There are so many amazing apps on the market these days! There are apps that are geared towards self-care, coping skills, automatic thoughts, reframing thoughts, offering support and many of them are FREE! Here are a few of my favorites:
Calm: Cost to download: FREE!
Calm is a wonderful app for meditation and sleep. This app offers a variety of free meditations that can help reduce anxiety, lower stress and help you attain better sleep. Calm also offers sleep stories which are basically bedtime stories for adults!
Pocket CBT: Cost to download: $4.99
Pocket CBT is literally like having a cognitive behavioral therapist in your pocket! This app will walk you through a stressful situation by having you identify your thoughts, physiological sensations, emotions and behaviors. Once you have identified these the app will help you rationalize your thinking and challenge your thoughts so that you can reduce your stress level surrounding the situation.
Thought Diary: Cost to download: FREE!
Thought Diary is very similar to Pocket CBT but its FREE! Thought diary will ask you your mood, what emotions you are feeling, what’s happening, what negative thoughts you are experiencing, help you identify cognitive distortions (thinking errors) and will assist you to challenge your negative thoughts.
Triangle of Life: Cost to download: FREE!
The Triangle of Life app is a cognitive behavioral therapy based app for children. This app teaches children the basic concepts of CBT (how our thoughts, feelings and behaviors function together) using scenarios and games. The player of the game is a Lion who helps other animals understand their daily experiences and helps them create more healthy and positive thoughts.
Virtual Hope Box: Cost to download: FREE!
Virtual Hope Box is an app that does exactly what its name says. This app is a virtual place where you are able to store favorite coping skills, visual reminders of things that make you happy, distractions (puzzles and games) and inspiration.
Wysa: Cost to download: FREE!
The Wysa app is an intelligent chat box that uses artificial intelligence to react to the emotions you express. This app offers meditation, coping skills, cognitive behavioral therapy in a nonjudgmental chat format.
Although apps can’t replace therapy these can be super helpful in-between therapy sessions or when maintaining the progress you made after therapy has ended.