405 - Resurrection From a Life of Fear and Anxiety w/ Dr. Curt Thompson

Foreign.

Listener. And welcome back to the Pure Desire podcast. I'm your host, Nick Stumbo, and this is your biblically based and clinically informed approach to healing from betrayal and breaking free from compulsive sexual behavior. Today is episode 405, and I am joined throughout this series by my co host, Mr. John Beguman. John, welcome back to the podcast.

Lonely. I am so lonely I have nobody to call my own.

Oh, my.

Anyways, just to say we had a great conversation with Dr. Kurt.

Yes. For starters, though, you know, I gave you a hard time and for our listeners, this is going to be confusing because it's like two more episodes down the road in the order we're recording them. But you sang a song and weren't sure who even sang it, so I'm going to put you on the spot again. Like, what is that song? Who's it by?

No idea. Couldn't tell you.

Just came to mind, like, do you know the song from somewhere or is it Akon?

Oh, okay, there it is. It's Akon. Akon sings that song, Mr. Lonely. I think it's called Mr. Lonely.

I feel like I should know who you guys are talking by.

Akon.

I don't even know who a hip hop artist. Do you mean Acorn?

Yeah, he's a hip hop artist.

I continue to show my lack of musical knowledge for the last 20 years.

And me too.

Well, yes, you've got us into the topic. This is part two in our series on the resurrection. And what we're trying to do in this series is bring new life to conversations that very often have been parts of our, maybe our negative history. Places of death, of destruction, of discouragement. And as we look towards the resurrection of Christ and the celebration of Easter, it's believing that his new life not only brings us to new life spiritually, but he's meant to, in his resurrection, to bring new life to all things and really to introduce a way of how do we begin to experience heaven on earth as a taste of what's to come in eternity? And I think nowhere, maybe, do we need some ideas of where could we experience new life than in this whole arena of anxiety and aloneness. And that's the conversation we got to have with Dr. Curt today.

Yeah, I would just say to the listener, my goodness, what a wealth of information. Dr. Curtis. It's just like, can I just talk? Can I listen to you for, like hours? Because I feel like you're unfair. It felt like free therapy. And, man, I just love the way he connects to the power of being with somebody and the healing that can bring. It's so simple, but so significant.

Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Kurt Thompson is one of our favorites, and I had the chance to hear him speak at the American association of Christian Counselors, where he introduced this topic. And he told us just to kind of let our listeners know that this is not yet in a book. And you might be discouraged by that because it's definitely along the themes of what he's written about. But I can't wait to until he includes this in a book, because I think as we talk about today, anxiety is such a common experience, but the understanding of why and where is this coming from and how does it connect to my story, most of us have never really thought about. And I think that's so much of what Dr. Kurt leads us into today.

Yeah. So grateful for this conversation and hoping it helps. So many.

Yes. And just in case you don't know much about Dr. Kurt Thompson, we encourage you to grab one of his books. But he is a nationally known speaker and author, a psychiatrist, and he blends a warmth and humor and weaves it into an understanding of our interpersonal neurobiology and a Christian worldview of what it means to be human. He understands that deep, authentic relationships are essential to experiencing a healthier, more purposeful life. Through workshops, speaking engagements, and clinical practice, he guides people in processing their longings, grief, identity, purpose, and perspectives on God and humanity. Kurt and his wife, Phyllis, live near Washington, D.C. with their two adult children, and he is the founder, founder of the center for Being Known. And you'll hear more at the end of the show, how you can connect with Dr. Kurt. But here now is our conversation with Dr. Kurt Thompson on finding resurrection from a life of fear and anxiety. Dr. Kurt Thompson, welcome back to the podcast. So good to have you today.

Thanks, guys. It's great to be with you. Thanks. It's always. It's been just really humbling to be invited, and I'm so grateful to be part of this. I'm so grateful for all the work you all are doing. So thank you.

Yeah. Well, Kurt, I got to hear you as part of the American association of Christian Counselors at their event, and you spoke on a topic I haven't gotten to hear you speak on or write about, and I'm a big fan of your writing. I know a lot of our listeners are. You went pretty deep on anxiety. And so today we want to get into that and hear some of the insights that you're seeing in that world, because I think anxiety is such A common experience. So to start there, most people know they feel anxiety, but they haven't really thought much about why. And so can you help us just as a starting place with a definition of anxiety? What is anxiety?

Well, I think like a lot of.

Things.

In our world, it's not easy to come up with a definition as much as. So I don't typically define anxiety as much as we describe it. And we would say that can be an experience in which I have, first of all, a certain set of cognitive experiences. So these, these are thoughts that I have, but that are attached and associated with a felt, a perceived sense of distress that, you know, we have words for these things, for this distress. We have the word, we have the word worry. I have the word rumination, I have the word obsess. We don't typically, for instance, I don't use the word obsess about something that I'm genuinely like hopeful or joyful about unless it might be, you know, my recent, you know, the crush that I have when I'm 16 years of age. But this is generally, it can be cognitive and it is often physically encountered, like when I'm actually. So we ask the question when someone says, well, I'm anxious, we ask, well, how do you know? How does one know? And invariably we will ask, where in your body do you sense this? So not just what am I anxious about, you know, in my, I'm worried about whether or not I'm going to have enough gas to get home. I'm worried about whether or not my kid's going to get a diagnosis of cancer. All these things that we do, I'm anxious about. But I typically am going to experience it in some way. So we describe like, so it's a, it's both a physical and a cognitive, certainly what we would call an emotional experience of distress. And you know, in our audience we have, we have a range of things about, you know, I'm anxious if I'm like in the 10th grade and I have, I have this girl that I want to ask out on a date. I might also be anxious if I'm in that same grade and I got to give my first speech in speech class tomorrow. Like we look at that was like, well, that's not life threatening. Neither of these things are life threatening. But if you're going to talk to the, you know, the 15 year old, he's like, well, well, it feels life threatening to me. Right? Because the intensity with we, that we encounter, it's, it's not, it's not just about, like, well, what is the absolute relative importance of this thing? Like, no, like, it is, like, what am I encountering right here in my very physicality? So this is something that we would say. And so therefore you. You just like, well, you don't need to worry about that. As if somehow these magic words are going to, like, make somebody's heart slow down all by themselves. Right, right. The Bob Newhart. Right. Way of, like, curbing anxiety. Just stop it. And. And at the same time, we would say that if you. If you were to. If you were to. Yeah, so this is how it presents itself. This is one way of describing what's happening. But if we were to pause and say, okay, like. Like, we. We in our modernist way, in a medical model, it's easy for us to say, oh, somebody has anxiety. And these are the features they think, these thoughts, they have these feelings, these perceptions. These are the things they experience in their body. And so they therefore quote unqu. Anxiety disorder. To which we would say, well, that's a kind of convenient way to think about who we are as machines. Or like, I'm a brain on a stick. It doesn't really get to the root of, like, well, how is it that I'm anxious about asking her out on a date? You know, not that I somehow shouldn't be, but, like, what's really behind it? What's behind my worry about my speech class? What's behind my worry about my kid? Which we might say, like, well, come on, Kurt. Like, what do you mean? Of course they're anxious. Your kid might have cancer. No, I'm not debating whether or not we should be. Or we're saying, what's that ultimately about?

I say, which I think is such a great segue into just our next question of how does anxiety connect to our past trauma and the stories that we tell ourselves in the present moment? Why is he so anxious about his kid or this teenager asking this girl out? What is that connected to? Or is it connected to trauma in the past?

Yeah, well, I think, again, I think it's connected to trauma, but I think it's also connected to the reality of something that's much bigger than any of our own individual stories of unrepaired ruptures. I think, you know, we would say from an anthropological standpoint, from a human. What does it mean for us to be human? We would say that, you know, for me, the most haunting sentence in the first two creation narrative chapters of the Bible. Or, it's not good for the man to be alone. And you Know, why does God have to say this? Like, everything was good. What's up with him having to make a commentary about why the editorial offering. There's something. And we would say that it's not just a matter. God's not just making. Offering a reflection on the material universe as it currently is. These Hebrew writers are brilliant. They're giving us this line as a hyperlink for what's coming later. Like, you don't really know what that. Like, well, why is he. Why is it not good? Like, well, okay, you get one chapter later and you're like, oh, oh, this is. This is a problem. Like, Adam didn't seem. Like Adam didn't seem to know that he had a problem with not having a mate. It's God that seemed to look at this and the writers are saying, something's coming. And I would say that this is a thread that weaves its way throughout the entire arc of the biblical narrative. And we would say that at the end of the day, you know, we can describe it neurobiologically. There are a number of researchers out there who have done really beautiful, elegant work on tracking. What does the brain tell us about what anxiety looks like, what's happening in the brain, all that's beautiful and fine and good. And at the same time, what that brain science does not tell us is. It does not tell us about what the meaning of anxiety is, because science doesn't tell us about meaning. But what we would say that the biblical narrative says is that anxiety is telling me that catastrophic abandonment is coming. It's letting me know that at the end of the day, I'm not going to be enough, such that people will want to be in relationship with me. It doesn't matter that I know that if I ask this girl out on a date and she says no, it doesn't matter that I know that, like, I'll be fine. Some people would be more anxious and others less anxious. But for those of us who are anxious, we would say yes, because this represents. This connects to something that is archetypal. This connects to something that is ancient. This connects to my awareness that without the connection of other people, like, I'm literally. I'm not just going to be a dead man. I'm going to be a living man who is miserable because I am only with me. And so when it comes to trauma and how it's linked to this, our trauma just becomes. And our unrepaired ruptures, right? Not just trauma for trauma's sake, but trauma that has been unrepaired that has been unhealed. It simply is an extension and a loud echo of Genesis 3, where my trauma is just my lived experience of what it means for me to be essentially scapegoated and dismissed out of the community, perhaps at least in the privacy of my own mind. And then I do it to myself. I get rid of myself. I cut off parts of myself because I can't tolerate them. And those parts are the parts that are left, like, why can't I come into the room, right? The part of me that feels stupid, the part of me that feels like I'm way overwhelmed by these things and so forth and so on. And so so much of our coping strategies, so much of our addiction behavior that the Bible would just simply call idolatry, right? It's like I'm going to choose to give power to something other than my creator, to be responsible for my ultimate well being. When I do that, what I'm really trying to do is to cope with ultimately the anxiety that I can no longer tolerate. I can't tolerate me. And so this will help me not have to be present with myself. Which of course only doubles down on my deep awareness of being alone, which only makes things worse in the long run.

Yeah, yeah. It occurs to me how significantly what you're saying connects to the kind of issues that we see at pure desire lead people into addiction and talk about how they're going limbic and into their limbic brain that is all responsible for survival and keeping us alive. And the ways in which then our experiences become fused into beliefs that we have to protect ourselves for survival. That in a similar way anxiety goes, it supersedes just the logical thinking brain that we can make sense of, oh, I'm anxious because of this or that. There's something at a deeper level triggering that kind of fear survival response. And we can't just, like you mentioned in your comments there, we can't just tell in a logical way, like, oh, it's not logical for me to feel that because that's not really a concern. Even running out of gas, it's like, well, I've got a credit card and there's four gas stations within a mile of me. It's not legitimate, but maybe there's something about a sense of belonging or safety that is being triggered. And if we never pay attention to that, if we never go to that level, we just keep experiencing all these things and then they drive our lives. But we need that help of going to what, what's happening below the surface here. What's really creating all that anxiety in my life.

Yeah, I mean, I just to bring it home, I. I meet with a spiritual director who's, who's been this. My, my director now for about a year after the director that I had for over 25 years passed away. And she in many respects has become like a second mother to me. She's loved me in ways. She's 82 and she is just providing things for me that are just crucially important. And about three weeks ago on our last call, she was naming things for me because I had, I. We were talking about my being anxious. I know what I'm anxious about and the particular, the particularities of that. And she painted for me a picture of what it would be like for a figure who would be represented like an adult father to come through a crowd, like, come looking for me. And I was undone by this. She said, like, I picture you as some three year old who can't get through the wall of people. And you're alone and you're afraid and through this wall of people, God's coming for you. And you know, it's one thing to just hear somebody say that, like as an idea. It's another thing to pause and reflect and actually allow myself to run a video in my head in which this is happening. You start to feel the difference of. And you come to recognize, oh, this is what it's like to feel like you're three or feel like you' 14, but you're being asked to live an adult's life. Like any 14 year old who's asked to live an adult's life would be anxious. And they should be. Yeah, because I'm gonna screw up and the world is gonna go away. And so this is where it's crew like, like what you all are doing is so crucially important because you are creating space for and emphasizing not just with ideas and abstractions, but. But communities in which people can be seen so safe, secure. They have this encounter in embodied ways in which they are able to kind of come to terms with the parts of them that still believe that they're, you know, that God is at war with them, that still believe that they're not enough. All where all these places where shame hides out and give them an opportunity to actually physically reconfigure their experience of what. Of what it means to feel anxious, but then at the same time have someone be present for them in that moment such that that anxiety, that physical response of anxiety is transformed. And that's where the money is.

Yeah. The, the I am with you of a group experience. We should put that in a little promotional ad for pure desire. Dr. Kurt Thompson, talking about the need of community as you walk through recovery in this regard. Kurt, you've talked about anxiety and aloneness and how much those go together from a neuroscience perspective. How do these impact or affect our brains? And what does it look like to start healing if we recognize that anxiety and the fear of aloneness are driving a lot of our emotional responses to people and our world?

Well, I think there are a couple things that happen from a neurological standpoint. One is that when we are anxious, we naturally have an increase in certain hormones. You have acth, you have cortisol, that tends to increase. And these are things that when we are anxious, we actually need. They are protective for us, they help us, they help advance our brain's capacity to think more quickly. Our body gets ready to take action when it needs to take action. And to have increased doses, increased concentrations of those hormones in our brain for a certain short period of time is exactly what the body needs. But the body does not need that to continue for long periods of time, because over time it then becomes toxic. It's kind of like, yeah, I like having my SWAT team come, you know, come into, in, you know, into the neighborhood when things are really bad. But like, I don't really want my SWAT team just to stay there then indefinitely because like every time I watch a guy with a, you know, with an automatic weapon, that's not my idea of like this. I don't, that's not the neighborhood that I want. And so what, I mean, there's that there's the toxicity that can happen. Like it makes it harder for cells to do their job, the hippocampus that is responsible for my short term memory. It makes it harder for me to remember things, it's harder for me to encode things, harder for me to focus my intention on things because of, in some respects, because of the toxicity. Now, by toxicity here, I don't mean like that's going to kill you, but it makes it harder for the brain to function. When cells have too much exposure to these kinds of stress hormones for longer periods of time. And then the other thing that happens is that it makes it harder for. When the brain is having a hard time with each part of the brain, each function, sections of cells here and there to do their job, it equally makes it that much more difficult for them to communicate with and remain connected to other sets of neural networks in the brain. And so not only Is each set having to work harder to do its job, but part of that energy is going to be given up that they would Typically where the prefrontal cortex is downregulating the, the amygdala like it has, it's harder to do that. It's harder for my right brain and my left brain to talk to one another. I tend to become, if I need to, I tend to become more left brain focused where I'm going to analyze and solve the problem to not really paying attention to my body, not really paying attention to what I feel in order to like get this job done. And if I'm not paying attention to that, it's going to want to ramp up and send even stronger signals, which I'm going to ramp up and pay even more attention to not getting like, I don't want. And this becomes like a snowball effect. And so then we wonder, why am I yawning so much? Why am I so tired at the end of the day? Why are all these kinds of things happening often? Because what I'm really trying to do is to regulate this either low grade or high grade anxiety that is making it really difficult for, for my brain to function. But it's also important for us to know this even when we ask this question, well, how does anxiety affect the brain? It's easy for us to think, oh, it's how my anxiety affects my brain because I'm anxious. How does that happen? I don't necessarily quickly think, oh, when I'm more anxious is the first thing that I do. When I'm anxious, say, am I going to call you all up and say, hey, can I just let you know I'm anxious? You're, you're on my, you're on my speed dial for texting, right? I'm just like, dude, like I'm having an anxious day. Well, I'm, I'm actually like every day is anxious for me, but like it's a more anxious day, right? Like, like, am I, am I going to do. No. Like, okay, all right, so I've been married for 38 and a half years and I, like, I, I, I, I, like, I don't deserve my life in, in, in, you know, and, and let me just say, I don't deserve to be married to the woman that I'm married to. And she doesn't deserve to be married to the man that she's married to, but for very different reasons, right? Like she does, she doesn't deserve to have to put up with me. I don't deserve to have had the opportunity to live with her. And, you know, it would be fair to say if people were to. If people were to 20 years ago, if they would have hung out with us for a certain period of time, I think it would be fair to say that people might easily say, if you were to ask, like, well, which of the two of them, Kurt or Phyllis, which one is more anxious? I think people would say, oh, Phyllis is definitely more anxious. And now what I would say is, well, the reason that that's apparent is because she just names what she's experiencing, says it. She's actually. She's actually not more anxious than me. She's actually just naming things. And nobody else in the room, like, people don't do this. Me. It turns out, like, I'm a really anxious dude, but I have been working since I was a child to make sure that nobody sees you sweat.

Yeah.

And if you're working that hard, like, you really don't know that you're anxious, but you're living like you are. And in the last several years, in working with my director and then my director, like, it turns out, like, yeah, I have these. These narratives, these undercurrents that are going on with me all the time. Like, I'm an anxious guy. And like, okay, is this good news for people to know that, you know, you're treating psychiatrists? Is this anxious? Like, I don't know. You can, you know, they can let me know on Monday. But the point being that we do all kinds of things to try to protect ourselves from ourselves, to keep ourselves out of our awareness. And so our anxiety is often very subtle. Right. If you look at all the sections in the Sermon on the Mount, no section gets more treatment in terms of his words beyond the Beatitudes than his treatise on anxiety at the end of chapter six. And Mike, no wonder, because he's not. And what does he say and does. You know, look at the. You know, look at the birds of the air. Look at the lilies of the field. And does your Father not love you more than these. And when you. When you hear him at the end of 11 Matthew, when he says, come unto me, all you are, you know, weary and heavy laden. And what I need to recognize is that when I'm weary and heavy laden, what I'm not doing is coming unto him. When I'm. When Jesus says, do you not know that your Father in heaven loves you so much more than the. You know, than these flowers and these birds? And I'm like, no, I don't actually know that I know you can tell me that I don't feel it in my chest because I've been practicing living as if I belong in it, as if I'm in a different story altogether. And it's not until, you know, sometimes until our addictions become so prevalent and are so impairing do I find myself in a room with you two guys.

Right?

In which for the very first time perhaps in my life, you're asking me questions I've never been asked before. They're not just about my anxiety. And the questions that you're asking are not just being asked for the purpose of gaining content or information from me, but in many respects the questions that you're asking are really vehicles that enable you to be fully present with me with your tone of voice, with your eye contact, with your body language, with your messaging of I'm, I'm, I'm not worried about you. Well, you know, I, I don't know how you could not be worried about me. Like I'm, I'm, I have enough worry for 10 people for me. And you say like no, I'm, but you, you might say you're not worried, but what I'm going to feel is your felt unworried, non anxious presence. That will be perhaps the first time I've ever had an encounter with what it's like for me to be in the presence of someone who's completely at ease being in my presence. And that is the gospel.

It's profound. Dr. Curtis, you're saying that it just comes to mind that Jesus is a really skilled teacher. You talk about Matthew 6 and him really leaning into this topic of anxiety and it just makes me really think that he's also a high priest who empathizes with us in all of our weaknesses. And I'm just thinking, I Wonder if Matthew 6 and the attention that he gives anxiety is because he fully, God, fully man knew a thing or two about anxiety. Like how beautiful of a conversation would that be to sit down with Jesus and to pick his brain of how did you experience anxiety, Jesus? And what did you do and how did you move back into right relationship with the Father? Because I can only imagine that that was a lived part of his experience.

Yeah, well it makes me think about how many of Jesus statements around this areas of fear, anxiety, you know, and well known that so many times he said do not be afraid. And then the follow up was for I am with you. And I think our response to that is like yeah, yeah, I'm with you. And I think sometimes Jesus wants to make us stop and go, no, hold on. I am with you. Like, yeah, yeah, I get it. And he's like, no, let's really pause and think about, what does this mean that I, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Son of God, I am currently present with you and, like, letting. Just. Just what you're saying, like, actually being in that place long enough to let all those things start, to slow down, to be aware of the presence of Christ. And I think in my story and for so many listening to this podcast, it was through just what you said, Kurt. Someone else doing that for us. Being there in our story, hearing some of the worst parts of it, the parts that we had the most shame around, and hearing them say, wow, I'm with you.

Yeah, that.

Then we felt like, oh, if my brother, who's also a failure in his own regard, can say that to me, then I'm actually starting to feel and experience the ways in which Jesus says that to me as well.

That's right. You know, we do a lot of work in our practice and in this nonprofit that I help to support around the development of what we call confessional communities. And one of the things that we hear routinely that we began to hear years ago, and it came unsolicited. After people have been together in one of these communities for a number of months, we'll hear some version of somebody say, yesterday I had the hardest conversation I've ever had with, you know, fill in the blank. I had to do the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Fill in whatever it was. Fill in the blank. And the reason I would do. I could do it is because I saw where every single one of you were in a room.

Huh?

This notion that when we are willing to vulnerably reveal ourselves to others who are doing the same. This is Jesus and Thomas in John 20. This sense of him saying, put your hand right here, put your hand right here, that Jesus wasn't just with Thomas. Jesus was pulling Thomas in to be with him. And, like, dude, like, if I'm Thomas and you've put my hand in your still unhealed wound, like, first of all, that's weird. Okay? Like, second of all, it's certainly not comfortable. And thirdly, it will be unforgettable. Mm. You know, he's not just saying, hey, we're eating fish together. He's not just saying, hey, I'm shaking your hand. He's not just giving him a hug. He's going below the skin, as it were. Into this wound and saying, like, yeah, this. I'm. I'm bringing you into the. This is you, this is me. This is where we live together. And it's in these spaces where we have enough time again, what you guys, what you're all are doing in your ministry, you're creating space for people to have embodied encounters with each other over a period of time. Time that literally allows the brain, you know, allows your presence, for example, and what happens in these confessional communities, it allows my remembered presence of the other of you, of your tears, of your encouragement, of your empathy that I see and hear in your tears as I tell my story. I take you. You literally take up residence in the memory neural networks of my brain. And if. If we take seriously Paul's language that we are the body of Christ, that that's not just metaphor. What this means is that Jesus is literally occupying my brain because, like, you're the body and you're now going to, like, I'm. And you know, at some point, you know, it's like, you know, Jesus shows up at one of the meetings. Yeah, that was me. Part of the challenge, I think, in all this is that we have so many ways now, especially in the last, you know, 15 to 20 years. We have so many accessories, not least of which being the suit, you know, the supercomputers that we walk around with in our pockets. We have so many ways to distract ourselves from ourselves. So, you know, my. The hits for my addiction, you know, is just always available to me and it doesn't, you know, and it's, it's not a felony. It's just a swipe of my phone and I'm just, you know, I'm. I'm just checking my calendar. I mean, that's, you know, this is what I'm doing to distract myself. You know, a calendar is now, like, exciting to me because I am too distressed for myself.

Yeah.

And. And so there is no question that if we are going to be committed to community simultaneously, that kind of work in the body of Jesus, in the, in the, in the communities that you all are developing, it is not enough to simply do that. It must. There all must have. So this is, you know, Hebrews 12:1 and 2. Therefore, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses, let's run the race set before. But before, like, what do we have to do? We have to throw off the sin that so easily entangles us. We have to say no. We have to restrict our addictive behaviors, and I don't want to do that. Because they're actually so prominent, they're so everywhere that I don't even know that they're there.

Yeah. And they're doing something for us.

Right, Right. I'm in the middle of a book called A Web of Our Own Making by Anton Barba K. That is really. I think the. I think the subtitle is the Nature of Digital Formation. It's a magisterial work that really explores the reality that we are being formed by digital technology, most of which the ways are we have no idea. And so most of how it's forming us, like, we don't even know how to talk about. Because in order to talk about it, you'd actually have to be aware of how it's happening so that you could then talk about it. But because we don't know that it's happening, we don't understand it to be formation. We don't think about the fact that, for instance, I can sense just as easily where my phone is or isn't as much as I can sense where my child is.

Right. That unattached limb. I said, Dr. Kerr, I'm really curious. Just as we continue the conversation regarding being known and seen and the power of secure relationships and the power of safe, honest, you know, community, I know that you've been doing some study regarding the James cone and Virgin study, and I'm just curious if you could speak to a little bit of how that impacts the perception of pain. How does community and being in a safe community impact our perception of pain?

Well, you, you mentioned James cone, and this is, this is work from 20 years ago, so it's old data, but it still holds. And cone is a neuropsychologist at the University of Virginia and has done a lot of work in. In different variations on the same theme, and, you know, took research subjects and subjected them to a small noxious stimulus, pain stimulus, while at the same time then getting brain scans in a. In a SPECT scanner and really kind of looking not only at how the somatic pain registered with them, but then also how does their parietal and frontal lobes tend to respond in terms of their experience of distress, emotional distress, existential distress. That's what that's tending to monitor. And he runs this series of scans and then he repeats the study, only this time he asks. He asks the subjects to have accompany them someone who is a really close friend or close family member, someone with whom they feel really comfortable and safe with. And they do the whole experiment again. And time after time after time what they came to what he came to find was that their perception of pain, somatic pain, did not change over time, but their experience of emotional distress in the presence of somatic pain reduced significantly. Now, in some respects, we might look at that and say, well, that kind of makes sense. Like, if somebody's with me, like, it's. I. I perceive life to be less difficult. Right. And most of us walk around actually perceiving that. That somebody isn't with me, which makes me anxious.

Yeah.

But the other thing that Cohn, I think, really put his finger on, and he's not a believer, and so he wasn't asking this question from a theological standpoint, but the question that he raised was, we have done hundreds of thousands of scans looking at what we believe normal brains should look like, and we've kind of collated that. And here's. Here's what a normal brain typically looks like, because we've got all these. But now we have brains that even when we do this experiment and people are holding hands, their brains show less distress than normal subjects do, even when they're not under some kind of pain stimulation. What's that about? He's asking, is it possible that for all these years that what we would consider to be a normal brain is only that because it's by itself. Is it possible that a more completely whole brain, completely at ease mind, is one that has deep connection, even physically, to those by whom we are being deeply seen and known and loved? To which we would say, well, you know, there is that verse again in Genesis, chapter two. It's like, it's not good, y', all, for the man to be alone. I don't, you know, I don't know if you know about that. And. And so I think it gives us good evidence to at least be curious about and speculate. Oh, what does it mean for me to take seriously that my being with others matters to them, Their being with me matters to me. That. That. I mean, here's one of the major things is like, most of us have no idea of the degree to which our presence is going to make all the difference in the world for somebody today. Most of us do not leave our homes in the morning wondering to ourselves with God. I wonder who I'm going to see who. When I do, they are going to know that they are loved in a way that before they saw me, they didn't know. Like, we're. We're not. I, like, I don't think I have that much power. I. I don't think. I. I don't think that my presence matters this much. I mean like, and like guys, like this is especially true of fathers and our children. Like we know that we have responsibilities for our kids. We know. Like we know in the abstract that we, like, yes, we matter to our kids, our kids matter to us. Like we really, like, we believe that. But if you ask most fathers what's their viscerally felt sense of their significance, like you know, oh, like if, like if, if, if something happened to me, like they'd be fine because they'd had their mom.

Yeah.

If something would happen to their mom, like, oh my gosh.

Like.

This challenge that we have as men in particular, because we haven't received it from our own fathers, we haven't received it from other males in our lives, this felt sense that our presence is, is going to be the difference maker multiple times today because we are the light of the world. Wow. Yeah.

I just want to go home and hug my kids. I think there's something powerful about what you're saying that for many men in particular, physical touch in their experiences was often limited to competition of. When I was in a sport, there was physical activity. I'm elbowing with a guy in a basketball game and. And then physical touch was like you mentioned, through a mother or perhaps in a romantic relationship. And so I do think we see a whole generation of men that are like, it's awkward to hug. Am I supposed to hug? If I hug another guy, does that mean something? But just relearning like being in physical proximity to other men and having that be safe and non sexual, it's like our society has very little concept of that. And how could we, in an appropriate, you know, biblical kind of world, you say man to, to see another man and be able to touch him and on the shoulder and affirm and not have that, have any sense of. That's weird that I'm touching to hear that the brain is responding to that. It's like it underscores for me how important it is that we learn to be together again as friends, as men with men, as women with women. That not only in the physical same space, but actually able to touch or to hug or to grab a hand and say, you're not alone. Right. God made our brains to respond to that is what I'm hearing you say, which is amazing.

I think what's so cool for me, Dr. Kurt, one of the stories that comes to mind is I landed in Orlando and I had been super late. It was for this conference, it was for an event and I had Missed a flight. I was literally a whole day late. My suitcase was literally in Chicago, not Orlando. I didn't have clothes. Like, it was a train wreck. It was a train wreck. And I was now late for the check in. I'm supposed to be wearing khakis to this event. I don't have a car. Like, nobody's there to pick me up. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. And I feel alone, and I'm not enough. And like, everybody, all of these people at this event are gonna see me poorly, negatively in sweatpants and a T shirt. And I'm just. I'm there outside of MCO or the Orlando airport, just going like, God, like, will somebody find me? Will somebody come get me?

Yeah.

And it ended up being the head of HR had to come get me because again, the event is in motion. Like, they had to send the head of HR to come get me in his own personal vehicle. And he picked me up and I got in the car. And I'm immediately apologizing, right? Because this is about me. It's not about my flight. Like, I've done something wrong is what I'm believing. And he simply said, tell me about it. And his presence in that moment, I don't know if I'd ever felt the presence of Jesus with him taking a deep breath with me and simply saying, tell me about it. I'm here. I'm with you. It wasn't rushed. He was a non anxious presence. He got me to the hotel. He got me checked in. He got me a free T shirt at the event so I could change out. T shirts. The next morning, I was going back to that same event, still without clothes now having borrowed a roommate's shorts that I just met the night before. And he said, hey, you can't go in like that. And I said, I know, but I literally have no clothes. And you know what he said? I'd like to take you to my house and I'd like you to put on my clothes. And I literally walked into him and his wife's bedroom. He had khakis and a polo laid out. I literally took his boxers. I wore his boxers.

That's close and personal.

I called them my Ebenezer boxers. And I'm going, doctor, because what I didn't know is that he was a part of the center for being known. And Dr. Kurt, that man loved me like Jesus, unlike I've ever been loved before. I still have his boxers in my room today because he said later on, when he found out that I was wearing Them, he said, and you can just keep those. And so I literally still have them to remind myself.

Yeah.

That Christ is with me in the lowest of moments when I have nothing, when I have no resources of my own. That man showed up for me in a way that I will never forget.

Yeah.

It was so profound.

So that's why you have framed boxers on your wall that says, that's an amazing story, John.

It's, I mean, it is. You're, you're really kind of getting to the point of this notion that, you know, we live in a culture where even so much of our formational elements, of our, of our, our spiritual formation is a kind of a left to right, top down attempt at formation. And that's not, that's not unhelpful. You know, we, this is how we learn math, it's how we learn a lot of things. But it is also not very effective when it comes to relationships and when it comes to my overall human behavior. I can, you know, I can learn how to do trigonometry if I'm learning, if I'm just doing problem after problem after problem after problem. But if you want me to be a person of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all the rest, I, I have to have a felt sense of what that means for it to be directed at me. And only then once receiving it, can I then give it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Kurt, so love this conversation, but let's wrap up here today as people are thinking about now anxiety and aloneness and maybe through a different lens, if someone's having an experience of anxiety, feeling stuck in it, what steps would you encourage them to start taking, to both understand maybe the source of their anxiety and to start working through it? Would you, would you wrap us up with just some thoughts of what could someone start doing today?

Yeah, I think, you know, I would always want to encourage folks to know that there is help. We might think that it might feel hard to ask for help. That's different than whether or not there is help. A lot of times, you know, we've already made up in our mind that, like, the help isn't going to be helpful or the people that I want to ask are not going to want to be helpful and so forth. And so I just say there's no help in my head. And so I want to assure you that there are people, like I'm talking to two of them right now. Right? There are people in the world to our listeners. There are people in the world who want to love you, who want to be Jesus Hands and feet and voice and embrace. And so I want to invite you to also to know that when we're anxious, there is going to be required of us. Risk there is going to be required of us. Like this is. We are not going to be spoon fed. Jesus is not in the business of just simply changing diapers for the rest of our lives with us, right. He wants us to get potty trained. He wants like the woman who's got, you know, who's got the bleeding dyscrasia right in Mark 5, you know, she's got a plan and it's all going to be very like commando healing. Like I want to get in, get the job done, get out, nobody knows anything. And then you know, all the wheels come off because he says, who stopped? Who touched me? And who knows how long he would have stayed. But like at some level she had to gather up the courage that's right into public and to do this. And that's going to be a requirement. It's going to require risk. Because Jesus wants serious, serious followers. He wants people who are taking this stuff seriously and he will meet you. And so who would be one or two or three people who are the options that you would say, look, I'm anxious. I want to call this person and just say I'm anxious. Can we talk about why I think I'm anxious? And we don't even have to solve the problem because remember, the problem of anxiety is not ultimately about the thing I think it is. It is ultimately about me being alone with me.

That's right.

My 10th grader is still going to have to give that speech. What he's worried about is that at the end of the day I'm going to look stupid. The teacher's going to think I'm stupid. People are going to all this shame and actually no, you want a classic and say like, this is hard. We all know it's hard. Bring it on. We know it's hard. We're going to be with you in this. Yeah. And so yeah. And he's then going to have to muster the courage. Like that doesn't suddenly like make it easy to do. But once he does will change not just his comfort and confidence, you know, giving him speeches, it will alter his experience of being alone for the rest of his life.

So risk relationship. Well, I think what's community I think.

Was so profound for me, Nick, was that the enemy had lied to me in addiction, that somehow sexual acting out or this sexual high was the only way to get dopamine. But Dr. Kurt, what you're saying is. No, when we risk in relationship, when we risk in community, risk is a proceeder of dopamine because it's, it's not certain how this is going to play out, but we can trust, if we identify safe, trusted people that they will meet us in that moment. And it is there that we're also finding dopamine in right relationship with others. And that's so profound.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's dopamine without being consumed or abused.

Yes.

Yeah.

As God intended. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Kurt, thank you so much for joining us today. We could talk for hours and hours, but thank you for the time you had today. Would you tell our listeners where could they hear more? Where could they keep up with you? How could they connect with all the work that you're doing these days?

Yeah, thanks so much. And so, and also, first of all, like, man, I am, I'm so grateful for all the work you're doing. I'm grateful to have been on the podcast and I would love to do this again sometime. So for what it's worth, if that's something you want to do. All right.

Hey, we'll call this part one.

Well, so people can find my work in, in a number of ways. The, the probably recently the most common way is through a podcast that I co host with my friend Pepper Sweeney and our producer Amy Chella. It's called the Being Known podcast that you can get on any of your podcast platforms. You can find my work@kurt thompsonmd.com where I provide some resources and some activities, things that you can do to address some of these things. There are the four books that I've written. You can also find out about those on the, on the website. You can also track me on Instagram and Facebook and I guess X is what it's now being called. And then.

That's right. I'm gonna keep up with the times.

Yeah. And then the, the last thing is there's a nonprofit that we have called the center for Being Known, which has kind of as its, its flagship offering right now is lay led confessional communities. And we currently just started our, our fourth cohort to date. And we've got about somewhere between 450 and 500 people that are in these different groups that are all over the, all over the place. And so we're, we're grateful for what the Holy Spirit is doing and giving people an opportunity to be known and to, you know, recommission them to do the beauty and goodness work that they were called to do from before the foundation of the world.

Yeah. Amen. So if you haven't checked out one of Kurt's four books, you need to grab one today. Go find the center for Being Known, look into those confessional communities. Kurt ThompsonMD.com we'll put all of this in the show notes. And yes, check out the being known podcast. Dr. Kurt, we're such big fans. Thank you for what you're doing in our world and to help people really be in touch with God, what God wants to do in them and through them in community. We're so grateful for you today guys.

Thanks so much. Great to be with you. Many blessings. Bye.

And to you. And to you our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you are a fan of this content of today's show, would you please please subscribe, write a review, share it with someone. All of these are ways that other people can encounter a life giving message and might be a part of their healing and recovery journey. And if you want more information on pure desire, groups, resources or counseling, go to PureDesire.org Journey on my friends, you are not alone.