16. Running Towards Our Values: Faith, OCD, & Religious Scrupulosity with Reverend Katie O'Dunne

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to a chat with Uma, with me, your host, Uma R. Chatterjee. On this podcast, I bring together all of my roles as a neuroscientist, researcher, board certified mental health peer specialist, mental health advocate, community builder, and a survivor with lived experience to bring you honest and unfiltered conversations, exploring our true human experiences in their fullest form. Every week, I'm bringing you conversations bridging the gap on all things neuroscience, psychology, mental health, lived experience, advocacy, psychedelics, and more. This is a space for raw unfiltered truth, to truly explore ourselves for who we are and how we are. I cannot wait to connect with you, answer all of your questions and co-create this with you. Welcome to a chat with Uma, hello my beautiful friends, and welcome back to another week of the podcast. I am so beyond excited to get into this episode that I am going to try to keep this intro super, super short because today is so special this episode. It is the first official interview that is going live on the show, and it is with someone who I just love so, so much. She is truly one of my favorite humans on planet Earth, and I'm just so, so grateful to life for bringing her into my life and me and to hers. And, ooh, okay, we'll get into that in a second. But before we get into the episode, I just want to check in and say hello and just send you all so much love and care and space to breathe because, ooh, life is a lot. And that is so much of what this show is about. And I just want to take a pause with you all to just be in awareness and acceptance of where we are and how we are because I know I sure need it. And this space with you all is one of those places to do that. So, I just want to check in and encourage you all to check in with yourselves and see how you're doing and see what you need. Something as small as some time offline or more sleep or a nourishing meal, a hug from someone you love, a call, with someone you care about, some time and space to just be with yourself and how you feel and who you are as a person and not just what you're doing because I'm the most guilty of them all. And I am coming off of the time, well, I'm still in the time, really. But I just got back from a week in Denver for this, like, science conference, which we'll have a whole episode just recapping that because that was such a big experience and there was so much to update the space on and anyway. But with that was so much, so many beautiful things. I presented twice me and the Iterchlegic Psychedelic Network hosted a whole event. We were at our booth all week. It was just endless nonstop. It was beautiful and I'm so grateful for everything this summer, especially that and the upcoming International OCD Foundation conference, another week of five presentations and so many more things and I'm so and so many other things. And I'm really grateful and excited and that's so much of life. And, you know, those are the things I do and the ways I'm showing up in the world and lucky for me, they come from a place of excitement and invageration and joy and purpose and love and authenticity and big, big, big, and it's a lot and I am working on holding myself accountable to checking on myself and taking causes and taking time to be and to take care of myself and I'm not perfect at it but I'm working on it and so all that to say, I just hope that you all are taking that time. And I felt really, really, really important for me to share now more than ever because this space amongst many other things is a space for truth and honesty and integrity and just, just, having and flowing with the existence of life. So that is my check in. I also want to quickly say before we kick off this episode that there is now a link for you to share any ideas of guests that you would like on the podcast because I have a list of amazing people who are scheduled or already interviewed that are going to be coming out soon and as much as I really hope that I have a roster of people whom I would really love to share with you all, I also would love to hear from you about your ideas and who you want to hear from and what you want to hear about and people who you think would resonate with the show and its energy and everything we talk about just the full scope of human existence and different topics of research and lived experience and advocacy and all of the things that come with this show. So if you have any suggestions, anyone you want to nominate, anyone you want to bring into my preview, use a link, it's going to be in the show notes and just tell me all about your ideas and also feel free to email me or message me on social media, but that form will be the best way to do so because I will be checking out the most often. So just use that form to nominate anyone who or any topic or anything that you would like on the show because of course this space is co-created with you and me and I can't wait to hear from you. And my final announcement is just a minor one which is that as you can tell, this episode is coming out on a Thursday instead of a Monday because historically the podcast has come out on a Monday each week and I am going to be switching it up and seeing if releasing episodes on either Wednesdays or Thursdays is just more supportive to people's listening schedules. So the podcast is young, it's new, it's growing. So I'm just going to be testing it out. So expect for the next several weeks to have midweek episode. So it drops Wednesday or Thursday, I'll settle on one soon. And then you have the weekend in the beginning of your week to listen. So just wanted to make that quick update for anybody who noticed that this was in the middle of the week. All right, so without further ado, I cannot express how excited I am to introduce today's episodes guest, Reverend Katie O'Don. All right, let's get into the bio before I just start crying. Reverend Katie O'Don is the founder of Faith and Mental Health Integrative Services, an organization helping individuals with OCD and related disorders live into their faith traditions as they navigate evidence-based treatment. Prior to this, she spent seven years serving as the Academy Chaplain and the Pauline and RL Brandt Jr. 35 Chair of Religious Studies at Woodward Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. Katie is proud to be an IOCDF lead advocate, an ordained minister, and an endurance athlete tackling 50 ultra-marathons for OCD. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at Vanderbilt to continue her focus on faith and mental health. That is her bio, but I have to say so much more because she is all of those things. She is a Reverend. She is getting her doctorate. She is a lead IOCDF advocate. She is an ultra-marathon athlete. I don't even know what the right term is because my gosh, whole other world that I'm an off. But above and amidst all of those things, and all of the ways that she shows up in the world, all of the roles that she takes on, all of the beautiful things that she can list about herself, that I can list about her. She is just one of the most kind and beautiful and just radiating with love human beings. I have ever encountered on planet Earth and you will hear some of me confessing to her on this podcast episode about my first impressions of her given my own background as someone who has been a religious cult and someone who from my trauma and my pain, here's a word religion, here's Reverend Chaplin, whatever and just wants to run the other way. And we talk about that. But introducing her and all of her roles, I just feel like that's just a snippet of who she is and how she shows up in the world to me. She is a human being that is just so in service of love and care and inclusion and honesty and she shows up into her values and the way she radiates it into the world through her work. And for her, that's through her incredible knowledge and expertise and skills in chaplaincy and in religious education and the intersection of religion and mental health, particularly with OCD as we're gonna get into in the episode. She's also just shows up that way as a whole. as a friend, as a human, as someone who just holds space for people and just reflects back all of the love and light within them amidst all the pain that they may experience and just really holds all of it at once in a way that I'm an olive. And I can't believe I only met her. I mean, it's about to be an exact year because this episode's coming out right before the annual OCD conference, which is where I met her last year, literally by hearing her speak on a panel, asking her question, her watching me ask that question, and then her and her amazing fiancee Ethan, another person I love, with all my heart, chasing me up an escalator, and starting to just be in connection in terms of advocacy and growing this beautiful friendship. And so I just, I'm so excited for you all to witness, I mean, just a snippet really of all that Katie is as a person. She just inspires me endlessly with her honesty and her compassion for others. And I also want to uplift the work she's putting in to have compassion and love for herself because we are two people who just so deeply have such similar experiences and tendencies to be so loving and open to other people and sometimes the real work outside of doing that for others is to do that for ourselves. And I just want to uplift and honor the way that she shares so openly about that experience while also being that for other people. So I will stop rambling now, but I'm so excited for you to tune into this episode with Reverend Katie O'Donne. We talk about so many things, including her lived experience with OCD, how she came into her role as a Reverend, as a Chaplain, her doctoral work, her work as an advocate, intersecting all of her identities, talking about all things, moral sprupulosity and religious themed obsessions and compulsions, and how her work is informed by her lived experience and her experience with diagnosis and treatment and just just a lot of wisdom for for humans with OCD, of course, and also people just existing on planet Earth who experience suffering and pain and how she has really, truly transformed and channeled her pain into purpose and passion in such an authentic and driven way that is supportive to her and how so many people have that unique way of doing that for themselves, talking all things, her ultra-marathons, which again, like completely over my head, and one day I will do like a tenth of a marathon in honor of her, but there's so much in here. I can't wait for you to get to know Reverend Katie O'Don. Welcome to the episode. Let's dive in. Okay, so Reverend Katie. Katie has my whole heart and we're going to get into why through this episode, but first I just want first of all welcome to the show. So excited to have you and I like to start every episode off before we get into the nitty-gritty of asking in your words who is the person behind all that you do and the ways you show up in the world? Like how would you describe yourself outside of your roles or just like the definers you would put in a bio? Oh my goodness. This is such a hard question and I actually love it. It's funny when I worked in school chaplaincy, I used to ask my students like no, don't tell me what you do. Tell me who you are. And yeah, that's really really tough for me. So I think the person behind all those things is someone who cares about genuine love and inclusion and giving individuals around me permission to be their unique, awesomely authentic selves and someone who wants to walk alongside people in the really hard parts of their journey while also experiencing lots and lots of laughter and joy and recognizing that life in the midst of lots of hardships can be a really really beautiful place. I could not have summed you up better myself. You are just a beacon of love and light and inclusion and kindness and just this this joy for being in the presence of others that I it's on parallel. And I asked this question because we're going to get into all the beautiful things you do, all the projects you have, all the roles you have, all the credentials you have, all of those things but they all just come together as this one beautiful human and so much more. And so I'm just thank you for saying that. Thank you for seeing that within yourself and allowing us to see that because that is exactly how I describe you and with that. I feel that you I love and I'm already like beaming because I feel the same way about you. You are such a beacon of light in the world. So I'm glad we get to I don't know. We get to come together and talk about all of these things that relate to the reality of life but also hope and what that can look like for people. And it is extra wild to me that we're talking and I told Ethan this last week but what I haven't told you before we get into your story is that when I was going to come to the conference last year, I think I had posted about like my research that I'm going to be presenting at the IOCDF conference and then I think I remember you followed me on Instagram and I had known that you existed but you know I saw the word reverend and I was like, nope, goodbye. And that was and that is completely, you know, just like my own baggage, my own bias of like, I had no concept and I was completely just I didn't even think, right? And so then you followed me and I was like, oh my god, oh my gosh, really cool. I didn't understand and then you know, like I was like, okay, she looks really, really nice but like, you know, we'll see and then and then we met at the conference but I'm really, really bad at faces. So when you chase me up an escalator, I like took it took me a while to figure out it was you and I was like, oh my god, the reverend is talking to me. Oh my god. And then like as we were talking and part of the context we'll get into of like why we were talking was about the biohaving commercial. So we got to do and you'll invite me to do it. I don't know why but in this conversation, you probably don't remember this. I felt like the first thing I needed to tell you was like, oh, I was in a really just cold. So, you know, blah, blah, and like your face just like transformed and then the empathy you shared with me and then starting to you also talked about like your background working with so many different faiths and faith backgrounds and people and people who look like me and people who have some where backgrounds to me. I was like, oh my gosh, this isn't how what I expected out of this human like where like and obviously entirely transformed. And so actually I'm curious. Do you ever do you ever get that response from people in those community or people in general? Like do you feel like you have to, I don't know, battle some sort of judgment or preconceived notion of someone who works in ministry? Yeah, no, I actually all the time and it's it's so interesting like on different friends, people I think assume different things just based on their experiences, which is totally and and completely valid where it's actually interesting. I have some folks that assume I'm much more conservative than I am and are very disappointed when they find out that's not the case. So there's kind of kind of both sides. But it's I think a really a really beautiful thing and I know we'll get into some of this today, but the work I do I work a lot with folks from different faith backgrounds who experience religious group velocity, but I also work a lot with religious trauma. And it's actually it's really really important for me. I always try to create a safe space and actually let folks know what I do that I affirm every faith background, every way that folks worship the divine, every gender, every orientation, whatever that means and looks like, but I think it's also like it's really it's really interesting because I feel like I get to have some really cool moments with folks that are like wait, okay, this isn't as scary as I as I thought it would be. And still those experiences, those traumatic experiences are so completely valid, but I think there gets to be some healing that comes when we are able to talk about the fact that yes, there are people who do religion in really exclusive, achy ways, but that it doesn't necessarily have to look like that and that we can move towards something different. I don't know if I just said anything to make sense. I feel like I just read all that. No, you made so much sense that I already have like three different questions and prongs that I'm going to add to this. So let's, okay, before I lose this one. So how has your practice always looked like this in terms of this being your goal, this being how you practice or has it evolved in terms of moving into working specifically at the intersection of mental health and ministry, like how how is this evolved and whatever parts of your story that come into play with this. Oh my goodness. Okay, so I'm gonna rewind and kind of talk about the beginning. Is that okay for me to rewind a lot? Okay, so there's there's kind of a couple different different sides that have come into play where I've navigated OCD really since before I can remember remember a lot of my earliest things related to making sure that everyone in the entire world was safe. So I often think back to when I was eight feeling like I needed to touch things in a particular order so that the earth wouldn't get too close to the sign. Because of something that I had heard in third grade and I thought if I didn't do everything right everyone on the planet would die. And that's a lot of pressure for any year old who feels like kind of the the world rests on their shoulders whether or not that's a rational thing it felt very real to me. And my mom checked me my first psychologist who did not specialize in OCD who didn't know I had OCD who didn't do ERP and we talked a lot and played a lot of checkers and I pretended to get better because I was fearful that he would lose his job if I didn't. So I said, oh, my symptoms are gone. I'm better. And I was just this eight year old pretending things were fine. Kind of throughout a lot of my life I pushed down the things that I was experiencing regarding perfectionism regarding harm OCD sexual intrusive thoughts. I mean anything that you can possibly possibly think of and there were ebbs and flows but I was someone who was really really high functioning almost to a fault where no one really knew the level to which I was experiencing not only intrusive thoughts but ruminating kind of consistently throughout the day and engaging in compulsions. So things really started to spike for me in in college. I was a division one athlete and I was majoring in religious studies and human services and had just felt like there was a lot of pressure to do everything perfectly and the compulsions really started to heighten where for me at the time it was really classic ovens, stoves, locks, checking everything under the sun to make sure everyone in my apartment building was safe to make sure things were okay. But really didn't want anyone to know because I was pursuing ministry at the time and that kind of sidebar was not something by any means that I plan to do throughout life it actually came out of really some really unique work that I got to do with foster kids in North Carolina alongside my religious studies program and learning about different faith traditions and really wanting to bring inclusion and interfaith work to spaces where folks were really struggling. There was this kind of dual piece so all of that is going on but I also know in order to do that I need to be ordained and I wanted folks to think I had it together and wasn't struggling with OCD. So no one really knew through college or even through my collegiate athletic component and ended up getting a full scholarship to Emory and moved to Atlanta to pursue my master of divinity to go into ministry. And OCD really ramped like really totally and completely ramped up to the point that I pretty much wasn't sleeping I mean little bits here and there but I was staying up all night checking the oven, stoves and locks going down to the parking garage to make sure everything was safe driving back to the ministry sites where I was working to make sure candles were blown out indoors were locked like literally driving the middle of the night and like checking doors and downtown Atlanta to make sure things were okay. And I started to realize these were some things that maybe needed to be addressed so I shared with a mentor at the time and you can tell me if this was like way too long a story to okay. So I shared with a mentor at the time that I thought I might have this thing called OCD because I was doing a dual program with the School of Public Health and was kind of learning about OCD and I was told okay you can't tell anybody that you are pursuing ordination you are getting ready to do all of your psyche valves. That is is not something that will allow for you to pass your evaluations and move into ministry and you're up and coming in this field like keep that on the down low. So I did I actually studied ways to pass my psych of valves without noting that I had OCD. I live in pretty much every evaluation and it was all it was interesting because it kind of accounts for that so it was other weird things came back that actually weren't there because I was like being really disjointed in my evaluations but I passed everything it was fine and moved into ministry and was ordained and got my first big role actually in interfaith work which was exactly what I wanted at a huge private school in Atlanta. Working with 2700 awesome students from different faith backgrounds and as a lot of folks know when you get something that's really important to you OCD really decides to amp up its game. I was coming in and felt an extreme amount of pressure it was everyone was telling me it's the biggest private school in the continental US I was the first female in the role and my predecessor had been there 25 years and I was 25 walking into this job and it felt like I need I need to get this thing right like I need to do everything perfectly. And OCD love that OCD latched on in some really really big ways ultimately I got to a place where OCD latched on to everything I was working in areas of grief trauma and loss and OCD was not only latching on to whether or not I was harmful to my students or whether or not I was a horrible person were saying inappropriate things or running over people with my car. It also started to latch on in ways that make very little sense when I explain them logically but made sense in my head at the time of how every loss and tragedy that I experienced with students was somehow my fault particularly with mental health struggles or with things related to to substances are really major sudden tragedies I would figure out how I was somehow responsible. And I would actually be up doing funerals for kids that I cared about deeply experiencing so much grief feeling like it was actually tangibly my fault and I would spend hundreds of hours trying to figure out if I said something if I did something if I went out and somehow committed a crime I mean all sorts of things. And I got to the point where even things that happened in my area I would think that every crime was somehow my fault like I was somehow going to bed and waking up and going out committing all sorts of crimes around Atlanta and somehow covering it up. So nobody knew I was at the point where I was working with kids all day doing intense grief trauma loss work and then coming at home at night and staring at my phone and trying not to call 911 on myself for crimes I didn't commit and just hating myself. I really hit rock bottom kind of in 2017 2018 I didn't want to live anymore I didn't want to continue to function in the way that I was and I didn't think I deserve to get better because how could this person that everyone saw as this happy chaplain. And how could I reconcile that with the thoughts and the things that I was experiencing in the at that point thousands and thousands of hours of compulsions that had in my mind confirmed everything I was afraid of. And yet it got better and I think that's always an interesting part of our stories were like and it was really bad and then I then I got better and it was not it was not that quick of a shift. And then I really therapist at the time shala nicely very much saved my life. I got better kind of a first time and then had a really tough loss with a student that my OCD latched on to where I relapsed and was in kind of a hole with OCD for a year and a half where she walked with me and helped me do some of the hardest exposures that I've ever done. And then I really lean into uncertainty helped me get better and for the first time both in part because of treatment and because of my best friend at the time now fiance Ethan started to love myself and started to actually realize that I did in fact despite everything OCD was saying to me, deserve to get better. So the distinction here when I started to get better, heading back into my role and kind of showing up in a different way for students. I didn't want to be quiet anymore about the fact that I was a faith leader who experienced OCD or that I was someone who stood up and made speeches during commencement while worrying that I ran over someone in the car in the parking with my car in the parking lot like I wanted kids to know that. I was having these experiences where I was recognizing students from different faith backgrounds that didn't come forward about their mental health struggles in particular a student that I lost one of those mental health struggles and I felt like it was my obligation as their chaplain to say actually I struggle I can engage with my faith while seeking treatment. So I started speaking up about that started sharing about that within the confines of my school community and it was the opposite of everything I've been told in seminary. It was nobody hated me nobody thought there was something wrong with me it was families reaching out and saying cool now we can. actually tell you what's going on. Here is my child's diagnosis. How can we talk to their priest, to their rabbi, to their imam, to their spiritual leader? How can we actually get them help? And it was through that that I got to start doing some work with the IOCDF and starting to build out faith in OCD work and programming in ways that I had absolutely no idea existed. You have changed everything for everybody and I, okay, where do I even begin? First of all, thank you and thank you for all the details. This place is like, give me all the details, give me more. I'm just reveling in your journey and in the way that you share in such a vulnerable honest way because it's not easy and it's, you know, I know you're a professional, I know you're used to saying it. So it's just like, yeah, and then this happened and that happened. But like in reality, you're sharing some of the deepest, darkest, most vulnerable parts of life and we feel so alone so often because we don't know other people are going through this and in the way you've shown up for your community and you shoot, you showed up for your students, like look at the way you've just transformed the way people can live in integrity rather than, you know, pretending things aren't happening. So I have a clarification question before we move on, which is in your entire journey, when did you know that, or I guess when did you get a diagnosis to get OCD and when did you, like, did you start evidence-based treatment at the time that you talked about or had it been before but it really became efficacious that time, like how did that play out? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think really throughout college, like 18 to 22, I had some sense that it was probably OCD because of human services degrees and psychology courses that I was taking and then as I got into grad school and more intrusive thoughts came up, I was very lucky that a couple courses I was taking actually talked about intrusive thoughts where I was like, huh, maybe OCD, but still was so fearful of getting treatment. So didn't really because of what I was told about psych evaluations, things like that. And it wasn't until I was well into my role at Woodward where it was becoming really difficult to function. I think kind of at my lowest, it's so interesting looking back and I actually don't physically know how I was able to teach and do grief work and speak publicly with all of this, but I could actually probably do 20 plus hours of compulsions in my head a day while like functioning in my role. And I could like live and not actually be there but look like I was there while trying to figure out if I was like this horrific murderer who deserved to be in jail. It was this dichotomy and it was kind of at that point that my mom actually, I was calling her all the time driving home from work, you know, going through all of these different things where she was like, I think you need, I think you need help. And she was actually the one who found ERP, she was the one who who found Shala and was like, you should like reach out to this person. And I feel very, very fortunate that it took me, it took me a long time, you know, in the scheme of things, but that the first time I really reached out beyond when I was eight for treatment, it was the effective treatment. And it was, it was treatment that really could help me get better. - Mm, and so many things that you said in terms of just the dichotomy of what you look like on the outside. And, you know, even if people are aware of what OCD is, which is oftentimes not the case, there's still this image of OCD means that you're, you know, locked into physical compulsions doing things that you can see everything someone's doing. And if they're not like debilitated in a physical, like they're literally locked in their house sense. And, you know, maybe they don't have OCD. No, you are a perfect example, just like me of so many things going on mentally, internally, and how you could maybe never see how much someone's suffering. And that is their whole reality and that there's hope. But at that point, you were debilitated for literally, when you say 20 hours a day, I believe you. Like that sounds like how can, how could that be possible? No, that is possible. It can even be in your sleep. That's a whole other conversation. But I also wanted to highlight and emphasize when you first went to treatment when you're eight years old. And that whole experience you had with your therapist, if like, oh, I want to make sure he doesn't lose his job. And I also want to make sure I look like I'm getting better. And I want to, you know, make him happy and make sure of, you know, I don't know if you felt this way. But it's like people are putting some money into treatment. So, I need to make sure that it looks like it's working. And if it's not working, then it must be me. Like, thank you for sharing that because whenever I share my experience with, you know, my past therapist, especially like when they did psychodynamic and they said, "Oh, CD wasn't real." And I was like, I really just wanted to make sure that she was, she was like happy and feeling like, you know, her degree was worth it. And she was doing a great job. Like, it sounds funny. But like, thank, I'm not the only one. And hearing you say that just makes me feel so so much more valid. And I know that means other people will feel valid too. So thank you for sharing that. And I, and let me move on from that. I just want to say for other folks here too, and you might relate to this. And Ethan and I, it's interesting. He actually learned some stuff with the work he's doing because of this when I first started dating. We were talking about I was still going through some really challenging stuff. And I have done a Y-box recently. And I told him my Y-box score. And he was like, "Um, that's really low kind of for what I see you experiencing on a daily basis. Like, are you sure?" And it actually came to pass. And it became a whole thing that he started working with folks on of even scoring the Y-box. But it, it came to pass that I historically lied on my Y-box without even knowing it because I wanted to always make sure, even with Shala, who I loved, I wanted her to like feel like stuff was working and like she was doing a good job. And that became a huge part of treatment of me being like, I'm actually not reporting correctly. Not even intentionally, but because I really want to make it look like things are okay for you. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to show that I'm doing the treatment right and the treatment's working so well. And it must be lower if I'm doing it, right? For months, you know, and we figured out that my comorbid, my OCDPTSC comorbidity was slowing things. But that took a little bit to come out because I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm just going to score." If I'm at extreme, I need to just be at severe doubt or like, "I just need to be a moderate now." And you know, Google's a thing. Like we can, we can look up how this is scored. And we can, we can see like, "Oh, if I just change this number, I guess it'll look like I'm getting better." And I must be, right? So I completely, "Mm, thank you for highlighting that because that is, I wonder how much we can optimize that process to account for the people actually reporting their symptoms." But I am so curious how you became interested in interfaith work. And is that something traditionally a part of the training of, you know, going through the degrees you've gone through? Or is that something you pursued on your own? And just tell me everything about your interfaith work. Yeah, that's such a great question. So it's, so I grew up in a really kind of progressive Christian background. I grew up in the Episcopal Church, which was always very open to other faith traditions. And that was even part of my confirmation was going to different faith spaces, which I always thought was just super awesome and cool. But it was really getting into, getting into college. I took an initial religious studies course, no idea that I would want to remotely study religious studies. And just thought it was so, so, so awesome. And really had this cool connection of seeing the way that different individuals connected with the divine. And I thought it was this really powerful thing to recognize that, wow, we don't necessarily have to put God in a box, that there actually can be this really expansive nature in recognizing these different, unique, beautiful ways that folks worship. So that was really big for me throughout college with religious studies where my professors were stellar and really emphasizing that. And it was actually, I got to grad school to seminary. And I really missed it because there weren't that many interfaith components that I was doing. And I think that highlighted it for me even more where, yes, I love all of the aspects of Christianity that I got to learn about, but I kept kind of getting to this point of, but I miss learning about Hinduism and Buddhism and Judaism in Islam. And I think it emphasized even more that I wanted to do interfaith work because I found so much connection to something beyond myself in that. And it was kind of getting into school chaplaincy in an interfaith way was kind of very random. I planned on working in urban ministry and doing kind of interfaith work. And I was working with an organization my last year of seminary that used running to empower individuals experiencing homelessness. So I would go and run from different shelters in Atlanta at like five o'clock in the morning in the dark. And it was like you would run with everyone at the particular shelter. And it's very, very cool. Everyone would be sponsored by by different two companies. And it was a whole thing of you can kind of move through this experience through running. And but everyone was in community together. It was just such a cool thing. And I was actually running with someone who had had some really tough life experiences and actually who had just gotten out of prison after I think 20 years, who was running with me. And we were talking about his experiences. And have this vivid memory of it being dark and Atlanta running over like these railroad tracks downtown and and him being like it's great. that you like doing urban ministry kind of stuff, he's like, but I think you should work in education. And I was like, why? And he's like, well, he's like, rather than doing this work, he's like, you could potentially change the systems that put me here to begin with. And it was what prompted me to want to look into school chaplaincy to work with young people to potentially make changes that could change the entire system of folks that I had been working with kind of in these types of ministry settings. So ended up kind of on a whim starting to apply to inner faith school chaplaincy jobs. Got this job at Woodward at 25 kind of unexpectedly and fell even deeper in love with inner faith work because my students were Jewish and Christian and Muslim Buddhist and Sikh and Jane and atheist and agnostic and I mean, everything under the sign. And it was so beautiful both in grief and trauma work, but also in the classroom teaching by the time I finished there, I taught comparative religions to like 1300 students and every class had at least five different faith backgrounds in it. So it was pretty cool. And doing pre K to 12 by Randall of our inner faith programming and getting to see, oh my gosh, primary school students who were sharing their faiths with one another and where I'd get to read inner faith books to little kids and have someone raise their hand and say like, I wear his job like that or or I go to the temple on this particular day, like that's what I do. And seeing their joy, but also their connection to God and their willingness and excitement about sharing that with their peers, it made me find I think faith in even deeper ways than I could have just in engaging with my own faith. So that work became so pivotal and important to me and then now carries through to OCD work too, but also just a big part of my own faith. It's amazing hearing just how I mean, I don't know if you label it this way, but your values, your true essence, just showing through and guiding you amidst the horror that your brain was racking upon you with untreated OCD. And also just learning, I mean, we're going to get into the running eventually a scary topic for me because like, oh my gosh, running. But the fact that running play this pivotal role in such a unique way to even, you know, building your career and following your values in that way, I didn't even know that. So thank you so much for sharing. I just see all these threads coming together of just how you live your life now. I'm curious from the faith perspective before we get into the intersection with OCD does when you talk about faith and you work with people does that include people who identify as I know things are not necessarily binary or like in a box, but if they call themselves, you know, atheists or agnostic or pantheists or whatever. Yeah, no, absolutely. And even in the courses that I taught that was a really big component for me, especially being in Georgia, where I had students who identified as atheists, agnostic, as humanists. So I actually built a unit into my curriculum to embrace that so that students could feel seen and could figure out ways to address that with peers who might not be as accepting and really highlight the beauty of what that looked like for them, not as anything negative, but as as they are believed, right? And that feeds into the work that I do with with OCD now where I actually have quite a few atheist agnostic, humanist clients who might be struggling with issues of scrupulosity that don't align with with their true values. And yeah, that's that's a big part of my work and always never wanting to, I guess whether or not someone identifies with a particular faith tradition or not for me, it's always getting them back to what is in line with their values from a spiritual perspective. And that is beautiful. However, it is authentic to them. And the way that you your your commitment to inclusion shows up in that way and you know, going beyond what I imagine to be the traditional scope of like this, this religion and you do this thing and just, you know, being open to people who don't even identify with something. And also what you talked about just made my heart saying and is so clear to me, like how and why you have worked so hard to create a space for me to be included when you talked about in your classes, like students from different faith backgrounds, also cultural backgrounds, just feeling so seen and and being like feeling like they can identify with what you're teaching. That's something that so many people, people of color, people of just, you know, the minority backgrounds in the US I can speak of, but in general, just don't feel like they're included or seen or like things in school or things are taught or just the general space they're in like that they that they're valid. And so thank you, thank you, thank you for doing that for so many students and for people in general. But I'm getting ahead of myself for I want to ask you now about the intersection of faith and OCD already started talking about it. But first of all, can you define for everyone who may not know the terms group velocity or moral script velocity what that is? Yeah, no absolutely. So when we think of OCD, I like to take it back and say OCD is OCD is OCD. We have lots of different themes and no one is more significant than the next. It's just whatever is the most significant and important to us. And I often say OCD is a lot of really gross ice cream that happens to come in a lot of different gross artificial flavors. They all taste really nasty, but they might look a little bit different. And that's that's kind of what it what it comes down to. And religious group velocity and moral group velocity are just a few flavors artificially flavored kind of nasty OCD ice cream is really what it is. So it's particularly with religious group velocity. We're talking about where OCD latches onto someone's faith where where someone is engaged well is having obsessions and engaging in compulsions that relate to their religious or spiritual tradition or to a tradition that maybe they don't hold, but they're fearful that they should hold or that something bad will happen if they don't hold. And often this can look so many different ways for so many different people. But it typically means that we see individuals leaning in and feeling like something horrible will happen, feeling guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, this level of urgency. If they don't do religious rituals in a particular way. And for the sense of religious group velocity for sometimes for faith leaders, it looks like someone is just being super religious or or you know, really engaging in a beautiful way with faith. And that's not what's happening. I often say religious group velocity means someone is actually worshipping the OCD as opposed to worshipping the divine. But OCD is masking as faith in in some way where we are everything we're doing is feeding the disorder rather than feeding our connection with something beyond ourselves. I just thank you for that. And that is so powerful and important to I think not only the obvious people who would relate to this people who struggle with that with faiths they have, but also people who have experienced religious trauma and religious abuse such as myself where they're not only is that something one experiences, but that's also almost preyed upon as more susceptible people to be able to to to take advantage of. And so thank you so much for identifying that. And how has your work evolved really to work specifically with this population, with this flavor of OCD if you will? How is that all come for you? Yeah. So such an interesting piece. So kind of at the I was I know talking about moving into recovery while in my school chaplaincy role and starting to advocate. And as I started to advocate with the IOCDF, I started to have the awesome opportunity alongside amazing humans like Valerie Andrews and others to build out a faith in OCD resource page for them and to start our annual faith in OCD conference, which we just had year three, which was super cool and exciting. And to start a task force and a special interest group and a lot of this, it was really, really neat because there had been conversations around this, but I got to really be on the team and be a part of of spearheading a lot of those initiatives. And in doing that, I kind of felt like in some ways, I was building an airplane while flying it because it was like, okay, I don't know what this looks like from, I don't know, there was some there was work, a lot of work being done in different kind of faith spaces around Protestant Christianity, but the interface piece I thought was really, really, really important for us to be able to bring folks from different faith backgrounds together to have conversations about religious group, group velocity in an inclusive way. So as I started doing that and started building out programming, I started getting requests from different clinical teams because I knew a lot about different faith backgrounds because I had taught comparative religions in an interface setting for a long time. And I started getting requests of, hey, so I have this Hindu client or I have this Muslim client and they're experiencing group velocity. And I don't know exactly what their practices are supposed to look like or what they look like within the confines of their sector, their denomination. Can you come on and help me separate what's actually faith from what's OCD? And I was like, oh, okay, interesting. And at this point, I actually really didn't know what religious group velocity was because that wasn't a big part of my experience. And I started to learn about it just in consulting on cases and the need for that started to grow where a lot of cases they do bring on a religious advisor or religious leader, just unfortunately there aren't that many folks who actually know OCD in addition to a lot of different faith traditions. So I went from, oh I'm going to do this with a few cases to going home from my job at Woodward and like consulting on cases all night and like responding to all sorts of things of helping folks separate faith from OCD and started to realize that one I had a really huge passion for this but two that there was a really really big need in this area that wasn't wasn't being filled and that if I had the opportunity to do that full time outside of advocacy that I could continue to build a lot more things that I could just doing it overnight. So I had a lot of support from great psychologists with the IOCDF actually went to a wedding and had some really awesome conversations where I remember actually at the wedding being like yeah and I'm gonna take the leap I'm gonna leave my job and I'm gonna start this thing that doesn't exist and like all of all of this like stuff that was really scary because it was like I'm in a great job that I've been in for a long time that has supported me through a lot of hard moments. But I ended up kind of building out what this thing that didn't exist might look like. Really a little over a year ago I shifted out of my school chaplaincy role in May of 2022 and went into quote-unquote kind of private practice chaplaincy which doesn't doesn't necessarily exist but is is something that I've become really passionate about. And the role that I carved out and that I get to do a lot of work with now is is really threefold. I train clinicians in interfaith literacy for ERP so I get to do a lot of work around describing different faith backgrounds different ways that people read scripture and giving clinicians an understanding of how do we develop culturally responsive exposures. I train faith leaders in different spaces on recognizing religious group velocity how to make referrals things like that. And then I do direct case work and I'm always really clear I am not a therapist I am not a clinician I am a chaplain and a religious leader by trade so I actually work alongside care teams around the world and come on and we do we sign ROI's and I work kind of as the virtual chaplain on these different cases where I support the person who's going through treatment from a spiritual perspective while also helping to develop those culturally responsive exposures helping them to lean in helping them to take this leap of faith as a part of treatment in a way that makes sense to them as they reconnect with their faith values. And kind of through that work I've also a big passion for me and that is recognizing evidence-based treatments as spiritual practices because really believing that it helps especially when we're doing exposures or or something like that that it's not about moving someone away from their faith it's about actually reconnecting them with their faith in a value driven way. So that has become a key component of my work and my research. I'm in the last year of my doctor of ministry in integrative chaplaincy at Vanderbilt where my focus is really on that around reimagining ERP and other evidence-based treatments as spiritual practices on this journey back to an authentic value driven meaningful version of faith. Oh my gosh Katie okay I'm holding 10 questions in my head who's so much there okay let me go in chronological order let me try before 10 more questions prong from your answer okay so okay what would you say in terms of religious moral group velocity as part of the OCD experience in terms of in theory yes everything is treated the same way however some you know flavors might be more you know insidious they might be harder to treat in the way of like being able to identify and for clients for patients to be able to to fully buy into treatment can can you speak to some of the reasons why that might be the case or may not be the case with religious moral group velocity. Yeah oh that's such a great question so I come kind of with two from two different sides I think from the OCD perspective I do say yes all the all the same flavor we can treat it in the same way but there are additional external factors that I think can make this a lot more challenging. One is its stigma when folks are raised in faith backgrounds where they are told you can't seek mental health treatment there is a whole additional layer of stigma there I think two for many people and I see this a lot there is a religious trauma or component or a component where someone's experienced adverse religious experiences where from the time they were a child they were told that they are supposed to be feeling guilt and shame or that they are supposed to be feeling fear and it's really really tough in treatment when your OCD then I think I think a lot of times I'll back up folks might be predisposed to OCD but when they end up in those religious environments or religious environments take advantage of the fact that that person maybe has OCD that takes place too OCD latches on even stronger and I think as someone goes through treatment it's really hard to sometimes take that apart because it's not just oh I'm opposing the OCD I'm opposing all of the things that I have been told throughout my entire life by a figure who is in authority and both of those things have to be addressed simultaneously and that can make it really really tough I think if there's not a faith leader involved who knows kind of what that looks like and what's going on. I already have an episode in my head with you me and Tia Wilson entitled to two cults in a reverend because we are something like that because there's just so much that if I go into it this episode would be coming entirely that but thank you thank you for validating that and for making that clear especially for people who might be listening who might be wondering why religion why is that something extra or something one would specialize in there's so many reasons why I am also curious before we move into your doctoral work and everything how did you come into the IOCDF in terms of working with the IOCDF building the programming like how did that happen. Yeah so it's actually it's actually really funny it was when actually so I'm still really new which a lot of folks don't know I think some folks think I've been doing IOCDF stuff like forever which is not the case I actually came on oh my goodness like the end of 2020 beginning of 2021 I started doing IOCDF work wait was it 2021 yeah yeah that's right and it was because at the time Ethan and I were friends and then we were kind of starting to date and he was like hey like you have a lot of insight around faith staff and around around advocacy you really should share your story and at that point I was very fearful around sharing my story I was just starting to kind of share in the Woodward community and he actually started to pull me in and was like hey you should you should do advocacy and it's it's really funny because I remember for a while actually not talking on meetings because I was like I'm not supposed to be here I'm not supposed to do these things and Ethan texting me after and being like hey like like talk about religious stuff like you're allowed to do that like you can bring that into this space and it went from his push of hey like you have a space here to await the IOCDFs very much a family for me and they have been so supportive in building out all of these things where I had no idea that I could take those interfaith pieces and the faith pieces and and they've just I it went from zero to a hundred in like four months where it was high I've never met y'all too like we're planning a conference in a website and have a task force yeah and I'm not surprised at all I'm you might be but I'm not surprised at all because through everything everybody's already heard from your story which is just a snippet of your whole existence but even just what we've heard you are the primary example of someone who has carved and built a life completely to represent your authentic self and that's going to evolve and change over time because that's what humans do and so by no means is this the end version but where you are right now and what you're doing it I mean not almost nothing that you do has really existed ever so props to you in the most beautiful way and I am now so curious to hear about how on earth you on top of everything you're doing you're also about to become doctor Katie like hello tell me all about your doctoral experience how did that start did you come in with an idea did you develop the idea over time just give me all the details yeah so it's actually it's actually really really funny this is as a sidebar Ethan and I over our birthdays back in April we went to rent a house in North Carolina and we went jet skiing and in North Carolina it's weird I'm below a particular birth year where I have to get a boating license in order to drive a jet ski so we ended up having to spend like six hours taking a boating license course which is incredibly random we were like all day and he was helping me we're like studying for this boating license so we could go jet skiing but I got my little boating license in the mail and and Ethan now calls me and my doctor it's not done yet but he calls me Captain Reverend Dr. Katie Ethan literally for we were like in Miami last week for an amazing biohaving advocacy event and he literally put doctor on everything so like the emails I got for my like my hotel and like flights and whatever's doctor, he was like even that's so far away but I love that and I love him okay but yeah as I was finishing up my time at Woodward and transitioning I knew I was kind of going into uncharted territories where there wasn't a particular educational component for that there's a lot for institutional chaplaincy for school chaplaincy for clinical chaplaincy like in a hospital setting but there wasn't really stuff for what I was particularly doing and this program at Vanderbilt specifically was previously for VA chaplains and military chaplains and they were opening it up that first year that I was starting for folks who were working in other areas of chaplaincy and I was like well I'm kind of still going to be doing chaplaincy but it's kind of this weird thing that I'm not sure about so it would be really cool to do an integrative program and the program happened to focus entirely on intersection of faith and mental health but also reimagining act as a spiritual practice in looking at act through the lens of different faith backgrounds so it just seemed like it really fit for me the first year and a half of the program actually was all whatever setting you were in doing intense case work and bringing it back to an act model but through a spiritual lens it was very cool because it was as I was transitioning from woodward to this thing that didn't exist and felt like I was getting support in this program from psychologists and psychiatrists and faith leaders and kind of seeing how does this all fit together so that was the first half and then the second half it's a doctor of ministry so it's kind of different from other doctoral programs where everything is applied in practice where there is a big component of looking at the current research that exists but also creating something that can be applied like right now in this moment as you're going through the program so for me originally it was going to relate to interfaith literacy and religious literacy courses that I teach to clinicians but then I actually found myself in my work with clients navigating scrupulosity every day no matter the faith tradition saying like lean into the scary stuff and know it feels like you're opposing your faith but this is your spiritual practice to get back to what you believe and it's I started to see it really resonate with folks and people started to ask questions well what does that really mean within Islam or within Hinduism or within Christianity or Judaism and I didn't have all of the answers that I wanted for that but knew there was such a key component there and it immediately became clear like wait I could spend the next few years of my life diving into this and that would be really really cool so that that's where that came from yeah I mean once again just uncharted territory and that's the world of research and on top of everything else you're doing now bringing that to empirical research that you're creating it's so amazing and like what does your work in terms of doing this research look like and how does that intersect with your practice right now because I know you're so close to finishing yeah so it's I mean it's kind of twofold so the actual work for for the doctorate we you don't have to do anything that is you don't have to necessarily do an empirical research component it's all related to direct practice so I'm actually getting to just apply a lot of the things that I'm reading a lot of the theology is that I'm uncovering and putting them into practice with ERP which is really really cool and talking to clinicians about those things and directly writing about them through kind of a theological lens so that that is really really neat and just directly applied every single data what I'm doing but on the outside of that there is I'm working with a couple of folks on getting a hopefully pretty large grant if this comes through where we're trying to develop a screener specifically for clergy from different faith backgrounds where they could do a screen for someone who comes in specifically for a group or for OCD where they could go through a checklist and know specifically how to make a referral and and that's kind of in line also with some of the components that that I'm working on where as I'm doing all of kind of the spiritual and theological sides I'm pulling a lot of that for this other research component right now that I think could be so cool because clergy are often on the front lines and to give them a screener that's evidence-based that's tested that makes sense to them in their particular field that's culturally that's culturally responsive I think could be really really neat so there's this research component that kind of relates to my doctoral work but also kind of separate too well when you said empirical and to me I feel like it's entirely maybe you're going to be writing it down and this is going to be forever in the experience like the the literature of things that exist that have been worked on so deeply and that's what you're doing and you're also developed you're just casually like developing a tool on the side like that's cool just no big deal you just like slip that in in what you were just sharing I'm so curious in terms of your practice in terms of your research in terms of just interfacing with different populations and bringing you know your expertise is is that or together I would I would venture to guess that like you said clinicians, psychologists, practitioners when they come to you they're obviously like they're coming to you because they know that there is a problem I guess is the word and you know you're there to support that but when you're working with clergy with people from the faith side practitioners is it easy for you to find people who want to be trained in this or who want to learn this or is it more so you're bringing awareness to them to what to learn it like is it yeah tell me more about that yeah that's such a great question so I mean I definitely work more on the clinical side for sure I mean my email inbox is always psychologists of like hey can you help us on this or can you train so and so and less so on on the faith side and that's actually something I'm really working on where I'm working on developing relationships with with seminaries I have some kind of course stuff in the works to potentially for ministers and training kind of moving in and knowing scrupulosity so there's there's lots of sidebar components but for me right now it's it's developing relationships and I'm finding with clergy that I am developing relationships with there is such an openness to to this and even with the IOCDF faith and OCD conference our faith leader group is always the smallest but the folks that come always don't know that this exists and get so much out of it and or like I am so glad I know this so that I can help the folks that are in my midst so I you know one of the most positive things I can say is I don't necessarily have clergy except for clergy with OCD which I do have folks in that area come to me I don't have a ton of clergy all the time reaching out to have me come and do trainings but when I reach out to them and start to develop relationships really right now what I've seen across traditions there is such an openness to that even if it's a community that doesn't necessarily fully understand or embrace mental health because there is this need to want to support the people that they're serving and I really appreciate that and I'm sure that will grow and shift and change and I know there'll be challenges with that too but and I have heard some comments around you know leading people astray from faith to do mental health work and sometimes that hurts and sometimes I'm like well that's their perspective and it is what it is depends on the day but for the most part it's been such a positive response that I'm just actually excited to continue to foster those relationships and continue to develop what that might look like. I have no doubt whatsoever that everything you said is going to come back forth to you tenfold I mean you're that would be the analogy of kind of trying to reach out to this isn't even a good analogy but reaching out to clinicians to convince them that OCD is an issue first before helping support them in their practice like no you're already that barriers already over with clinicians but with faith leaders and faith practitioners there's I mean there's the education piece which you're validating and you know as much as I don't think titles or credentials is something that needs to define a person or legitimize them in the in the eyes of the people who you were reaching out to they see everything that you've done how you've served in every way and you're bringing that to them your existence is legitimizing that to them at least the people that are going to receive that so just thank you for that and you're making such a huge difference in so many elements in the most interdisciplinary way and I I personally believe that's how the change is made in the most effective way but I am so curious about you you've already touched on this a little bit but I want to hear more how what does OCD look like for you today how does that interplay with all of the work you do and show up especially because if we've talked so much about your professional life and you're amazing you're still also someone with lived experience who still has OCD so yeah tell me how that affects you today yeah oh that's such a great question and it um I I am really really open about this and even with the folks that I work with I think one of the cool things and kind of the faith space and and chaplaincy is there's um I really work on setting boundaries but also being really authentic about the fact that we can engage in faith and also struggle sometimes and that that's that's okay and for me um OCD I am probably at will not probably I am in the healthiest place that I've ever been with my OCD. And ironically, even if you would have asked me a year ago, I mean, even in a much different place now than I was a year ago, and that's really neat. And it doesn't mean that I don't struggle. It doesn't mean that I don't have intrusive thoughts. Some of my most kind of intense components relate to being an imposter. And even on things like this, you know, talking with you as you reflect back some of the work I'm doing, I'm like, am I allowed to be doing that stuff? What do people, are people like, why in the world is she doing that? She's not qualified for that. We don't want her, but that's what, or every livestream I get off, or anything under the sun, every time I get off from like training or working with clinicians, I'm like, they think I have no idea what I'm talking about. So the imposter syndrome is, is, is pretty still high for me. But my core fear has always been, what if, what if I'm a bad person? That's been my core fear, like forever. And I think for me as a part of recovery now, it's really about keeping that, keeping that in check. And really trying to note that anything that pops up around that, I can throw in the OCD bucket. And as someone who worked with Shalanae Slu, who's really big on this component, I'm really big on anytime that pops up and anytime I feel like I'm a horrific person, being able to say like, ah, thanks OCD, this is such an awesome opportunity for me, like, not to engage with this and make this a little smaller. Cool. I am so glad you told me I'm a bad person today. And I'm really big on the sarcasm and saying like, thank you, bring it on. And it does not mean that I do that perfectly every time. But I try to do that as much as I possibly can. And as I do that, I would say, my life has taken up the least amount that it ever has by OCD. And even on days that are really tough, I would say I experience joy every day. I experience sadness every day. I experience a full spectrum of emotions in ways that I previously couldn't. And even in the last six months, crying is like a new thing for me. I worked in trauma and grief for the longest time and felt like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't cry. And it was really because my OCD was covering up everything. And I was so busy in my head figuring stuff out. But it was terrifying to let yourself be emotional. And it's so interesting. Now pretty much every day, I like laugh, I cry, I get mad. I'm like, what's going on? And I know we joke to last night, the first time, which wasn't that long ago that I actually cried like for the first time in years. I turned to Ethan. I was like, I'm leaking like what's happening with my eyes? Like what's going on? And it's that sounds so strange, but it is such a beautiful thing for me right now that yeah, there are stock points, there are sticky points, but I get to experience the full spectrum of emotions in the work I do in my personal life, in all of the above. And that's a really, really cool thing. Trying not to get too emotional now because you and I talked about same, same here. And for me, as you're talking, all I can feel is just this intensely deep amount of love for you, which is also something that I've always, you know, I think we've both been very capable of that. We're very deeply emotional humans, but our OCD was protecting us from the pain that we believe just insurmountable because we were in so much pain. And one of those, you know, other emotions or feelings is love. And the fact that I am able to access and feel that love for you, it's just such a testament to number one, just you existing. But number two, recovery and the power of that, so I'm feeling everything you're sharing on a visceral level. And thank you for being so candid and honest about recovery and being an example of someone who is still living through it with it and walking the exam, I mean, really running the example of everything, gosh, that word running, the only positive association I have to the word running is to you. So thanks. That's new. But that leads me into me wanting to ask you, as like before I go into my rapid fire questions for you, of tell me about two things. Number one, you're running toward your values, your entire initiative, what you're doing to raise so much awareness and, you know, financial support for OCD. And also a special project you have in the works that you may or may not want to share about. Yeah, and I'll share. So I'll share this special project. And then I have another one that I actually really haven't talked about hardly at all that also shares. So there's there's two things. So the running piece by my really quick answer is I've been a runner for a really long time running helped me through so much stuff. I started running when I was 15 in cross country and or actually know when I was 15 or 16 in track and then switched across country as well, my senior year of high school, much to my mom's disapproval because she wanted me to be like a professional field hockey player. And they were like, what are you doing? You're throwing away scholarship money like you're leaving what we've done for the last like eight years. So that's the different story. But ended up getting recruited to run division one cross country in college and ran cross country in track. And you know, that was always really interesting because it was a piece that always kind of ran parallel to my OCD journey. And there were aspects of OCD that came up with that. But it was also always really a safe space for me. And getting out of getting out of college, I continued with athletic endeavors. I raced competitive short course draft legal triathlon and actually got to travel and race internationally in that area, which was was very cool while I was going through grad school. And did my my research for my masters actually around reimagining endurance athletics as a spiritual practice and as a way to connect with God across faith traditions. Because that was very much for me in the throws of OCD and hardships, the one place that I really felt like I could actually connect with something beyond myself where the thoughts got a little bit quieter and where I could could be there. So I moved from that into then Ironman and raced really, really long triathlons for it. So Ironman's are it's a 2.4 mile swim 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run. And I raced seven half Ironmans and three full Ironmans. And that was a chunk of my life. And then got to a lot of changes in my life got to COVID. I went through a divorce. I got better from OCD and there was kind of this big this big shift. And in the midst of that, I wanted to go back to the basics with running, which triathlon I loved, but running was always the core of everything that was meaningful and that was spiritual to me. So I started just focusing on running again for fun as I was doing OCD advocacy and started wanting to do something different and ultra marathon for some reason sounded like super cool. And so an ultra marathon for folks listening is anything longer than a marathon. So I raced primarily 31 mile races up. Some of the ones I'll do on the west coast are 100 and they're all trail races. So I raced kind of off road really, really long races. And it ended up being a really neat way to pair it with my OCD advocacy where I teamed up with no CD and I'm racing one ultra marathon in every state to raise money for someone in that state seeking treatment for OCD. And no CD has really generously agreed to to match that effort. And it has just been such a cool journey, both to raise awareness, to raise funds, to help make sure that folks are able to access evidence-based treatment. But it's also for me got me back to really a love of running for the reasons that I started it. I'm no longer for such a long time. It was like half to win, half to compete, have to do all these things. And for the first time in a long time, I'm kind of like, I'm just doing it because I love it. I get to go out and run in the woods for OCD. How cool is that? And for me, every time I go out and run, it's about my kind of tagline is running towards my values. And it means that no matter what I'm going through on any particular day, if something is sticky or feels icky, if we're sticking with the ick, whatever it is we're doing, I get to run towards everything I care about and everything that's meaningful to me. And it's every time I lace up my shoes and go outside, it's a reminder to myself that I have that choice and that I get to do that alongside so many amazing humans. My gosh. And that you've also translated or kind of evolved that for everyone in your community, in your space, like moving toward your values, walking towards your values, stepping towards your values. Tiny words that are less terrifying than running to someone like me, although some of the other words, like I have people who talk about painting towards their values, that is terrifying for me. And because I'm not artistic in that way, so I think what I think is we all get to pick whatever, for me, it's running towards my values, but we all get to pick our thing and whatever we do towards our values is awesome and cool. And that resonates so much more in out here to me, what stuck out that story about you running with the person who is in prison and how that inspired your work to move into educational spaces. And then tell us about your, I mean, if you don't do enough already, tell us about the 50 other things that you're doing to make this world a better place and live towards your values. Yeah, so coming up. So I have a new podcast launching in the next two weeks. I should have the exact date, but I don't, but it's called What's the Scoop on Scroop? And it's about all things group velocity. It's going to be a combo of kind of me chatting and sharing aspects of my story, but really having folks come on from different faith backgrounds and experiences. A big goal of mine is having folks talk about their religious experiences so that others can see themselves on the podcast talking about those religious experiences. Like we talked about with the students that I used to work with, of saying, well, that's me. I have that experience too. So I plan on talking with individuals from various faith backgrounds with OCD, with clinicians in the field and really diving into what a scrupulosity look like across faith traditions, but also this idea of moving towards this space of hope that we can reconnect with our beautiful faith traditions, whatever they are in really unique and awesome ways. So that piece. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say that number one, of course, this is going to be linked in the show notes as every way to connect with you, but also to our point in the past, this is obviously going to help so many people in the community and clinicians. I also think to our point of reaching clergy, reaching, you know, people who work in faith, this is going to be such an accessible, wildly inspiring tool to reach that community too. So props, but please continue on. Thank you. Okay. So the other piece, the other piece I'm working on kind of relates to what's the scoop on scrup. I'm actually playing with the name of it. I know you're not really supposed to announce things before you know the name, but it's okay. I can do that anyway. That I'm playing with the the scrup scrup group. I don't know a couple different things, but it's what I'm starting is a actually a platform specific to faith and OCD. I run free interfaith support groups every week, which is something we didn't talk about, but really cool. I have folks come on from different time zones around the world every Wednesday from different faith backgrounds and offer support from their different faith traditions for scrup velocity. And I've loved forming that community and want to make that something that is a more regular practice. So my hope is that in 2024, this will launch. I'm working on a community based platform and and app that folks will be able to sign up and participate in where there will be 24/7 communication with other folks who are navigating issues of faith in OCD. It will focus on being an inclusive inner faith space where there will be groups that run out of that all the time for support, but also courses around interfaith literacy, self-compassion is a spiritual practice, faith in OCD, scrup velocity, where all of that is kind of tied into one app where folks can feel safe to reconnect with faith alongside one another. Your commitments to not only supporting people, but the accessibility piece just makes my heart so so happy. And I'm so excited for this. And number I will I will definitely be linking to all of your groups and the show notes. And also when this comes out, we're going to have to share more about it. So thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing that and so much more. I know there's so much more we didn't cover and there's going to be I'm going to be bothering you from our episodes, but I'm excited. And we're going to be coming on and talk to me on episode two. So we're going to do both of the things. I love that so much. Okay, so to before we close out the episode, I have some final questions for you that I love asking people. So number one, what are three surprising things that people would not know or readily guess about you? Things like experiences, traits, interests. Oh, oh, this is this is good. Okay, let's see. Oh, I totally should have thought about this beforehand. Things that people would not guess about me. Let's see. Okay, so people know that I run, but I'm also like super daring outdoor kind of kind of stuff. And so even my 18th birthday president was going skydiving. I like to do very outdoor kind of dangerous, exciting fun activities. So that's that's definitely one. Let's see. Two, let's see. People might know this, but, but humor is is a really big piece for me. And I like to put it out there because I think people automatically assume like, Oh, minister, chaplain, like no sense of humor. And it actually makes me sad. People will say jokes to me and then like apologize. And I'm like, no, it's okay. Like, I'm allowed to be happy and laugh and also say like inappropriate things because I'm a human being. But that like that humor is is really a big key component for me. And especially with me and Ethan, like everything is an inside joke forever. And I think the third thing is, oh, my love growing up was musical theater. That will always be a big component of of my life that we didn't get into. But I consider myself a musical theater kid at heart, always and forever. And to give folks a little window into our house, Ethan and I might like sing musical theater all day long in our house. And we might do parodies about like navigating OCD very frequently as he plays the piano like in our living room. Will you ever film this for the people? Yeah. So we had what we did. One of our parodies actually last year at the at karaoke at the OCD conference. But we we've talked about that. So this he, well, and not to give information on him, he is actually an incredible pianist. So I've tried to get him to do a joint Instagram with me where we do OCD musical theater parodies. Okay. And Dors, I will start bothering him for that now. You didn't tell me. It's not recorded. Okay. What do you think unifies us all as you as a live beings on the surf? I think the ability to to empathize and to feel alongside one another. I used to to always talk to my students about the difference between sympathy and compassion. But with empathy in particular, I think it's it's never about the fact that we all have to have the same experiences or or be the same people, but that we can feel similar emotions and that we get to feel alongside each other and that we can really care and make the choice to do that. And I think that's something really, really neat, especially I mean for human beings in general, but especially within the OCD community that I see every day, individuals who have totally maybe different experiences, but making the choice to lean in, walk in another shoes and feel alongside each other so that no one has to be alone. And I think that's something that unites everyone that we have an opportunity to do that and that we can really make the choice to lean into that to walk alongside each other. Okay. And final question, very final question. What is one thing you wish everyone knew or could hear? Okay. So absolutely that you deserve the same loving compassion that you so freely offer to those around you. You are not defined by your OCD. You are not defined by your intrusive thoughts. And however you're feeling in this moment for folks with OCD or really folks without OCD, you deserve to step towards the big beautiful, awesome life that you are created to live. And the world is the better place because you're in it. The world is the better place because you are in it, Katie. And thank you so, so much for all of your wisdom, your generosity, your kindness, your love for being exactly who you are and sharing yourself on this episode today. I'm so grateful for your time. I'm so grateful for your friendship. And I cannot wait for so many people to just rebel in the amazingness that is you. And I can't wait to talk to you again soon. Thank you so much. My heart is exploding. I love you. I love you endlessly. Give me the biggest hug and you're literally the best. Thank you all so much for tuning into this episode of Chat with Uma with the beautiful Reverend Katie O'Don. There was so much wisdom and love and support just packed into this episode and I can't wait for you to experience more of her. So please go ahead and reach out to her, connect with her on social media, on her website, on her new podcast, on every possible way. If you want to engage with her services, everything is linked in the show notes. Just reach out to her. She is truly just such a beautiful person and will definitely connect with you. So I hope you love the episode. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. And I cannot wait to bring you more of Reverend Katie on the podcast as we move forward because there's so much more we're going to talk about. So let me know if you love this episode, share this episode with anyone who you think could be supported by it. I know there's so much in there and just there's so much for for people to receive and to absorb and to experience. So if you love this episode, if you love the show, please take just five seconds of your time right now where you wherever you are on the podcast to hit the subscribe button so that you receive episodes as soon as they come out as well as leaving a five star rating and review if you can because that makes such a huge difference to be able to continue to grow the show and to grow our community and let other people know that this is a safe and supportive space to be when they listen to the podcast. So if you could subscribe and maybe a reading interview that would mean the whole world. And if you can share this podcast, this episode with anyone who you think would be interested, just send a link to them and let them know that this is a space for them to experience themselves and to learn and grow and share it on social media. All of that would mean the absolute world to me. Thank you so much for tuning in. I can't wait to see you again next week on a chat with Uma. And I'm sending you so much love and care as always. So we'll see you soon and have a beautiful week, friends.