I became a mom at 15, and served in the army for more than 20 years. I've learned that PTSD looks different for women.

• Dr. Sonja Stribling served in the Army for 21 years, including three combat tours.
• After serving in Iraq, she experienced PTSD and a traumatic brain injury.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Sonja Stribling. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up fast because I always felt that I had to protect myself. When I gave birth to my first child at 15, doctors strapped me to the table. I didn't know enough to tell them to stop. Only later did I realize how traumatizing that was.

Two years later, I was raped and left for dead. After the rape, I didn't get any counseling. One day I saw my attacker at a gas station. My mother said I'd feel better if I told him I forgave him. So, I followed her advice, even though I hadn't forgiven his violation.

I joined the military because it felt like a path toward higher education. My mother only had a third-grade education, so she couldn't provide much guidance about college. By enlisting, I was able to get my degree and a career.

I served in the Army for 21 years, retiring as a Major after three combat tours. The Army taught me so much, but when I left, I was dealing with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When my marriage of 18 years broke down, I added clinical depression to my diagnosis.

I want people to focus on endurance, not resilience

These days there's a lot of talk about resilience. Resilience means overcoming, but for me, that wasn't enough. I wanted to emerge stronger than before. That comes with endurance.

From the time I was 15, I've built my endurance — the ability to live with challenges and emerge stronger. Just like we build physical endurance through exercise and training, we can build mental endurance too.

After retiring from the Army, I was on meds to wake up, meds to go to sleep, and meds to function during the day. But after a while, I built up my endurance for managing PTSD. I learned to say no to negative thoughts. I learned breathing exercises, which truly saved my life. I improved my diet and exercise and found therapists who really understood me.

Our culture impacts how we think about mental health

I won't say that women go through more than men. But I will say that we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We're also in touch emotionally with everything that happens around us. That's a strength, but it also leaves us vulnerable. It may be why women are two to three times more likely to experience PTSD than men are. PTSD isn't just for veterans. It also impacts sexual assault survivors and people who live through medical trauma, like I did.

Back in the 1980s, when I was raped, there was no discussion about PTSD. Today, there's much more awareness. But our cultural influences still impact how we talk about mental health. In my Black community people are too often told to go to church and pray about their problems. Yet that doesn't impact the help they truly need.

The Army didn't want to talk about PTSD at all. That's why I retired. After being deployed to Iraq, I was having panic attacks that would leave me hiding under my desk. One day, I put on my full uniform and drove 30 minutes to work, before realizing that I had no shoes on. And yet, when I reached out for help, the look on my boss's face was horror. Struggling with mental health was not something that people in Army leadership admitted.

I've adjusted to my new normal and learned to ask for help

One day I was taking my sons to a Six Flags amusement park with a family friend. While we were there, I felt a familiar prickle on the back of my neck. It was the first sign of a panic attack. I tried to explain to my friend what was happening, and she responded in the worst possible way: "Are you crazy or something?"

We all need people on our side to cope with mental health challenges. But it's important to tell the right people — those who have empathy and some understanding. It's best to tell them before there's an emergency so they have time to process.

Today, I'm able to look back on the traumas in my life and see them as things that happened for me, not things that happened to me. They happened for me to move into coaching and counseling work, which I feel is my true life's calling.

If you're struggling with PTSD, know that there is hope. It will take some time to learn how to live this new life. And yet, it's exciting too, to know this is just the beginning of a whole new world.