommended Mayo and Dichiro and Naucetil.
It is a big crazy fancy word.
It's a couple of words, but basically it's this specific type of sugar that is said to
have like, there's some data, some things that have proven that it helps balance out
hormones and cycles and all of that.
So I did some research, checked out my doctor, doctor recommended to me.
I got it off Amazon.
Honestly, I think it was a 60 day kind of bottle.
So I took that.
It was four pills daily.
And then I also purchased the hormone balancing supplements that Dr. Jolene Brighton from
the author from Beyond the Pill recommended as well.
There's like a little quiz in the book that you can kind of decide and tell which hormones
might be out of whack for you.
And so based on that, I found, I think it was called hormone balancing was the one that
I took.
So I started taking these in early January and I tried to kind of put some of the things
into motion that I learned from the book, like coffee before food in the morning.
I tried to eat something in the morning before having my caffeine because that really messes
with your cortisol levels and cortisol is a hormone and that can affect everything else.
I really continued my healthy rituals of moving my body, getting a nice walk in in the morning,
walking my dog, meditating, practicing yoga.
I also decided to do some athletic greens.
So I asked my brother for that for Christmas.
And so I was on athletic greens for a couple of months.
And yeah, basically that was January.
Kept going this way.
I didn't get my period for January or February.
So the next period I actually got was March 1st.
And that two months trend was still going.
So one side, it seems like it wasn't cycling.
So after I ran out of those supplements, I decided not to restock because it didn't seem
like there was much of a change.
Although they do say that it takes about three months of taking natural supplements consistently
for them to show effect.
So maybe they did work because my next cycle was a little bit closer to normal.
I got my period after that on April 28th.
And throughout that time, it seemed like my moods were like leveling off a bit.
So that was really nice.
And one massive, massive thing that I can trace this to is in March, I actually started
eating meat again.
I went Pescatarian back in 2018.
So it had been five years, as of May this year, that I just cut meat out.
I was in Hawaii.
I had a creepy piece of chicken and I said, that's it.
Something snapped in my brain.
And I said, I'm not eating meat anymore.
But in March this year, I had heard from a couple of friends, a couple other people in
my community that they started, and also from Beyond the Pill, the book, that meat actually
can help with regulating your cycle.
And so there was this part of me that really didn't want to believe it and really didn't
want to do that.
I felt like I was selling out in a way.
Sounds so crazy to say now, but we all have these parts in us that's really resistant.
And it was like an ego part that was really closely tied with being a Pescatarian and
not eating meat.
And like certain kinds of meats creep me out still, and it is a lot of a texture thing,
but it's also the animals and the kindness and not eating death.
So that was hard for me to kind of just try again.
I started small.
I started with bacon.
It's like the gateway meat, right?
So some bacon, the occasional bite of sausage if Kyle was eating it, and then slowly added
back in turkey and like a couple of bites of chicken here and there.
Although chicken has been like really hard for me.
So I don't know if I'll stick with chicken, but I've always been eating eggs, always been
eating fish, but it didn't seem to be enough.
So I mean, in March, that first period, March 1st, second period after that, April 28th,
the biggest change in that timeframe was me eating meat again.
So I was like, okay, I guess I'll keep this going.
I also at this point started noticing more big changes in myself.
I was actually starting to feel sexual desire spontaneously again for the first time in
like 15 years.
And I listened, I worked on a couple of things.
I listened to the book, Tell Me What You Want, which I think I referenced a couple episodes
ago when Jen and I were talking about the episode about sex.
It was like something I was really focusing on.
So sure, maybe parts of that were the meats and the changes, the leveling off of my hormones.
Maybe I, and I have a hunch that at least some of this was an effect of me also working
on shame and myth busting all sorts of beliefs and confronting different ideologies about
myself and just really embracing them, talking about them with Kyle in couples therapy, doing
this work on my own, reflecting around my own desires.
And there were some pretty interesting shifts.
Like I came to realize and learn that I'm like more gender fluid in desires and had
really good conversations with Kyle about it, who dubbed it my second puberty.
This whole time of my life as my second puberty, because I'm just learning about myself and
I feel like a little teenager of like, do I like this?
Is this weird?
Is this me?
Is this for me?
Do what?
What?
Who do I like?
Like, what do I like?
And it's just been a freaking wild time, but it was crazy, right?
That was a lot.
And this is where it gets wild.
After continuing all of this with these shifts, with the meat, with the work on myself, with
the hormones seemingly like coming to normal, having a normal sexual desire.
And I say normal with quotes on either end, because what is normal really?
But I got my period on June 1st after the last one on April 28th, which was a 34 day
cycle, which is still in what they say a normal cycle is.
And so this was my first normal cycle.
It was almost, it was almost a freaking year, almost a year.
It was June.
So I got off of it June, 2022.
I got my first normal cycle June, 2023.
And so here I am like, did me bring on my cycle?
Like what brought on my cycle?
Questioning all the things, but I'm sure it was all the things, right?
All the things.
I don't think it was just one thing, but I'm just really, really grateful that I got to
this point and where I am now.
So almost exactly a whole year in from when I got off hormonal birth control, I'm feeling
amazing.
I feel in sync with my energy levels and what's going on in my body and my mind.
I can pinpoint so much of this to my cycle.
And really like we are magical cyclical beings as women and womb carriers.
Truly.
While it felt so random when I'd bleed after looking it up in my natural cycles and checking
out every date of the start of my period, I'm freaking blown away because every single
period while they felt crazy random, every single period started on a waxing gibbous
moon.
Like what?
It's just, it blows my mind.
So I got the Stardust app because one of my friends also recommended that and it is a
really fun app where there's some astrology mixed in and it's just like visually appealing
as well, but some spiritual elements too.
So we love it.
And basically with my cycle of how I bleed very close to the full moon, they kind of
just bucket me in with bleeding on the full moon.
That is under their category of the red witch, which is the healer type, the wise type, the
shaman type, which is just really cool and I feel like I resonate with that.
So wild, wild, wild.
That's where I'm at now.
I feel like I can pinpoint my energy levels.
I am now in my luteal phase, which I'm not thrilled about because Electric Forest starts
on Wednesday.
When you hear this episode, it will be Friday.
I will be at Electric Forest, my happy place in Michigan, frolicking through the woods.
So it just sent me some good energy if you'd like, but I wish I was in my follicular phase
because that's where we're like, we're ovulation, we're feeling our best, we're super energized,
but I can't change it.
And I'm just going to try my darndest to honor my sleepiness and just be with it and do all
the good things for myself and try not to be too hard or stringent on the shoulds.
I just try to be present.
So one important detail that I realized I left out is what I have been doing for birth
control since not trying to get pregnant and being off the pill.
So what we've been doing, and I know this might be crazy to some people, we have been
using condoms every single time for the past year.
And you know, it's not my favorite, but if it's preventing children and it's keeping
Kyle comfortable with all of it, we'll keep doing it for a bit.
He's basically said, we'll keep using condoms until your cycle levels out and it becomes
more predictable because you can only get pregnant six days out of an entire month,
out of your entire cycle.
And so when you have a normal predictable cycle and you're tracking it through your
temperature through natural cycles or some other app, then you can literally know when
you can have sex without protection and when you should use protection if you're not trying
to get pregnant.
So we're going to get to that point.
I'm really thrilled because this cycle is even more quote unquote normal than anyone
previously.
It's predicting that I'll get my period on June 28th, which is a waxing gibbous, of course.
So I'm feeling just really good about that.
That'll probably be like a 27, 28 day cycle, which, you know, it's a range, but that is
kind of what we hear most commonly as like a classic traditional cycle is 28 days.
So that's a lot.
I'm sure you might have questions, things to share.
I'd love, love, love to hear from you all.
Hopefully brightens both Jen and I's days and makes this all feel so impactful and worth
it time wise when we hear for you and how everything's resonating.
So if you have any questions, you can find me on Instagram.
I am Katerina underscore Erickson, or you can find and or you can find our podcast Instagram
at Awaken Together podcast.
Thank you all so much for listening, for being here.
I love you so much and can't wait to hear your thoughts.
I will talk to you next time.
Bye.