About
What is The Friendly Mind, exactly?
The Friendly Mind is a free email newsletter from psychologist Nick Wignall that shares tools, resources, and advice for improving your emotional health and wellbeing.
Common topics include:
- Managing chronic worry, stress, and anxiety
- Building confidence and self-esteem
- Assertive communication & healthy boundaries
- Emotional intelligence and resilience
- Doing your best work with focus and consistency
You can subscribe to the newsletter for free here →
Why is it called The Friendly Mind?
My entire philosophy of emotional health boils down to one core idea:
When you’re struggling, treat yourself like you would treat a good friend.
See, most of us are pretty good at supporting our friends when they’re struggling: We listen empathetically, we reframe worries and fears objectively, we validate difficult feelings without judgment, etc.
But ironically, we tend to treat ourselves much differently…
- The minute we feel anxious, we critcize ourselves for being weak or irrational—which only makes us feel ashamed about feeling anxious.
- We ignore our stress day in and day out until it’s so overwhelming that we have to numb it out by stress-eating or mindlessly doomscrolling social media—which only makes us feel guilty on top of feeling stressed.
- As soon as we start feeling depressed and unmotivated, we launch into a tirade of judgmental self-talk about how lazy we are—now we’re feeling angry about feeling depressed!
Emotional struggles are unavoidable. The trick is to create a better—friendlier—relationship with them.
I call the newsletter The Friendly Mind because I believe the heart of emotional health is learning to respond to difficult moods and emotions just like you would respond to a friend who was struggling—with clarity, curiosity, and kindness.
Who writes the newsletter?
The Friendly Mind is written by clinical psychologist Nick Wignall. You can learn more about me and my background here →