If the Pill really has been increasing my anxiety, then could much of the past 13 years of emotional turbulence have been avoided simply by switching my birth control?

In rare cases, she said, women have gone off the Pill and found that things they’d felt certain of — like their work-life balance or their choice of partner—suddenly felt wrong. “There are women who built their whole lives when they were on the Pill, and they go off it and don’t know what to do because they feel like they don’t recognize it — they built a life that they don’t want anymore.”

Then again, a similar fraction of women see improvements in mood on the Pill, particularly those who suffer from PMS or premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

Dr. Sarah Hill, a professor of psychology at Texas Christian University and the author of the popular-science book This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, w

To treat the clot postpartum, the doctors wanted to prescribe an FDA Category X drug to treat the clot -- it's so dangerous for pregnancy that women often choose to be sterilized before they take it. They told me that my clotting disorder means I should not have any more children, because of the risk that pregnancy poses to my health. I didn't want them to think I was religious for fear of what they'd think of me, but when I hinted at the question of using Natural Family Planning (a method for spacing children that the Church deems morally acceptable), they laughed. Someone with my condition had to use contraception, they said. There was no choice. Fatigued by the constant pain, overwhelmed by medical bills that were piling up by the thousands, I began to slide back away from this religion, tumbling down a slope that ended back in atheism. I hadn't minded changing in the sense of not using the f-word so much, but this was a whole different ballgame. To stick with the Church now would be to lose my life as I knew it, and to set out down an unfamiliar, frightening path. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to the basics of the way I'd been taught to work through problems since childhood. My dad, my parent from whom I got my religious views (or lack thereof), had not raised me to be an atheist as much as he'd raised me to seek truth fearlessly. "Never believe something because it's convenient or it makes you feel good," he'd always say. "Ask yourself: 'Is this true?'" And so I set everything else aside, and clung to the simple question: What is true? I quickly realized then that that was not in question, and hadn't been for a while. For weeks now, I had known on an intellectual level that I believed what the Church taught. What stalled me had not been a hesitation of whether or not it was true; it had been a hesitation of not wanting to sacrifice too much. I had no idea how things would work out. I thought there was a fair chance that this step would lead us to financial ruin, and may even take a serious toll on my health. But I decided, for the first time in a long time, to choose what was true instead of what was comfortable. Joe and I signed up to begin the formation process at our parish church. And, in the first statement of faith I'd ever made, I told my doctors that I would not use contraception, because I was Catholic. ### After that moment, a bunch of fortuitous events occurred that smoothed the way for us to become Catholic. A series of windfalls gave us the money we needed to manage our medical bills. After they got over their initial shock at encountering someone who wouldn't contracept, my doctors came up with creative solutions to keep me healthy.

Women also have more access to birth control, more control over their reproductive lives, all good things.

Petrie-Flom Center