Helpful Apps
Pacifica
Pacifica is an app with daily tools to help manage anxiety, depression and stress. It has a mood tracker, which allows you to check in at least three times a day. There is a scale: Very bad, bad, okay, good, very good and so on. You can also label your tracked mood as to why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling and you can look back on these at any time. There is also a section for goals, meditation and relaxation- the goals section allows you to set small tasks in the day which are achievable but challenging too.
Also, you can write sentences that are negative in the app such as: “my family don’t like me” and then it gives you the option to cross it out and change it into something positive such as “if my family didn’t like me they wouldn’t let me stay at home.” There is also a support network on there where people from across the country all give each other positivity and help each other out. Everyone I’ve come across is friendly and supportive.
SAM
SAM is another app to help with anxiety. This app focuses more on anxiety rather than low mood and is easy to use. There is an anxiety tracker diary, so it has a calendar of the levels of anxiety you’ve been feeling and it allows you reflect and see if there is any progress. There is an anxiety tracker too which allows you to log the anxiety you’re feeling in that exact moment. If you’re feeling extremely anxious you can click on the “help for anxiety NOW” link and it gives you calm breathing and relaxation audio to help calm you down. You can make an anxiety toolkit so there are certain things that help soothe your worry thoughts or help calm the anxiety. There is also a support network on here and everyone seems very empathetic and helpful. There is always the option to not use the support network if you don’t want to.
CalmHarm
CalmHarm is an app to help distract a young person from self-harming. They call it “riding the wave.” When the young person has an urge to self harm or urges to self harm they can go onto the app and choose to ride the wave. It allows you to select an activity type such as: comfort, distract, express, release or random. You can select which one you’re feeling and set an amount of time that you’re going to do the activity for. There is a long list of activities to choose from.
Headspace
Headspace is a meditation app and you can access it at any time. It gives you ten free sessions (you can pay for premium) however you can continue to use the ten sessions are many times as you like. There is also another selection called: SOS, ON-THE-GO, and classic meditation depending on your mood. With premium you can connect with friends and you can choose from a variety of meditating packs such as: relationships, mood etc.
Digipill
Digipill is another meditation app but I like it a lot more than headspace. The meditation lasts longer and there is a guided talk throughout the meditating session which is reassuring when you feel unsafe as it feels as though there is someone still with you. The voice helps ground me too. You can have different “pills” for different moods, I currently have depression relief, confidence and relaxation. You can also get pills for anxiety, relationships etc. It’s really easy to use too.
Dreamdays
Dreamdays is also another favourite of mine. It allows you to sort through events by categories and time. You can customise each countdown event with a background, record voice memos and you can share with friends on Facebook, Twitter of Instagram if you please. However, I keep mine private. I use mine as a mini diary, I have special dates to me which includes: the day I bought Casper my horse and the day I was discharged from Rowan. But my most important one is “Days clean” this is days clean from self-harm. I keep a diary and it counts the number of days I’ve been clean. I set goals such as: I want to be 50 days self harm free and when I feel like self-harming, I check dreamdays and count down the amount of days it will take to get to 50 and I manage to keep myself safe.
Calmeleon
Calmeleon is a mindfulness colouring app- it’s easily accessible, you could feel risky out in public and instead of taking a colouring book and pens you could sit down and use the app instead.
You can pay for more colouring pages but there are lots for free.
