Evicting the demons: Self-harm, self-awareness, and self-advocation

I just got off the phone with my doctor who told me to stop taking my hormonal birth control immediately after I confessed to her the explosive rage and frequent self-harm compulsion I’ve been having over the last week.

I’d been off the pill for eight months due to my surgery but had to go back on it to control my endometriosis, a mass of cells the size of an almond squatting on my ovary and causing shooting pain. The high levels of estrogen I’d been on in the previous year made it practically...