3.19.20 Best Anxiety Relieving Apps 2020
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Anxiety can be a whirlwind of fearful emotions and it can be frustrating when we feel we lack control of our anxiety. We understand that our friends and/or therapist cannot be there with us at every moment to offer support, but…
What if you had the tools deal with your anxiety right at your fingertips?
To offer continued support, this article is based on my personal review of the best 10 Anxiety Relieving Apps that came recommended by colleagues at Life Span Psychological Services and from research into top choices.
If you know of other good ones, feel free to comment with them below, so we can add to the resources available here.
Price: Free
Toobee can help choose or create affirmations to center your thoughts throughout the day. Toobee is a very simple app to help prevent anxiety provoking thoughts. This could also be done on your phone’s alarm setting, but this app provides a less intrusive reminder and handy setup for practicing positive psychology.
Price: Free for some features, 10$ a year or 50$ for the lifetime version
Relax Meditation is easy to use with customizable choices for relaxing sounds to help you sleep or study. Sounds include rain, waterfall, frogs, cars, crackling fire, etc. with adjustable volumes for each sound. While it is a great free app for these basics, you can upgrade to the pro version for more availability with meditations.
3. Simply Being
Price: 1.99$ in the app store
Simply Being provides guided meditation and nature/music sounds in a very simple platform that is similar, but not as Relax Meditation. However, for 1.99$ this app may be just what you need.
4. DARE—Break Free From Anxiety
Price: Free, 10$ a month or 60$
DARE has a wider variety of offerings since it includes psychoeducation, mindfulness lessons, meditation, breathing exercises, and even support from other people who have anxiety who talk about skills that helped them to overcome it or deal with it effectively. It also includes an SOS option for panic attacks where they will guide you through the situation.
5. Rootd
Price: Free, 7$ a month or 60$ a year
Rootd is my best recommendation for panic attack relief due to its simplicity and “panic button” feature perfect for when you’re in the heat of the moment of a panic attack. Panic attacks seem to be the specialty of this app, providing you with grounding thoughts that can be spoken or read. It also provides psychoeducation, breathing skills and visualizations in the free version with deeper educational levels with the paid version.
Price: 10$ a month, 60$ a year
If you are wanting to track your mood for understanding, prevention or learning mindfulness, this app offers mindfulness guidance, meditation, customized support based on your daily check ins, tracking of your emotions and even sticker rewards to celebrate progress. It provides great quality in the free version, or unlock the paid version for more insights.
Price: Free for 7 days and then 60$/year
Insight Timer offers courses on relationships, spirituality, social anxiety, overthinking, stress, anxiety, etc. It also provides lots of free meditations including Yoga Nidra proven to be effective for trauma. You can create your own meditative or sleep space with a gong or music. This app is high quality, simple, easy to use and seems less overwhelming than Headspace due to the natural, soothing images.
8. Headspace
Price: 7-day free trial then 12.99$ a month or 14-day trial then 70$ a year.
Headspace provides many meditations and education for anxiety, breathing exercises, mindfulness, visualizations, insomnia, managing conflict, and self-esteem. It also has many cute graphics and many options for simple, short courses and support with the annual subscription. This could be very useful if you choose a course at a time and focus each day on what you are needing, but seems less customizable than other options I’ve mentioned.
9. Calm
Price: 15$ a month, 60$ yearly, 400$ lifetime
Calm is a high quality, in-depth app that provides individualized support for specific needs. While I am less familiar with the other apps in this area, I know that Calm provides meditations around mindful eating which has been powerful for clients dealing with disordered thinking related to food. Calm supports mindfulness practices, guided meditation, music, sleep stories and support, as well as masterclasses for anxiety, stress, gratitude, focus, breathing exercises, and more.
10. Happify
Price: 15$ a month, 139$ a year, 450$ lifetime
On the preventative front and for those who are needing to self-actualize and take proactive action against anxiety toward happiness, Happify offers CBT style activities, courses, and information related to the science of happiness and is customized to your needs based on survey results. Also a great gem for quality and practicing proven methods for helping you get healthier.
I know anxiety can feel intimidating and scary, but you are not in it alone. Seek a therapist or coach that supports your needs, choose one of these apps to download that fits your specific needs, and allow yourself the time and grace to work through this. Remember, you are not “messed up” you can grow to be in a stronger frame of mind, but don’t beat yourself up if you’re not there yet.
And above all, never lose sight of yourself in the service of others,
-Kay Bela (Psychotherapist and Wellness Coach)
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