Browse Personal Stories
I am Kealee Hohmann. A confident, courageous and ambitious woman who works in the construction industry. However, physical appearance does not tell someone exactly who you are or what you have been through. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in May of 2020.
You are sitting on a chair listening to a conversation between two people. One of them is your mentor—a psychologist with a specialty in clinical psychology—and the other is a voluntary participant in a clinical research study.
I have always suffered with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but really hit rock bottom about 5 years ago after my hysterectomy. About 18 years ago after the birth of my first child I suffered some complications. To this day, I can replay every moment - this is when the doctors diagnosed me with PTSD.
PTSD is an invisible monster. It disguises reality. When I was sucked into what I learned to call the trauma vortex, I often couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t. I thought I was going crazy.
There was a time when basic things—like driving, climbing a flight of stairs, taking a shower, or going through the checkout line at the grocery store—landed me somewhere between mortal unease and full-throttle terror. It all began with a single panic attack that seemed to strike out of the blue. Mistaking it for a heart attack, I called an ambulance, but I quickly learned that there is no ambulance for an alarm of the mind.
It is a continuous challenge living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I've suffered from it for most of my life. I can look back now and gently laugh at all the people who thought I had the perfect life. I was young, beautiful, and talented, but unbeknownst to them, I was terrorized by an undiagnosed debilitating mental illness.
I am a middle-aged woman, married with two children. I was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at age 25. I am grateful to say that I have had tremendous support, terrific professional help, a strong will to recover, and a resolve to do whatever work necessary to overcome all of my trauma. Other miraculous help has been my spiritual beliefs and practices.
My struggles with emotional and mental problems began at age 12, when I experienced my first nervous breakdown. At age 20 I was diagnosed with major depression. By the time I was 30 that diagnosis had changed to chronic major depression with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Later, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were added to my diagnoses. At age 40, and after three suicide attempts within two years, my therapist began to suspect that I suffered from bipolar disorder.