reducing_anxiety
Health

Reducing Anxiety with these 5 Great Apps

Reducing anxiety is one key to overall good health. The mind and body are connected, and when one is out of sync, the other soon follows. I’ve found this to be incredibly true in my life.

As many of you know, we have a lot of experience with anxiety. My oldest daughter has social anxiety and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. For years, she has struggled with anxiety symptoms that can lead easily to feeling overwhelmed while also chewing up your physical health too. It is not uncommon for stomach pain, nausea, headache and sleeplessness to come with anxiety.

Our Anxiety Journey

We’ve made every effort to help her keep her anxiety under control to varying degrees of effect. Together, she and I have done group therapy for youth with anxiety and we have also done art therapy and play therapy. Each of these has had an important role in helping her succeed managing childhood anxiety.

One thing I find super helpful is technology. From the start technology helped us to manage symptoms and build routine. At times, that was as simple as my daughter having her own phone and being able to call or text me when she had a panic attack at school.

Although that was draining for me sometimes, and for her as well, it did the trick. Clearly, access to technology and the digital health space has changed and grown into something so much more relevant and useful in the last five years. Now, people can use an app to help manage their health care symptoms. And there are so many apps out there. No surprise that there are also anxiety and mental health apps too. We use several in our home.

Thanks to technology, there are wonderful apps usable on phones and tablets to help with reducing anxiety. Now that I’ve found them, I want to share some of these apps with you.

5 Apps for Reducing Anxiety

Anxiety and stress can be cause by a multitude of factors so it’s important to take a multi-faceted approach when trying to reduce anxiety levels. Through the years, I’ve found that addressing stress from different angles using different methods has yielded the best results. That’s why the apps I’ve chosen all target stress and anxiety in different ways.

Also please note I am not a doctor, or a nurse and this is not medical advice in any way. I am a Mom with children who both struggle with anxiety. My Mom also had anxiety but it was only diagnosed as a senior. I wish so much that we had known that earlier. She missed out on a lot of things in life because of worry. Technology and apps were not available during her lifetime.

MindShift CBT

MindShift CBT aims to reduce anxiety through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The app’s cognitive-based tools help people change the way the think about things and employ behavioral strategies to make lasting positive change. Through their app, people can find help with:

  • Worry
  • Panic
  • Perfectionism
  • Social Anxiety
  • Phobias

We used this one for many years and it came recommended by a mental health care professional in our city. It’s an excellent app and gets high marks in my books for ease of use and usefulness as well. It’s recently been updated making it even better. Download it now.

Youper

Youper helps with reducing anxiety by acting as a safe sounding board for those who are feeling overwhelmed. It uses tools to help people gauge their stress level and give them insight to their own emotional tendencies. In addition, its AI interface actually becomes a friendly ear to which people can express their anxieties through texts. The app actually asks questions that help lead those who are filled with anxiety to a more stable path.

My high schooler came home from school one day and downloaded this one because she had heard about it from someone else at high school. She really likes it and finds it useful in tracking symptoms and providing feedback that helps with that. The aim of the game with many apps is to keep patients out of hospital and give them back a bit of control over their health. I have not used Youper for myself, but I have watched her use it and had her explain it to me. We have a rule about downloading apps here right now so I monitor and am familiar with all the apps on their phones.

Nature Sounds

Part of reducing anxiety is getting adequate rest. High anxiety can lead to trouble sleeping which can lead to even more anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle that can cause incredible strain on a person.

Nature Sounds helps people get better sleep so they can feel better in general. Sounds include thunder, ocean waves, birds, rain, or waterfalls. These are soothing and easy on your ears. Apps like this can sometimes help my kids fall asleep despite the worry and anxiety about the next day.

Worry Box

Worry Box is an app designed to help those who are suffering with anxiety take a step back and look objectively at their anxiety. The app helps people figure out if their source of anxiety is unimportant, important, controllable, or uncontrollable. It features a personal diary where people can “write” down their worries, after which, Worry Box helps them examine them objectively and give them techniques to manage apprehension and stress.

Relax and Rest Meditations

This app helps guide people through mediation to help them with reducing anxiety. Using three different guided meditations, the app helps foster a sense of calm and gives an active way to help reduce anxiety.

Reducing Anxiety Through Technology

We live in a technology-based world, so why not use it to our advantage? These apps are excellent tools for reducing anxiety and offer a measure of relief to those who suffer from chronic anxiety and worry.
Using these tools, people have more options for reducing anxiety and taking back control of their lives. If you’re suffering with anxiety, I encourage you to give all of these a try.

And of course if none of this works seek therapy and help from a mental health provider. Talk to your doctor first.

Do you have anxiety? What tools, or apps help you?



Mom of two beautiful active girls, traveller, fitness junkie, social media consultant, and keeper of the sanity.