'APPS FOR THE MIND'
APPS FOR THE MIND
‘USEFUL APPS WHEN CARING FOR ONESELF AND MENTAL HEALTH’
Amongst the social media, music streaming, fitness and
popular gaming apps that we can download onto gadgets or phones, there are also
many apps that have been created to help us keep our minds in check and
continue to ensure our mental health is cared for and a priority.
HEADSPACE:
A simple mindfulness and meditation app. Accessible techniques available
so people can experience the benefits of meditation anytime, anywhere. It includes
and shares guided meditations, animations, articles and videos. Sharing the
message that meditation and mindfulness isn’t about switching thoughts off, but
about acknowledging them and letting thoughts pass by in order to bring the
attention back to the breath. Settling and quietening the noise and tangling of
the mind and the body and bringing ones focus to the present. We can often
become caught up or too focused on what’s been or what’s to come, this app
helps to let go of the past and not worry about the future, but instead to
breathe and live in the present moment. You can use it to learn the essentials
and basics with the free course before subscribing to a range of bite sized
minis for when short on time, exercises, and hundreds of meditations on
everything from stress to sleep. Stress less, focus more and sleep better.
CATCH IT:
Helping to learn to manage negative thoughts and feelings and look at
problems differently. Particularly useful when it comes to battling with
feelings like anxiety and depression, it teaches you how to look at problems
and thoughts in alternative ways, turning negative thoughts into more positive
experiences and improving your mental wellbeing as a consequence. Helps you
monitor your own wellbeing and behaviour, recording when you feel low or down,
reflecting on thoughts and the effect they’re having on your mental health,
spotting patterns and looking at alternative lights and solutions. It’s useful
when confronting and understanding mental health needs. It works in three
sections, catch it, check it change it. Catch it is about recording moods,
scales and events. Check it is about reframing situation and reflection. Change
it looks at more thoughtful or helpful ways to approach situations which can
alter moods and feelings as a consequence.
CALM HARM:
An app especially designed to help people resist or manage the urge to
self-harm. It’s private and password protected. Tailored to your needs and will
provide you with strategies in order to help you get past those crucial moments
of need and urges of wanting to harm. It looks at the urge like a wave, it
feels the most powerful when you start wanting to do it. Learn to surf the wave
by using the ‘five minute rule’ or ‘fifteen minute rule’ with different
activities to bring ones awareness and focus away. Once you surf the wave the
urge will fade. It comes with different activity categories including: comfort,
distract, express yourself, release, random and breathe.
CLEAR FEAR:
This is an app that’s designed and created by the same producers of Calm
Harm, but this is for anyone experiencing anxiety, equipped with information
and support when it comes to triggers, understanding the bodies response,
managing worries and dealing with emotions. Reducing physical responses to
threat by tuning into threat responses, threats that aren’t necessarily threats
but the mind and body reacts as they perceive them to be so, facing fears, breathing,
relaxing, releasing emotions, accepting emotions and experiences in order for
them to change and pass, and changing thoughts and behaviours.
WORRY TREE:
Aims to take control of worry wherever you are, helping to create an
action plan for managing worry. Notice, record and manage your worries using
cognitive behavioural therapy techniques. Cognitive behavioural therapy is an intervention
used to work on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (thoughts,
beliefs, attitudes) and behaviours, to improve emotional regulation, wellbeing
and improve coping strategies. Through acknowledging thoughts and coming to
terms with challenging those that are unhelpful or harmful to us by letting
them pass by or adapting, we are able to unwire and rewire hindering thinking.
It looks at recognising behaviours, challenging and changing those that are
detrimental to, in altering behaviours we can alter our thought and feeling
patterns as a consequence. It looks at the direct link between behaviours
initiating a thought, sparking a feeling, which in turn begins the pattern all
over again. It’s about breaking that vicious cycle. It’s all about awareness
and adaptation in order to assist and support our mental health.
NHS
WEBSITE:
There are also many more to browse and try on the NHS Website https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/category/mental-health/.
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