Friends With Your Mind: How to Stop Torturing Yourself With Your Thoughts - by Lynn Fraser

COURSE

Friends With Your Mind: How to Stop Torturing Yourself With Your Thoughts

With Lynn Fraser

A hypervigilant nervous system generates most of our catastrophic thought. Learn tools to break the trance of compulsive thinking, become familiar with sensations and energy in your body that make thoughts feel more real, and cultivate patience and kindness. We learn to signal safety to our nervous system through smooth, diaphragmatic breath, softening our body, and calming our mind.

GroundedHealth & HappinessSOSStress & AnxietyResilienceYogaSpiritualityStress

Meet your Teacher

Lynn Fraser
Halifax Canada

Lynn Fraser is an anchor to support your journey in living from your own innate wisdom and goodness. She is a senior teacher in the Himalayan Yoga Meditation tradition, and founder of the Stillpoint Method of Healing Trauma. Lynn supports people to safely reconnect with themselves through knowledge, regulating the nervous system, and compassion. "Lynn's the real deal." -Dr. Rick Hanson

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12 Days

11.8k students

4.9 stars

10 min / day

Grounded

English

Lesson 1

Trauma, Neuroception, and Survival Responses

Neuroception is our unconscious assessment of safety and danger. Our brain has a negativity bias and uses evidence from our past to decide. When we sense danger, our nervous system activates a fight/ flight/ freeze/ fawn survival response. With somatic (body) mindfulness, we can become aware earlier of this unconscious process and work with it more skillfully.

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Lesson 2

Witness and Work With Thoughts

We practice tools to witness thoughts (words and images), and to help our brain realize that traumatic images and memories from our past are not a threat in the present moment. Try framing and tracing for images. With your eyes open, mentally place the image in a frame on a wall on the other side of the room. Take your eyes around the empty space outside of the frame a few times in each direction to help your brain realize it is an image, not something happening in the present moment.

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Lesson 3

Guided Somatic Practice For Regulating Your Nervous System

We don't talk ourselves out of feeling unsafe, we use somatic tools to experience regulation. This guided practice includes visual cues of safety, touch - holding our own hands, and grounding and orienting to the present. Exhaling at least six seconds activates our relaxation response, and we can do that through breathing practices, singing, or talking in longer sentences.

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Lesson 4

Somatic Inquiry: I Am Friends With My Mind

A reverse inquiry is a statement we know isn't completely true. It is a way of finding out what is in the way of it being more true. We might get a NO! or our body might tighten up. We listen to a series of statements and see our responses: I am at home in my body and enjoy my life; I have a sharp healthy mind; I am willing to be patient and kind with myself.

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Lesson 5

Sensations And Energy In Our Body

We store trauma in our body along with associated thoughts and memories. We cultivate somatic (body) awareness and learn tools like locate/describe to realize we are in the present moment where we are safe. Building on the tools for thought, we can self-regulate, learn why this energy is here, and work with it to heal.

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Lesson 6

Core Deficiency Beliefs

Children can't afford to turn against their parents so they blame themselves. When we regularly experience feeling unloved, we begin to believe we are unlovable. We disconnect from ourselves and our sense of value. We feel like we're on our own and some develop a mean inner critic. We can see through these false beliefs.

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Lesson 7

Regulating, Orienting, and Grounding Practices for Self-Regulating Your Nervous System

Most of the content in our mind and the tension in our body comes from hypervigilance in our nervous system. This lesson guides us through several effective practices for self-regulating. We use our senses in the 5 4 3 2 1 practice. We can hold our own hand or give ourselves a hug. We can catch ourselves worrying and soften our forehead. Try these!

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Lesson 8

Thoughts, Breath, and Nervous System Regulation

When difficult or alarming thoughts come up, we can be hijacked into hypervigilance. In this lesson, we do a guided walk-through of tools to work with thoughts and sensations and learn how the nervous system is always trying to protect us. When we hold our breath because we're anxious, we signal danger to our nervous system. As we breathe with more ease, we signal safety and our whole system relaxes.

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Lesson 9

Catastrophic and Ruminating Thoughts

Our mind believes what we think. Repetitive patterns like ruminating and catastrophic thinking create strong negative neural networks and deep grooves. Ruminating is a way to change our past and experience feeling more agency. Catastrophic thinking is an attempt to keep ourselves safe in the future. We'll identify and practice breaking the trance to use our brain in a more helpful way.

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Lesson 10

Somatic Inquiry: Working With Thoughts

Somatic inquiry is one effective way to become friends with our mind. What is your tendency? Do you more often ruminate about the past, or do you entertain worst-case scenarios about the future? This is a guided practice of noticing and challenging unhealthy thoughts, and strengthening our resourced, kind, adult self.

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Lesson 11

Releasing Toxic Shame

Remember to use regulating practices like cyclic sighing when we're working with shame. Shame causes us to disconnect from our sense of value. We have experiences of feeling unloved or unworthy and then form beliefs that we can see and challenge. We are having a trauma response. We are not bad or broken. It is natural to feel threatened when we are shamed or "don't fit in".

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Lesson 12

Welcoming Our Younger Self

As children, we stored experiences of feeling excluded, judged, powerless and hurt because we were overwhelmed. Adults have more resources and agency. In this session we invite our younger self to come forward and experience the love and protection of our adult self. We can realize our inner goodness and build a relationship of kind connection with all of our parts and our hurt younger self.

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4.9 (265)

Recent Reviews

Andy

January 31, 2026

This was the most helpful course I've ever discovered on this site.

Patricia

January 7, 2026

A must listen to for everyone in my opinion. Really helpful for me. It will definitely be helpful in getting me into a calmer place of living.

Martie

May 19, 2025

This was wonderful. I lucked into finding this. Soothing voice, such wisdom. I looked forward every day to next lesson. Thank you!

Adrian

May 8, 2025

Another wonderful course! Thank you! I love the practical advice and the inner child work, and feel aligned with your approach.

Jackie

March 25, 2025

Thank you. That was so helpful, has been so helpful in stepping back from rumination, being aware. Practical and useful tools, a kind voice.

Jeannie

February 25, 2025

You were reassuring and gave me a tool that stops my ruminating instantly. I will practice that tool to have it on autopilot whenever I start ruminating. You talked to me not at me. It was such a novel experience to be talked to and not talked at. My mother thought that shaming me even when I did well, was the special recipe for this child’s success. I would never stop “trying.”She called it “tough love.” It was tough but it wasn’t love. And it was very damaging. I gobbled up this course over two days. I am going to go over it again, maybe multiple times. It really helped. Thank you!!!

Tonya

February 23, 2025

Loved this and her voice is so soothing

Anna

February 16, 2025

Excellent course just like everything that Lynn offers. Very grateful for you!

Anita

January 29, 2025

Thank you! Your content and way of delivering has been tremendously helpful.

Kawena

January 25, 2025

Really a wonderful, deep, healing and soothing course that I'll return to to refresh the skills. Thank you so much.

Yvonne

December 28, 2024

Thank you so much for this course..

Sue

December 6, 2024

Thank you for this course, so many helpful tips and self regulating practices to work with which are immensely helpful and imminently practical.

Jim

December 5, 2024

So wonderful all of your teaching! And you have a peaceful calming voice! I’ll be looking for more of your work! Thank you so much! 🙏

Bridgett

November 21, 2024

Thank you. This helped me immensely

Wilhelm

October 31, 2024

The Best!

✨Sharon✨

October 27, 2024

Thank you.

Nynje

September 24, 2024

Very helpful

Sarah

September 23, 2024

Thank you for this course. I found it practical, engaging and well paced with many helpful insights and tools I can use immediately and hone over time. I'll revisit parts of this in future too. Thank you again. 🙏🦋

Kristy

September 18, 2024

Best thing I've ever done for myself, my anxiety, and my PTSD! I will be retaking this asap to keep practicing all this amazing content. Thank you so much for making this!!

Peri-Ann

August 30, 2024

Powerful course which offers practical, emotional and somatic experiencing anchors to help regulate the NS and connect with our inner child. Thank you 🙏🏻💖🕊️

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