Choosing Apps for Anxiety and Mental Health

1. Acute issues stemming from anxiety like panic attacks or a chronic anxiety disorder can completely disrupt your life. You might struggle to regain a sense of calm, and your entire day can be negatively affected. Fortunately, a number of apps are beginning to appear in the smart-phone market, and they use concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy to help people with anxiety management. Here are the things you should know about apps for anxiety.

2. Many of the apps that are designed to promote mental health well-being are developed by mental health professionals. They understand the mental health issues that are faced by people with higher than normal anxiety levels. Since no two people are the same, these apps take a variety of approaches to anxiety relief to give all their clients the best potential outcomes. Some apps focus on helping you identify anxious thoughts and dispelling them with a meditation practice that allows you to reduce those feelings step by step. This is a form of commitment therapy that can help manage panic disorders. Meditation apps are very common and help rid a person of negative thoughts. There are also apps that help with the physical symptoms of anxious thoughts. Chronic stress can worsen anxiety. People that suffer from hypervigilance, irritability, and insomnia can benefit from touch therapy by utilizing wearables and an associated smartphone app. Other apps focus on breathing techniques that help a person to calm themselves and eschew negative thought patterns or simple mood trackers to figure out what patterns emerge in their anxiety. These are just some types of mental illness management apps that exist today, and many of them offer a free version that people can use. There are several major names in anxiety management apps on the market today. As mentioned, the Apollo wearable and app is prominent in providing touch therapy to users. Not only does this help individuals with sleep problems, but it also can also positively affect the nervous system and increase heart rate variability that can aid in many areas of mental health.

3. Breathe2Relax is an app that develops breathing exercises to help a person reach a state of calmness. Deep breathing can help someone focus on the world around them and not so much on anxious thoughts. Happify uses CBT and positive psychology to generate games and activities that improve mental wellness. The entire concept of using apps to help treat anxiety is based on the idea that we can quantify and change the things that trigger this response in our bodies. It's important to try these concepts in different apps to discover which one works best for you. Fortunately, the apps that we've mentioned are available for a lot of smartphone applications. Whether you're using the iOS of the iPhone or the Android system, there are various means that you can use to access these apps. While many of them have a free mode, the best usually require app purchases or subscriptions to continue managing your anxiety. Over time, these apps typically prove to be well worth the investment into self-help. Finding apps that can help you manage an anxiety disorder is not as difficult as some people imagine. However, it's important to remember that each app comes with a unique approach to the concept of anxiety treatment. If breathing techniques aren't working for you, then a better approach may be to see if your sleep is affecting your health and turn your focus to that. Learn what helps you the most, and pursue it for a more fulfilling life.