1KHO 837: The Work of Being Known | Dr. Curt Thompson, The Anatomy of the Soul

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I am sitting across today from someone I have been a fan of for so long. Dr. Curt Thompson, welcome.

**Dr. Curt Thompson** (1:14)
Ginny, thank you so much for having me. This is an honor and a delight. I, you know, my wife is a mother, and I don't know. I mean, we're parents of two adult children, and you know, I often say that if it weren't for my wife, my children would probably be dead or in jail. And so I'm just so grateful to be talking with people of whom nobody is working harder in the world.
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:45)
Hello to all the mothers listening who feel like they're drowning. Curt, you know, I wonder about being the type of person that is quoted in so many books. So I have three of your books here. I have Anatomy of the Soul, which is such a great title.
Who even would have thought of that? Anatomy of the Soul. This book is about your connections between neuroscience, spiritual practice for your life and your relationships. I have The Deepest Place, which is about suffering and hope. What a book. I have The Soul of Shame, retelling the stories we believe about ourselves. I know there's also The Soul of Desire, and you have so many other things that you offer, so we're going to be talking about those today.
But I cannot tell you how many books I've read that are like, and Dr. Curt Thompson says this, and Dr. Curt Thompson says like, I hope one day I get a chance to talk to Dr. Curt Thompson. One of my dear friends, Nicole, is a huge fan too, so she sent me a couple of questions as well. But I would love to kick it off with, your work is foundational. Right, people are quoting you because you have these foundational studies and thoughts.
And you talk about being known. You have a Being Known Podcast. And I think as a parent, it can be really easy to do, do, do. You go, go, go. You're taking your kid from one thing to the next.
And you say that only when we are known, are we positioned to become conduits of love.
And you talked about a girl, and I know you change names, but you talked about a girl in Anatomy of the Soul where her parents never asked her about her emotional life, and they didn't really have any connection to that. And so, and you're saying this affects how our nervous system wires. So, can you talk about that foundational piece of being known, really kind of like what should we be doing?

**Dr. Curt Thompson** (3:33)
Well, I think, first of all, it's helpful especially for us to be aware that humans, we are not machines, we're not computers. With all the emergence of AI, we might wonder if that's true or not, but I can assure you that we're not. And we are not people who just, as it turns out, do, do, do, do, do. Even though it can feel like that.
If you were to give a person, if you ask a person a question, do you want more or less joy, more or less goodness, more or less beauty in your life? And you say like, okay, and now we're going to ask you, do you want to get more or less done? These are completely different questions, different kinds of questions. And the reality is that for us, we think that we can go out and just create our own joy and happiness and so forth and so on. I can, I can go do things. But as it turns out, and this whole notion of being known comes off of the page of one of Paul's letters to the church at Corinth when he writes, there are those who think they know things, who do not know as they ought to know. Now, just that phrase alone, right? I am, like, I want to know, I want to know things, I want to know things, I want to get information. That's why we have Google. This is, you know, I want to acquire, this is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I want to know things. I want to know that I know that I know. Because deep within me is also neurophysiologically as well as spiritually built this sense that if you know me well enough, at some point, you're going to discover the thing about me that is going to cause you to want to leave. Right.