Mental Illness & Me | Katie Davies

We loved our interview with Katie Davies! Her journey is a beautiful one of self acceptance and learning to live with her mental illness. We talk about her OCD/PD/GAD and Scrupulosity. How to recognize signs, the spectrum of differences in OCD diagnosis, how to support those with the illness. We learn about Exposure Therapy and how she used this specific type of treatment.  We discuss how to help mental health awareness go "from a whisper to a song" and how talking openly and freely is so important. Katie shares about her wedding being postponed, twice. Two were canceled. One permanently, one from covid. She shares how hard this was for her and how she handled the circumstances. We chat about life as a single lady in a culture that encourages marriage. She shares her experience of "35 dates by 35". (You will not believe what one guy did on a date!)  Katie shares what it's like going from working full time as a choir teacher, single and living in Salt Lake City...to a married lady, in a rural Wyoming community to a step mom of 4. She transitioned to being SAHM and now has a new little baby boy! We love all she does advocating for mental health awarness by sharing on her podcast, "Mental Health & Me". She talks about how starting the podcast helped to foster healing and bring hope to others.  Katie has always felt supported by her family through her Mental Health Journey. She has an instagram account where her and her 2 sisters share how to have a JOYOUS, HEALTHY, & HAPPY life. We talk about the time they had an IG Reel goes viral. (Another funny story!) ______________ About Katie: Katie Houston Davies was raised in Southern California. She completed her bachelor's degree in music education with a minor in English education at Brigham Young University in 2008 following an 18 month church mission to Brazil. Upon graduation, she began teaching junior high school choir in Provo, Utah and moved to high school choir in Salt Lake City in 2011. In 2015, she completed her master's degree in music education at the University of Utah. Outside of teaching, she performed with various choirs in Utah including the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and did vocal directing for community musicals. In 2018, she did an intensive Exposure Response Therapy program to treat her lifelong OCD illness and it changed her life completely. In 2019, she met her future husband online and moved to Wyoming to start their lives together in 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and became a stepmom of 4 handsome young men. During the beginning of the pandemic, she began a podcast for people to share their experiences with mental illness as a way to cope with her mental health problems. She got a job as an elementary music teacher for one year before giving birth to her son Rowan in July of 2021. She took a break from public school and opened a piano and voice studio and also began co-directing a children's show choir.  You can find Katie on instagram at: @joyouslifehealthylife and @mentalillnessandmekt ------------------------ Be sure to follow us on... Facebook Instagram And join our Facebook Group