Scarleteen

Hi i was wondering how to deal with my pregnacy anxiety and to calm myself down. I have diagnosed anxiety disorder but this kind of freak out is different to me. I had sex one week before my period, still had my period and took a test 3 weeks later and it was negitive so i know the chances are little to none. I normally wouldnt freak out but i have been having spotting and pretty bad breast tenderness. These are both side effects of my birth control i just started taking 2 months ago. My doctor however said its weird im feeling these things? Is it normal to have those issues while taking new birth control? How do i calm myself down? Should i test again?

Are you currently getting any support, like therapy or counseling, for your anxiety? This is something you could being up with your support person or team. Even if you haven't specifically had pregnancy-related anxiety before, the same sorts of tools you use to handle other sources of anxiety could help here, so if you have strategies for dealing with other things that make you anxious you could try to apply them here as well. For example, I'm not sure what in particular might calm you down but other people might find that physical activity like exercise or dance, relaxing hobbies like meditation, writing, or crafting, making sure they aren't seeking out pregnancy horror stories online, etc. are helpful in a case like this.
If you aren't currently getting any sort of in-person support for your anxiety, is that something you'd like any help looking for?

I'm not sure why your doctor said spotting and breast tenderness were odd; those are both symptoms that people do sometimes have when starting a hormonal birth control method. How comfortable are you in the effectiveness of your current birth control? If you aren't doing this already, would you maybe feel better using a second method like condoms as well, so you have two forms of birth control active at once?

I'm going to leave you with a link to all of our Pregnancy Scare Resources which do have information on anxiety, different birth control options, and when/how to take a pregnancy test.

I am going to start therapy in the next month or so for anxiety and have tried medicine but none of that works. It was my dermo that put me on this birth control for ance purposes but didnt seem too knowledgable about it. I think i might just stop taking the birth control and see if the side effects go away because then it will ease my mind. Maybe i can start it again when im in a better mental place all i do is google constantly am i pregnant when i know im not for hours and scare myself

One thing we know for sure is that that sort of fear-googling isn't going to help; it's actively hurtful and feeding your anxiety to do that. So, first off, the best thing you can do for yourself is take a break from doing that! Set yourself a reminder if you need to; if you find yourself going down that rabbithole, step away from the internet at all for a while. The internet can't tell you if you're pregnant; only a pregnancy test can do that.

If you want to stop taking your birth control, you definitely can! It sounds like if you want to take it again in the future, it might help to ask the doctor more questions about it, or go through a gynecologist who's more likely to be well-informed. Birth control pills aren't uncommon as an acne treatment, so many gynecologists can likely talk to you about the pill from that angle as well.
If you do that, it's a good idea to talk to your partner about alternate birth control options, or about holding off on sex until you've gotten past the worst of this pregnancy-related anxiety.

Thank you so much!

You're welcome!