8 Apps to Try for Reducing Stress and Anxiety

These days, there’s truly an app for everything! You can use apps to help you succeed in the workplace or at school, for time management, and even apps that allow you to create art or unique photos and videos. But did you know that apps are also for reducing stress and anxiety? Mental health apps are great for getting help at home for free. Some apps even allow you to speak to a therapist online for a lower cost than traditional therapy. Here are the top eight apps to reduce stress and anxiety in your life!

Calm

Calm is a subscription app that helps you get ready to sleep each night or can help you through guided mindfulness practices to calm your thoughts during the day if you’re experiencing a panic attack. You can try it out for free for a week. The benefits of this app include:

• Stories to help you sleep
• Guided meditation and mindfulness
• The option for a more personalized “pro” experience
• Pre-recorded “scenes” based on themes like forests, rain, or the beach

BetterHelp – Therapy

The BetterHelp therapy app gives you access to an extensive database of licensed online therapists who provide video chat, chatting, and phone call support. It’s cheaper than regular therapy, and you can tailor your experience to your needs. To learn more about BetterHelp and healing stress, you can also check out their excellent online advice column about stress on Betterhelp.

Daylio

Daylio is a free app diary that allows you to track your mood daily. The app will enable you to log activities, which you can track daily to notice patterns and connections between your moods and the things you do. For example, you might notice that you feel more anxious when drinking coffee over time.

Daylio also lets you customize the colors, check charts and trends between your moods each year, month, and day, and even check which day of the week you feel the best. You can learn a lot about your mood patterns using this app, which can help you reduce anxiety by reducing the things in your life that leave you stressed or anxious and by setting goals in the app.

Dare

Available in the app store and the Google Play store, Dare is an app designed to help calm panic attacks when they’re happening. It has cute designs and an easy user interface, with many guides to listen to or read. It even gives you challenges to help you keep your mind distracted and busy during a stressful moment. The app is also connected to a book, which you can check out if you like to read along with the lessons and guides.

Worrydolls

Worrydolls is an app with cute little dolls on the screen. You can type in your worries/anxieties on the screen, hand them off to one of the dolls, and save your thoughts with them. Likewise, you can save your past entries and return to them; your worries are safe with the dolls.

The benefit of this app is being able to type out your inner thoughts and leave them with someone, even if it’s just a little doll on a screen. The app’s art design and user-friendly interface make it easy to use and fun to return to, and there are many worry dolls to choose from.

Meditopia

The Meditopia app contains guided meditations and practices to help you sleep, calm down, or relax anytime. You can even schedule meditations and help make them a habit. The app can choose from various sounds and themes, such as nature, forests, or fire sounds. You can also listen to several lessons for different areas of life, such as stress, loneliness, sadness, and other common topics. In addition, if you opt-in, you can receive motivation quotes daily from the app, which many users report as helpful.

Being: My Mental Health Friend

The Being app is a free app with cute mental health “friends,” AI’s that help you through exercises and therapeutic tools. The app is super positive and is easy to work through, with a beautiful purple theme. You can talk to your mental health friend at any time of day. Even though it is an AI, it can help to have prompted questions.

It’s another way to journal and learn more about yourself and your needs. If you want to, you can listen to calming music to meditate, which is available in the app. The app is structured to give you somewhere to vent at any time, especially when people in your life aren’t available. It’s great for those who want to feel cared about and like positivity.

Pixel Art

Although it’s not an app specifically made for mental health care, art has been shown to affect mental health positively. Pixel Art app allows you to color pictures by number. Some pictures are larger and more complex, and others are simple. You can even download your picture to color in. The app assigns a number to each square in the photo, giving you a code with the colors to select from in the bottom menu.

You go through each color, starting with one. Painting by numbers is a great repetitive activity that can keep your brain busy amid a panic attack or whenever you feel down. If you like art, you’ll love this app. The best part is that it’s free to use, and the app has an extensive database of users and new paintings to try each day.

Conclusion

You’re not alone in your stress. Many apps help you calm your nerves and find relief from common mental health conditions or distressing symptoms. If you’re looking for something not focused on stress, many apps exist for depression, trauma, and journaling. All you need to do is search!