With approximately 48.3 million adults in the United States experiencing a mental illness each year, prioritizing mental health and practicing self-care is essential. However, finding time to prioritize your mental health and practice self-care can be difficult for most full-time employees. Busy schedules and long hours can make it difficult to schedule therapist appointments or find the time to read a self-help book.
Luckily, you can now use your phone to boost your mental health. Technology has come a long way in the last decade, and there’s now an app for almost everything – including mental health and self-care. Using apps is an easy, convenient, and affordable way to boost your mental and emotional health. Plus, it’s not nearly as time-consuming as other alternatives.
Here is the list of the best self-care apps that you should utilize to feel less stressed, improve your mood, and feel happier and healthier.
1. Aloe Bud
Aloe Bud is an all-in-one self-care companion app. Pick an activity you want help with, like hydration, movement, breathing, or sleep and Aloe Bud helps you track your progress and gives you helpful advice along the way. You'll get empathetic and encouraging messages throughout the day.
Through lovely and encouraging push notifications, Aloe Bud brings awareness to the little important ways to take care of yourself, such as drinking water, eating, and reaching out to friends. With its cute no-frills approach to self-care, it's perfect for people who deal with depression or other mental health issues that make looking after yourself difficult.
If you're trying to become a better human being and you've decided to focus on particular aspects of life, being mindful of your behaviors and actions is the first step to making significant changes. Aloe Bud can help you with this and track your progress as you get better.
2. HeadSpace
Headspace is one of the best meditation and mindfulness apps, as it perfects the art of guided meditation. Every day, you can listen to one guided meditation recording for free. You can pay a premium membership to unlock specific courses that can help you with conditions like anxiety and insomnia.
Teaching the basics of meditation and mindfulness, each daily HeadSpace pack is supported by a host of content, including animations, articles and videos in a playful, quirky style. Along with daily meditation guides, Headspace also offers condensed, bite-sized meditations for users with busy schedules, and SOS sessions to support subscribers in those meltdown moments.
3. Sleep Cycle
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock app tracks your sleep patterns and wakes you up during light sleep, which “feels like waking up naturally rested without an alarm clock.” By tracking your sleep cycles, the app purports to help you to feel more well-rested and less groggy.
According to the Sleep Cycle site, the app “uses sound analysis to identify sleep states by tracking movements in bed. Sleep Cycle uses a wake up phase (30 minutes by default) that ends at your desired alarm time. During this phase, Sleep Cycle will monitor signals from your body to wake you softly, when you are in the lightest possible sleep state.”
4. Sanvello
Sanvello is an app designed to help you manage stress and anxiety to live a happier life. The app uses cognitive behavioral therapy and mediation to help you achieve your goals. When you first download the app, it will prompt you to choose up to three goals, including: increasing happiness, building confidence, meditation, health, and more. The app is filled with psychologist-designed guided self-help paths, mood/health tracking, relaxation techniques, and community support. You can even track your progress, too!
Each day, the app will suggest activities based on your current mood and overall goals. These activities are intended to help you feel calmer or get more motivated to boost your wellbeing. The makers of Pacifica understand that it’s not about quick fixes or false promises. The app is designed to help you develop healthy habits that will help you progress one day at a time. To top it off, the basic plan is free!
5. Happify
This app will help you feel happier in no time! Many of us don’t feel like our happiest selves due to negative thoughts. But this negativity can be really harmful to our physical and mental health. Happify uses fun weekly activities to help you break old patterns and form new healthy habits. This app allows you to set goals including coping better with stress, conquering negative thoughts, fueling your career success, and more!
According to Happify’s website, 86% of users who use the app regularly report feeling happier (as defined as positive emotions and increased life satisfaction) within two months. All of Happify’s techniques are evidence-based from seasoned scientists who’ve studied positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy. The app is loaded with activities and games to boost emotional wellbeing. The app will even give you a “happiness score” that can be used to track your progress. Plus, it’s free to download and use!
6. Grateful: A Gratitude Journal
Plenty of research has shown how beneficial it is to practice gratitude on a daily basis. Gratitude has been shown to reduce stress, improve life satisfaction, and help you feel more positive. Practicing gratitude can also help you feel happier and perform better at work, too! This app makes it easy to practice gratitude every day. Grateful is a prompt-based gratitude journal designed to make reflection and expressing gratitude a joyful and easy process.
The app greets you with a question like, “What made you smile today?” to help you start writing and spark ideas. You can respond with one word, a paragraph, or even a picture – it’s up to you! Grateful lets you look back at your past entries with a user-friendly timeline to help remind you of everything you’re grateful for.
7. Breathing Zone
The Breathing Zone app is mainly for defusing stress. It’s a simple app that helps you slow your breathing rhythm when you need to calm down and relax.
You set the target number of breaths per minute you want to reach (eight is the default) and the app helps to reduce your breathing rate to that number. The app guides you and helps you focus on achieving this goal in five minutes, which helps to reduce any stress and anxiety you’re feeling at the moment.
8. Today
Today is one of the best habit tracking apps for iPhone and Apple Watch. Its user interface is visual and inviting. You can set an image as background and have complete control over the check-in process. The app also lets you decide which days to include for activity tracking and the number of check-ins per day.
If you're trying to take up a new habit like walking every day or meditating, Today is a great way to keep track of your progress. Once you've done the activity for a couple of days and see the visual chain in the app, you'll want to keep going.
9. Stop, Breathe and Think
As the name suggests, this app wants you to take a break from your busy life and stop to catch a breath once in a while. The app takes a conversational approach to provide you with intelligent tips and get you started on the path of meditation.
You'll also get recommendations based on your mood. If you don't want to use all the suggestions, you can still use the app as a simple meditation timer.
These self-care apps will help you keep track of and work towards your goals for sleep, meditation, exercise, and more.
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