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- [00:00]
TherapyNotes Announcer
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Laura Reagan
Therapy chat podcast episode 476 this is.
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The therapy chat podcast with Laura Reagan, LCSWC. The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. And now here's your host, Laura Reagan, lcswc.
- [01:23]
Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. I'm your host Laura Reagan and today I'm bringing you another replay episode. This one is from several years ago and it's never been replayed. My Interview with Lynn Fraser Lynn Fraser is a senior Meditation Yoga teacher in the Himalayan Yoga Meditation tradition and a senior facilitator of the Living Inquiries and Natural Rest. She has done a whole lot more since our original interview, but she teaches in Nova Scotia, Canada and she has courses online. Her website Still Point Somatic Mindfulness Inquiry is very it's a really great resource. She has classes, courses, live events. She has meditations and practices on Insight Timer. It seems like a pretty robust community space that she has going there. So that is something really cool and I'd love to interview her again sometime soon. But for now, here's my interview with Lynn Fraser about mindfulness and somatic work and healing trauma. This was when I was just beginning to explore bringing the body into therapy. I believe I had some training in somatic work at the time that I interviewed Lynn, but you know, we're always learning and we're learning and practicing embodiment all the time. In fact, I've been in training this weekend, both Saturday and today, which is Sunday, in the Trauma Conscious Yoga Method with Nitita Gesell, who is a previous Therapy Chat guest whom I will be interviewing again about her book. So sometime a little bit later on this year you'll hear that and I'm going to be doing training in person with her very soon. I can't wait. So, you know, despite having spent hundreds of hours training in somatic psychotherapy and practicing somatics myself with clients and in my own life, it's, it's a lifelong process to implement, embody those practices. And there's always so much more to learn. You know, they say these are interesting times for sure, but in the field of trauma, there is so much learning and growing that has been happening over the past 10 years and will continue to happen. And it's very inspiring and hopeful. I'm. I'm super inspired just seeing what Lynn has on her website that's newer since the last time I talked with her. So I hope you'll enjoy this conversation. Maybe it'll be an entry point into a deeper understanding for you too. Until next time, be well.
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Lynn Fraser
Hi.
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Laura Reagan
Welcome back to Therapy Chat. Today is a very interesting conversation. I am talking with Lynn Frazier, who is a mindfulness and yoga and meditation teacher and who uses Living Inquiry, which is a mindfulness based, meditative inquiry process with people who've experienced trauma. And I am fascinated to learn more about this. So, Lynn, thank you so much for being on Therapy Chat today.
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Lynn Fraser
Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
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Laura Reagan
I'm really happy too. You're all the way in Canada and Nova Scotia. Yes. So, Lynn, can we just start off with you telling our audience a bit about yourself and your work?
- [05:18]
Lynn Fraser
Sure. So the Living Inquiries, as you mentioned, is a mindfulness based, meditative inquiry. And what we do is we break down our experience into thoughts, which are words and pictures and sensation in our body, our energy or feelings that are in our body. And when we're looking at any kind of experience, whether we have, you know, a racing mind, if we've got some kind of anxiety, whatever it is, it always breaks down into thoughts and sensations. And with words, all we can do with words is hear them, hear the sounds. Our brain makes sense of them. With pictures we can see them, and with feelings or sensations, we feel them. So we work with them on a very simple level. There's three elements, words, pictures and sensations. And there's three questions that we might ask in the inquiry. So one is, is that me? So we're looking at our, at our identification. And a lot of the work when we're dealing with trauma is identification of some kind of a core deficiency belief. So we might have experiences in our life of being feeling unloved, being unlovable, and we'll create a belief out of that. It's the way our brain and our system works. So if we have the experience many times of feeling unsafe, unworthy, not smart enough, not seen, not loved, then we'll form a belief about that as a identity. So one of the inquiries is to look at how do I know that I'm unlovable? Well, I have a bunch of evidence and the evidence is the words and the pictures and the sensations in our body. Then another question that we look at is the compulsion inquiry. And we look at, how do I know that I want to have that thing to eat, that I want to drink, that I want to do drugs, that I want to. Where is the compulsion? Is it in the picture? Is it in the words? Is it in my body? Is it in this energy in the body? And for me, when I would have this kind of a pulsing energy in my throat, that would signal that it was time for me to eat something, something sweet and comforting, usually like ice cream or something. So we really work with the energy and the sensations in our body and what is associated with those. And in the work with trauma, a lot of the work that we do is with the anxiety inquiry. So we're looking at where is the threat? And what's really interesting is that it always comes back to what's happening in our body and we have associated memories and thoughts with whatever it is that's in our body. So one way I would talk about it is that trauma is stored in the tissues of our body. And when we're doing this mindfulness inquiry, we're looking to see and really get to know what's going on in our body, what's the energy feel like and what are the associated words that come along with that.
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Laura Reagan
So you explained to me when we were talking before we started recording about that this is a type of meditative inquiry that's similar to Buddhist inquiry.
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Lynn Fraser
Yes, it's a form of meditative inquiry. And Buddhism has an inquiry like that. Meditation does as well, Yoga meditation. And the inquiry that we were. That we started with, with the Buddhist inquiry, Scott Kiloby developed the living inquiries. And he was really looking at the unfindable inquiry, can I find a self? And when we feel like, you know, this is me, I'm here in this body and I'm a woman and I'm this and I'm that. We have all these identities. Then how. How do we know that that's true? Well, we have thoughts about it and we have feelings in the body, we have sensations in the body. So it started out with this basic unfindable, can I find a self? And then as you know, as he and this group of senior facilitators he was working with, as we were working with people and we're working on our own identities. The other two developed the compulsion inquiry and the anxiety inquiry developed through the work that we were doing. So those two inquiries aren't. I don't actually know if there's any inquiries like that in Buddhism or in yoga meditation. Those were developed more from this group of people that have been working with people and with ourselves.
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Laura Reagan
Fascinating. I mean, you're bringing up these questions like, you know, really what is the self? What are my core beliefs? I think those questions are things that many of us never even consider, even though it can be such a part of how we work with clients or how anyone who is in a process of trying to heal may. It's sort of part of the process that's happening, but we may not always reflect on that process.
- [10:20]
Lynn Fraser
And we're all really evidence based systems. And you know, we talk a lot about that with scientific research that we need to be evidence based. We need evidence based therapies, and that's legitimate. And as we're going through life, though, what happens, especially as children, we have very limited brain development as children. And if we're not in an environment where we feel connected and seen and safe, then we have these experiences in our primitive brain and our nervous system of fear. And we have, you know, we might have something that people would think of as trauma, you know, some kind of abuse or neglect or, you know, somebody dies in the family, there's divorce, there's violence, there's all of those kinds of things that we would think of as trauma. But one of the things I was really interested to see in the ACEs, the Adverse Childhood experiences research is that neglect has an equal impact on a child. And the reason for that partly is because we all have this need to be part of a family, a community. A tribe in the old days would have been called a tribe. And we need that in order to survive. So if we're not connected in that way, then we feel that as a survival level threat. And then our nervous system develops like that. And it's been really interesting just in the last 20 years of the research around neurosciences being the brain develops in response to our experiences, and if our experience has been that we're not safe, that we're not seen, then we don't develop neural pathways for trust and for connection. And disconnection is the effect of neglect and of abuse. It's the core of why we feel we don't belong, why we feel we're not worthy and we're not lovable. And so really looking at. At the systems and how they work, that it's not our fault that we've developed this feeling of not being worthy. It's just how our system works. We have these experiences and then our primitive brain goes, which has a really strong negativity bias. It's always looking for danger, then it's always trying to protect us from that. And so it feels like kind of a mess because there's all this going on, there's all these intrusive thoughts, there's the evidence gathering. So if we feel like we're not worthy or we're not smart, then everything we're doing is looking for evidence of that. And we get into this situation where our minds might be not very healthy. We've got a lot of catastrophic thinking. We've got a lot of really intrusive thoughts. We really don't have any peace from the thoughts in our mind. And we're not really able to go into our body and feel what's going on in our body because it feels kind of scary. And. And that was the situation for me 20 years ago, and it's not anymore. So these methods between meditation, breathing and calming my nervous system through yoga and meditation and then through these inquiries, I've really healed that big mess that used to be driving a lot of my suffering.
- [13:33]
Co-host or Guest Commentator
Wow. Thank you for that clear explanation about what is not always seemingly so simple, which is, you know, the neuroscience of trauma.
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Lynn Fraser
It's.
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Co-host or Guest Commentator
To me, it's an endlessly fascinating subject, and I'm so glad that you're talking about it and teaching about it and using it to. To help people. You know, I'm just thinking about how if you were doing mindfulness and meditation teaching without the trauma part, then that there's so much that could potentially be missed. And I've been talking with some other meditation teachers and people who are really involved with mindfulness practices too, about how sometimes people can kind of fall apart when they're doing meditation practice as they get more into their body and then their trauma can get triggered and they get caught by surprise and really know where to go with it. I think it's really beautiful how the.
- [14:36]
Laura Reagan
Way you're doing this work with people, both.
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Co-host or Guest Commentator
Both are covered.
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Lynn Fraser
Yeah. And, you know, safety is always at the foundation of healing. And if, you know, I really love it that there's so much trauma informed yoga now where we're getting into the body and really starting to relax Our nervous system. My shoulders used to be like cement blocks. I'd turn my head and I couldn't move for a week because I had so much tens stored in my body. And I was kind of in a state of freeze. And a lot of us are. And we don't even realize that that's what's happening because that's the way it's always been. Our body just really stores the. We brace ourselves against being hurt, and then all of that gets stored in our body, and it comes out as stress, and it comes out as. Some people go into the fight mechanism and they get kind of sharp with other people, or there might even be violence. Other people go into more of a freeze, and we numb out and we watch Netflix for hours and eat ice cream and do all of those things. And then, of course, there's far more serious addictions as well, in terms of alcohol and other drugs that have an immediate life threat to them. But it's also very, very serious when we go through our lives not really connecting within, not really happy, because we're really driven by this fear of what's in the body and the energy that's in the body, because it's associated with these feelings of being powerless or feelings of being hurt or not seen or neglected when we were children. And the good news about that is that we can connect now. We're not any longer powerless, we're not any longer children. We have a brain that we can work on, our brain development. We can work with breathing and the nervous system. All of these are workable. And so that even if we've had a serious trauma history, we can understand it and we can work with it and heal it.
- [16:39]
Laura Reagan
Yes, thankfully, there is neuroplasticity. Just because our brains have been impacted and our identities have developed the way you described in childhood doesn't mean that we can't begin to connect in a different way and have healthy, nourishing, nurturing relationships with ourselves and others.
- [17:07]
Lynn Fraser
And, you know, in the research around shame, what they say is that shame is meant to correct. Correct a behavior. It's not meant to be. You should be ashamed of yourself. It's meant to say, this behavior needs to stop, but it's supposed to be within the context of connection. So connecting, being connected with the person who's correcting our behavior, which would normally be your parent, your caregiver. That's really different from someone who's disconnected, who doesn't feel like they have any value, who doesn't feel like their parents really love them or care about them, and then they're being shamed for who they are, not just behavior. It's very traumatizing for a child especially. And a lot of the people that I work with have so much shame that that's part of shame is meant to be an intense experience because it's meant to correct a behavior that could get us kicked out of the family. But the way that shaming works in the toxic way that shaming works so much in our culture, it's devastating. And we'll do almost everything to avoid feeling that. And that's at the root of a lot of the resistance or avoidance. So one of the practices that we do is a welcoming practice where we really work with the energy. And the three phrases we might use are thank you for arising or thank you for being here. And so we're kind of tuning into the energy in our body and thanking it for being here. I love you and you're welcome to stay. And most people don't really mean it. It's hard to get to that point where we're not at war with the energy in our body and where we can actually really tune in and sense that it's okay for us to be with that energy. And that energy is actually not here to hurt us. It's here usually to warn us, to protect us, or to tell us something, or maybe because we need some kind of reassurance, we need our own attention. And that's where the mindfulness comes in, is we pay attention to ourselves.
- [19:09]
Laura Reagan
Yes, I can relate to that so much that once you start to get connected to what you're feeling in your body, if you've been disconnected from that, and then you start to notice these uncomfortable feelings and sensations in the body, and then you think, and I'll speak for myself, it's hard not to think, well, this feels unpleasant. So I'm not supposed to be feeling this way. What's wrong? Why am I feeling this instead of that? All ways of being and feeling are okay. It's really hard to, like, believe that.
- [19:51]
Lynn Fraser
It is. And part of that is because of the thoughts that are associated. When we're overwhelmed by something, as children especially, we find a way to disappear. So we might, you know, daydream or fantasize, dissociate somehow. Oftentimes we'll try and work it out in our head because it's too scary to feel it in our body. And then we develop this habit of just never really opening to what's going on in our body. And when we. When we go in one of the things that we might do in a guided session is to notice where exactly is the energy? What exactly does it feel like? Is it hot or is it cold? Is it moving? Is it still? What is the location? And, you know, if it's in our heart area, our chest or something, can you feel it up into your throat? Does it go down into your stomach? Might only go down partway. And then we notice the space all around the energy, and we get kind of clinical about it. We're really working with the objective witness or the observer, where we go, okay, here's this energy. Here's what it feels like. These are the qualities of it so that we're not getting kind of sucked into the train of thought that will often come with it. And then from the perspective of mindfulness, of watching and observing, we can go, okay, I can see that these thoughts are what's associated with this because these are the thoughts that are coming up for me to look at. It's this memory of some. Some incident that happened when I was 3 years old or 10 years old. And oftentimes people say, I haven't thought about that since it happened. I had no idea that that was what was associated with this energy. And as we really have a look and see, is this energy here to hurt me? No, it's not. And energy is not random either. It's here because there's something stored in our body that is ready to come up and be seen now. And then with the right support and then, you know, the right safety, then we're able to be present with it. And then that just opens up into this beautiful ability to be present with our own experience.
- [22:00]
Laura Reagan
Wow, this is so beautiful. I love it.
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Lynn Fraser
It's really cool. I. You know, I. When I was teaching meditation, I would. I would, you know, really talk about the mind and how the mind works and, you know, the storehouse and memories and associations. And I would also talk a little bit about the body, but I didn't really, at that time know how trauma was stored in the body and how it was. How it is possible to be. Have a mindfulness practice of being present with that and that it's okay to do that. And then, you know, as the fear and the shame and all of these traumatic experiences are released from the energy, the energy itself starts to release as well. And, you know, I used to have such a pain in between my shoulder blades that I had three different times I had X rays on it, and they would come back because I thought my spine was disintegrating. Or something. There's so much pain. And one time I just had a big breakthrough with that and the pain disappeared and it's never come back. But what happened after that pain disappeared was that then I I was able to really notice what the energy was going on, the feelings in my heart center. And then I was able to sit with the direct. That was where the associations, the memories were coming up and I could sit with that and look and see what was going on there. And then as they started to release, then there's not that much going on in there anymore. It's pretty quiet. What a relief.
- [23:32]
Laura Reagan
Yeah.
- [23:33]
TherapyNotes Announcer
Today's episode is sponsored by Psychotherapy Networker and pessi. If you're a therapist, be sure to check out the Partner page, which is linked in the Show Notes where you can get discounted trainings with previous Therapy Chat guests like Courtney Armstrong, Dr. Leslie Korn, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Dr. Tammy Nelson, Dr. Janina Fisher, Rebecca Case, Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Lindsay Gibson, Deb Dana, Lori Gottlieb, and many, many others. You'll find the link in the Show Notes to my Partner page with PESSI and Psychotherapy Networker where you can find all these discounted training.
- [24:08]
Laura Reagan
If you need CES, this is a.
- [24:10]
TherapyNotes Announcer
Great place to go. TherapyNotes is consistently transforming the way therapists manage their practices with continuous updates designed to save money and improve efficiency. Their latest Game Changer Therapy Fuel, a powerful and fully integrated suite of AI tools that streamline documentation so you focus more on your clients with AI features that help by generating progress notes from summaries or transcriptions, creating contact notes directly from clients, secure messages, and automated summaries of client history forms. TherapyNotes users are already reporting hours of saved time and energy. Some other recent feature improvements include automated recurring client payments, electronic secondary insurance billing, and their constantly expanding library of outcome measures. The best time to give TherapyNotes a try is now. Sign up for your free trial by going to therapynotes.com, clicking Start My Free Trial and accessing your first two months free with the promo code CHAT see why TherapyNotes is the most trusted EHR for behavioral health professionals today.
- [25:09]
Laura Reagan
And you know it. It resonates so much about the pain that you had that you were getting X rays. You know, I I if any of my clients listen to this, I know that they will relate that there are so many times where there's some physical symptom that is a very real symptom is not made up.
- [25:28]
Co-host or Guest Commentator
It's not in their head.
- [25:29]
Laura Reagan
It's a real symptom and they're trying to find out, do I have this? Do I have that? What is this? Cancer, Mississippi. Lupus. You know, what's happening here? And with more body awareness and trauma therapy, the pain will be not there anymore, you know.
- [25:51]
Lynn Fraser
Yeah, it's really surprising. And, you know, when we look at that. I have such respect for our bodies that they keep functioning with all of the tension and the. Everything that gets kind of locked down in our bodies. And we're so much more likely to try and figure things out in our head because it just doesn't feel safe to go down into our body and feel that. But once we figure that out, once we have the direct experience that we're going to be okay, then we reach this tipping point where we become really interested in what's going on in our body because we have the experience then that it's starting to release and we're having a lot more calm. Our nervous system starts to really heal. I do a lot of work with people on breathing and calming our nervous system as well, because we really need to come into the body and experience what's happening in our body in a very safe way. And there are a lot of great ways to breathe and to support our nervous system that are really helpful.
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Co-host or Guest Commentator
Yeah.
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Laura Reagan
I don't know anything that works better to get someone regulated, for someone to get themselves regulated than breathing.
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Lynn Fraser
Yeah, yeah. And sometimes people are in a state of freeze such that even to breathe feels too threatening. And then there are other ways that, you know, we can work with that until. Until the breath opens up. But for anyone who can work with the breath or, you know, saying a sound or. One of the interesting things I think is fascinating about medical science now is that it's really looking at how does the body and the nervous system and the brain function. And there's such good tools now that we can actually see it. And one of the things that I discovered a few years ago was some research around it takes six seconds of exhaling for the relaxation response to kick in. That's to do with the polyvagal system. So that's pretty easy to do. You know, we can just breathe out for six seconds and count that we could breathe out and talk in longer sentences. So if you're at a party, for instance, and you're feeling anxious, like I'm doing right now, I think I've been talking for probably 10 or 12 seconds without breathing, and take a deep breath and then do it again. So there's all of these ways, but if we don't know that then we're not able to use it. But there's some really simple, really great tools. Box breathing is another one that Dr. Andrew Weil has popularized. And I have people do where they, you know, you hold your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, inhale, you know, you have that four seconds on the exhale, hold, inhale, hold. And most people can do that for two or three seconds. And it kind of breaks the panic, it breaks whatever's happening in the nervous system so that we can come back to the moment and recognize that, you know, I can feel my feet on the floor, I can, you know, rub my hands together. I can break through a freeze or a beginning of panic in the body with some really kind of simple things. And then I can also do some breathing and other things that will help to strengthen the resilience in my nervous system. And there's all kinds of great gratitude practices and all kinds of really, really cool tools now that we can use for that.
- [29:06]
Laura Reagan
Yeah, it's a really good time. There are a lot of beautiful things that are super effective and basically mostly free. You know, like gratitude practice doesn't cost anything.
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Lynn Fraser
Exactly.
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Laura Reagan
It's just a matter of doing it.
- [29:23]
Lynn Fraser
Yeah, yeah. And I have a, a lot of, a lot of practices, guided practices on my YouTube channel, but I also do a free daily online practice every morning at 8am Eastern. And in that we do breathing, relaxation, some inquiry, we do all kinds of things to support the nervous system. And once people learn the tools, then they've got them. And so I would really encourage everybody to learn some breathing tools, learn some relaxation. It's really helpful.
- [29:54]
Laura Reagan
So where do people get this 8am Eastern time free practice that you have? Do you do it on YouTube?
- [30:01]
Lynn Fraser
It's actually on Zoom, which is similar to Skype. And the, the link for that is on my website. It's Lynn Fraser stillpoint.com and the Zoom link is right on there. And there's people from all over North America, Europe, and it's a small group, there's usually around 20 people and we have a great time.
- [30:21]
Laura Reagan
So do people sign up for a certain time commitment or they just sign up daily or how's that work?
- [30:27]
Lynn Fraser
You can just come and go as they like. I've been doing it every day since December 1, 2015, so over two years and it's really evolved. I love doing it. It's wonderful for my own practice too. I have this great half hour practice every day. But yeah, people can come and go. Lots of people come really regularly and then you Know, some people come in and out when they can, so it's, you know, two o' clock in Amsterdam, so some of the people over there have their lunch at that time, so they come when they can. And it's just. It's up to people. Yeah, you're free to come and go as you like.
- [31:02]
Laura Reagan
You have so many amazing resources on your website, including your explanatory videos about trauma, which are really, really helpful. At least the. The part I looked at, I thought it was really helpful for, you know, people can. Therapists can often understand the nuts and bolts about trauma and explain to clients the nuts and bolts about trauma, but to get it in a way that's more like a lived experience is harder. And, you know, we get. We stay in that intellectual, cognitive part of our brains instead of the felt sense. But the, the feeling I got from your videos was it was more from that lived experience. And it felt very true and digestible to me. When I was watching. I shared it with some, my two associates who work with me for them to benefit from and also to share maybe with clients.
- [31:59]
Lynn Fraser
Well, thank you. And, you know, about five years ago, I started really looking into developmental trauma through Dr. Gabor Mate primarily, and then other people as well. And I've worked through it with myself. I didn't know anything about developmental trauma until then. And once I started to learn about it, I really could see what had happened. When I was a child, I was really disconnected emotionally. And as a teenager, I had a series of events that were very traumatic starting at 12. And I had a lot of shaming and shunning that was happening to me and bullying during my teen years. And I never even really thought about that as trauma until recently when I started looking at it and realizing just how disconnected I was from everybody else. It was very clear to me that I couldn't reach out to my parents for help. And when I did, it was true. I was right in my assessment of that. And the only thing that I really had that was helpful was drugs and alcohol when I could get them, which wasn't that often, but also food. So ice cream in particular, there was always ice cream in the freezer. And I could always just kind of comfort myself through that. And I didn't realize that the impact of feeling so isolated and so disconnected until much later. And then I came out as a lesbian when I was in my mid-20s. And then, of course, there's that social shunning and the isolation of that as well. And as I worked through it in the last Five years just really connecting with myself. That's what's been really healing. And it's been so helpful for me to understand that it wasn't that I was doing something wrong. That's not why I felt the way I did. It's because that's how our system is. We need to be connected in order to have fulfilling, satisfying lives. And if we don't trust anyone because that's been our experience, then it's very difficult for that to happen.
- [34:02]
Co-host or Guest Commentator
Well, it comes through that you've understand.
- [34:05]
Laura Reagan
This at a deep level and you're really gifted at being able to explain it at a deep level. And I'm grateful for everything you're doing. And I want to ask you too, didn't you tell me you have a book?
- [34:18]
Lynn Fraser
Yes, I do. It's called Friends with your mind. How to stop torturing yourself with your thoughts. And it's a small, easily digestible book. And it has, you know, I've. I've had pretty much everything in there I've had going on in my own mind. So it has a section on what if catastrophic thinking. It talks about anxiety. It works with, you know, explains a bit about the living inquiries and how all of that works. So between that and you can get that on Amazon, you can get it as a print book or Kindle. Between that and the videos that I have on my YouTube channel and the resources on my website, I think it's really possible for people to understand the basics of our system, how it works. I have a one understanding how thought works because it seems like it's a real mystery. We just have all of these thoughts in our mind. We're up at three in the morning and there's all this anxiety pouring through our mind. Or we might feel that in our body. And there's so many things that happen to us, our experiences that trigger this. And then we're kind of helpless in a way. And so it's been very helpful for me and for the people that I work with just to understand the basics of this is what stress is. This is what a normal response to stress is. We tend to get these kinds of patterns going on the mind and then how can we work with that? And one of the things about this is a meditation, spiritual practice is that I know through meditation and through my experience that there's nothing wrong with me at my core. And that trust that I have in that is part of what helps other people to touch into that. That's what makes this a mindfulness practice is a bit different than therapy. Because in a mindfulness practice, we're really working with our own basic goodness and touching into that and having access to that. And we don't really have access to that when our mind is like all the time and we can't get into our body. So these practices, as we peel that away, then we have access to the stillness that everybody has at our core.
- [36:29]
Co-host or Guest Commentator
Wow.
- [36:30]
Laura Reagan
That's a beautiful way to end our conversation, talking about the basic goodness that we all have within. No matter what we may believe about ourselves, it doesn't change that we're all good at the core.
- [36:45]
Lynn Fraser
And we can all discover that for ourselves.
- [36:48]
Co-host or Guest Commentator
Yeah.
- [36:48]
Laura Reagan
And I love the fact that you said that, you know, there's nothing wrong with you. It's not just that you think, you.
- [36:55]
Lynn Fraser
Know.
- [36:58]
Laura Reagan
Because it can be really hard to believe that sometimes.
- [37:02]
Lynn Fraser
Yeah. And I know that is true for everybody.
- [37:05]
Laura Reagan
Yeah, I know that too. I know it's true for everybody. I'm not always certain about myself, but if it's true for everyone, then it must be true for me.
- [37:14]
Lynn Fraser
You know, it is the hardest thing to apply kindness and compassion to ourselves. And what I find is as we get more confidence in going inside and really experiencing and welcoming what's happening inside, that is when the kindness and the compassion start to really flower. And when we get to experience that, there's a real freedom and a peacefulness in that that we don't have if we haven't done this work well.
- [37:39]
Laura Reagan
Beautiful. Lynn, thank you so much for being my guest on Therapy Chat today.
- [37:44]
Lynn Fraser
Oh, thank you so much. I've really, really enjoyed talking with you.
- [37:48]
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- [38:31]
Laura Reagan
Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat with your host, Laura Reagan, LCSWC. For more information, please visit therapychatpodcast.com.