You're listening to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and this is part two of my

conversation with Dr. Kurt Thompson about his new book on suffering that is called The Deepest Place.

We begin by Kurt sharing some more about Korra's experience in a story group which he calls

a confessional community and specifically we talk about why Korra has these intense bouts

of panic and why they are her body's way of saying something is wrong, something needs care

and attention. We talk about how our symptoms, our body is often communicating to us that something

needs care and attention via symptoms. Then we also talk about a second woman named Cheney who

experiences deep healing as a result of taking in the acceptance the embrace of other group members

and here's the key point in the precise moment when she is feeling intense shame. We flesh all

that out because this is how neural networks get rewired. This is how healing occurs. We need other

people. Thanks so much for listening. Here's part two of my conversation with Kurt.

Now, when Korra came in, she came to see you because she was experiencing intense bouts of panic

and her perspective, the words she put to it was, you know, Dr. Thompson, there's something wrong

with me. My brain's not working properly and here's what you write at that point. Little did she

know, this is so important that her panic was merely her brain doing exactly what it should have

been doing, given her state of mind. Her panic was her body's way of sending a signal,

informing her that she needed help. The kind of help that she had no practice asking for or even

recognizing that she needed. Okay, we're going to just camp out here for a minute. First, Kurt,

are you suggesting, and I know that you are, that bodily symptoms, whether it's depression,

anxiety, panic, whatever it is, that bodily symptoms are very often our brain doing exactly what

it should be doing? Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a, in the previous book, The Soul Desire,

we talked about this notion of what does it mean for us to reimagine our lives as being artifacts

...