Kurt Thompson is a psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Desire and also The Soul of Shame. And he hosts the Being Known podcast.

His new book is The Deepest Place, Suffering and the Formation of Hope. That's our topic today.

Welcome, Dr. Thompson.

Mark, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

We jump right in here. You speak of people in a particular condition, quote, suffering has taken up residence in the deepest places of their souls.

Now, this residence is more complicated than what we usually mean by, by, oh, someone feels bad. Someone's suffering. The residence is is more complicated than what we usually mean by by oh someone feels bad so

someone's suffering the residence metaphor is is you mean that intentionally don't you i do i do

this sense that uh suffering is not a passing thingering is not a thing that we feel temporarily.

It's not just about my skin knee.

It's not just about my temporary upper respiratory infection, although it could be.

But what we're really talking about is the human condition.

We're really talking about, you know, we like to kind of cordon Job off in the Bible.

And we'll just, we'll plant him where he belongs and we'll keep him there.

And we'll say, oh, every now and then we'll have to visit Job.

It's just a drag, man.

Yeah. Well, as I say in the book, if I were going to buy a book like this, I'd want to buy a book that would help me learn how I wouldn't have to suffer.

Please give me that information.

And yet I think that sitting with the people that I've been sitting with for the last 30 years reminds me that we all carry within us spaces where suffering is taking place.

And sometimes that suffering comes on to the front of the stage much more dramatically and much more kind of irresistibly than in other times.

But then it often, we tend to think that if I'm not immediately in the middle of something

that is worthy of being called suffering, that somehow it's not even in the theater,

but in fact it perhaps has just moved off stage where I'm burning a fair bit of energy,

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