Four months after being hospitalized, the reality star talks candidly to PEOPLE about how she’s recovering from unresolved trauma.
The life of Kendra Wilkinson appeared in front of her eyes. She believed she was going to pass away.
She had a tight chest. She was scared to death and out of breath. “I was experiencing panic. I had no idea why I was crying or what was going through my body and mind. In her first interview with PEOPLE since being admitted to the hospital following a panic attack in September, she says, “I had reached my lowest point.”Wilkinson’s words fade as her hands settle into her lap gradually. Sitting in a friend’s living room, she confesses, “I was dying of depression.”
As my life was coming to an end, I descended into madness. I believed that my strength to survive had diminished.
Wilkinson is just now starting to heal from the harm caused by her time spent in Hugh Hefner’s contentious Playboy world, even though it has been 20 years since she first gained notoriety at the age of 18 as one of his companions on the reality series Girls Next Door.
It’s difficult to reflect on my twenties. A week after visiting the ER on September 6, 38-year-old Wilkinson says, “I’ve had to face my demons.” Her ex-husband, former NFL player Hank Baskett, was by her side.
Wilkinson started going to UCLA for three times a week outpatient therapy in the weeks after her hospital stays. There, trained mental health specialists assisted her in addressing unresolved trauma, which was primarily related to her stay in Hefner’s mansion and her traumatic 2019 divorce from 41-year-old Baskett.
“I’ve never been happier than I was there.” I thought I had nowhere to go. I was unable to see beyond my sadness,” Wilkinson recalls, adding that she had been having trouble making a new beginning in the real estate industry. “I was losing hope and was unable to locate the light.” I was hopeless.
Wilkinson, who has previously discussed being admitted to a mental health facility as a teenager after ingesting six pills, had not been eating or sleeping for weeks prior to her hospitalization, and her mind was racing.
How am I going to succeed? she was asking herself over and over. “What in my life am I doing wrong?” “Do I give up?”
