All of us face disruptions to our peace of mind — work stressors, parenting pressures, and even smaller hurdles like running out of shampoo. Stress management apps might help ease anxieties that might otherwise pile up and make life feel uncontrolled.
Monitoring and managing your emotional health is a clever alternative for each today and down the road. Experts at the Mayo Clinic say that unmanaged stress can affect your body, thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This will result in serious physical repercussions.
Luckily there are plenty of great stress management apps on the market that might help — and listed here are a few of our favorites.
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What are stress management apps?
Stress management apps are digital programs in your phone which might be designed to enable you improve the way you take care of stress and/or anxiety. They supply a wide range of tools, practices, and perspectives to assist you within the pursuit of higher mental health. These apps are at hand wherever you’re and at any time when you wish support.
Note: These apps are usually not intended to be substitutes for medical advice. Consider them as educational, intended to enable you explore your situation and discover possible solutions.
You’ll want to seek the advice of your healthcare skilled before making any health, medical, or other decisions based on data inside these apps.
11 Stress Management Apps You Must Try
1. Headspace
- Price: Start with a 7-day free trial, then pay $12.99 a month. You may as well start with a 14-day free trial after which $69.99 a 12 months.
- Available for: iOS | Android
- Price: It’s free to download limited content. In-app purchases range from $0.99 to $399.99 per item.
- Available for: iOS | Android
Meditation is an awesome stress relief technique, and Headspace is the most effective apps on the market for guided meditation sessions, especially for those who’re a beginner. These guided sessions will teach you the way to turn off the brain chatter and meditate more effectively.
Headspace has been on the scene and growing for years. The corporate has also acquired and incorporated Shine, an app created by women of color that addresses the mental and emotional health issues which might be specific to their communities.
Pro tip: Many discounts and plans can be found to audiences known to profit most from emotional tools, equivalent to overworked teachers, stressed-out students, and anxious teens. You’ll want to check to see for those who get a deal.
What We Love
- It’s age-inclusive; this app offers tools for toddlers as much as elders.
- Meditations vary from 10 minutes to 60 minutes, supporting a deepening practice over time.
Limitations
- Headspace only offers free content during trial periods.
2. Calm
Calm is a particularly popular and well-marketed meditation, sleep, and rest app. It’s well-known for soothing soundscapes and delicate aesthetics.
The app guides users in self-chosen every day meditations, adds recent music every week, and encourages them to return to their vital self-care work every day. It also features mental health trackers and respiration exercises to enable you find, claim, and calm your center.
Pro tip: Calm offers each 7- and 21-day mindfulness programs that may enable you dig deeper and achieve your goals.
What We Love
- Calm is geared toward adults, yet great content is out there for youths and youths.
- The interface looks and feels soothing.
Limitations
- Calm is free to download, but there’s not much content available until subscribing.
- Payment info is collected upfront.
- Users have reported slow response from customer support.
3. Sanvello
- Price: You may download Sanvello totally free. In-app purchases range from $0.99 to $199.99. You may as well buy a premium version that has unlimited access to features.
- Available for: iOS | Android
Previously branded as Pacifica, Sanvello has expanded its mental health mission. The app relies on cognitive behavioral therapy combined with rest and wellness techniques.
This every day tool helps address stress and anxiety at a gradual pace. Over time, the app becomes customized to your specific needs.
Track your every day activities and emotional states to assist the app determine what activities might cause different moods and emotions — especially stress, anxiety, and depression. The goal is to enable you recognize triggers so you can break the cycle.
Sanvello gives you goals to set and simple emotional homework. Plus, it has a refreshingly non-fluffy aesthetic. You won’t need to pretend you’re feeling sunny if you’re not.
Best for: Individuals who like a darker, more straightforward UX.
What We Love
- Many insurance coverage cover the price of this app, so make sure to check your advantages.
- The interface won’t gobsmack you with vibrant colours.
- There are several price options to suit a wide range of budgets.
Limitations
- Some users report that coaches could be impersonal.
- Therapy options might not be available in every state.
4. Daylio Journal
- Price: You may download the app totally free. In-app purchases can be found.
- Available for: iOS | Android
Here’s a tried and true tracking app that permits you to track your emotions, activities, medications, and more throughout the day. With regular use, you may determine what’s driving your emotions.
Monitoring your mood in an app can enable you find some useful correlations. For instance, some folks find their mood changes depending on whether or not they worked out that day.
You may put in your sleeping times and sleep quality, amount of exercise performed, stress levels, menstrual cycles, and more.
Best for: Those that already like to journal.
What We Love
- Classic and highly functional.
- Tracks tons of details for locating patterns.
Limitations
- When you don’t have time to write down, this may occasionally not be the app for you.
- Regular usage is the important thing to success; be ready to speculate time before seeing results.
5. SAM: Self-Help App for the Mind
Created with psychological principles, supported by research, and advisable by practitioners, Self-Help App for the Mind (nicknamed SAM) helps you determine what’s making you anxious or stressed while also suggesting ways to combat it.
It’s an awesome resource for external information, covering every part from details about anxiety to physical and mental rest techniques.
Together with these resources comes guidance for putting these techniques into practice, including respiration and muscle rest exercises. Over time, you’ll track your feelings and triggers to see a graph of your anxiety so you may self-monitor.
Pros
- Has a community forum called the Social Cloud to interact with.
- Helps you track your triggers in addition to your feelings to enable you manage them.
Cons
- Heavily text-based and never very interactive.
- User experience is disjointed and may benefit from more streamlining.
6. Breathe2Relax
Has anyone ever told you to shut your eyes and breathe? That is because specializing in and controlling your respiration can really help calm an individual down.
In reality, diaphragmatic respiration (respiration out of your stomach) has actually been proven to diminish stress.
The Department of Defense’s Center for Telehealth and Technology created this app to assist soldiers and their families learn stress-relieving respiration techniques — but, in fact, it really works for everybody.
It also offers information and resources on depression, anxiety, stress, and more. The subsequent time you’re feeling super stressed, try letting this app guide you into some mindful respiration exercises.
Note: That is the one app on our list that’s laser-focused on using your breath to assist your body ramp down.
What We Love
- Respiratory exercises might help decrease the body’s fight-or-flight response.
- Respiratory sessions are highly customizable to best suit your needs.
Limitations
- The interface looks outdated.
- Users report that the safety login is unnecessary and hinders the user during sudden panic attacks.
7. Happify
- Price: You may download the app totally free. In-app purchases can be found.
- Available for: iOS | Android
This app helps you improve your mood using positive-thinking activities.
With research embedded in its philosophy, Happify believes that everyone has a genetic set point for happiness — and the power to offset it. In other words, now we have more control over our happiness than we would realize.
By practicing certain exercises and interventions that promote positive emotional qualities (like kindness and mindfulness), we are able to select our thoughts, behaviors, and actions.
Over time, these selections grow to be habitual and progressively increase our resilience to make us happier.
That is exactly what the Happify app goals to do. The app helps you set specific goals and offers suggestions for achieving those goals. The positive-thinking activities include games, gratitude exercises, or imagining what a situation can be like in another person’s shoes.
CNN named this app among the many top apps to coach your brain and higher deal with stress.
Best for: People trying to make an enduring change to their behavior and rejoice doing it.
What We Love
- Happify is incredibly easy-to-use.
- Science backs up the activities.
Limitations
- The premium version of the app doesn’t include a free trial.
- User reports say that some games can get cluttered and confusing.
8. BetterSleep
- Price: BetterSleep is free to download. Subscriptions cost $9.99 monthly or $59.99 per 12 months.
- Available for: iOS | Android
Previously named Chill out Melodies, this app is a great alternative if stress or anxiety hampers your ability to fall or stay asleep.
The app permits you to pick from relaxing ambient and natural sounds, in addition to calming music and guided meditation sessions.
You may customize these sounds into a combination, or select only one. You may set a timer for the music to stop playing after a certain quantity of time, or set a time through the night or morning for them to wake you up.
Best for: Sleepy individuals who would love to drift off to sounds or stories with beautiful images fresh in mind from the app.
What We Love
- There’s an enormous catalog of stories and sounds to pick from.
- The app has deeply saturated colours and delightful artwork.
Limitations
- The app is expensive at $59.99 per 12 months to unlock every part.
- Many sounds that was accessible totally free have since been locked.
9. Worry Watch
- Price: BetterSleep is free to download. Subscriptions can be found to unlock premium features
- Available for: iOS
Worry Watch earned an ideal 5-star rating in 2021, and is an awesome app to check out for those who are into journaling. It guides you thru recording and reflecting in your writing step-by-step, letting you’re thinking that it through.
If the fear is controllable, it’ll enable you list out some steps for managing it. If the fear shouldn’t be controllable, you may select from a listing of coping statements to enable you approach it from a special angle.
Worry Watch relies entirely on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques which might be proven to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression.
Best for: Individuals who spend time worrying and find relief in writing.
What We Love
- Worry Watch has a clean and refreshing interface, available in 16 languages.
- This is a superb app to enable you to show emotional overwhelm into logical steps for feeling higher.
Limitations
- This app shouldn’t be available for Android.
- You may’t view patterns or trends without the premium version.
10. Acupressure: Heal Yourself
Here’s an app that’ll enable you garner some physical release out of your on a regular basis stresses. Acupressure is an ancient healing art where you utilize your fingers to press on “pressure points” on the surface of your skin to stimulate the body’s natural calming abilities.
Acupressure is protected to do. Further, pressing on these pressure points has each physical and emotional advantages. You may release nerve endings, ease tension in your body, and increase blood flow.
The app itself helps you find the pressure points that’ll help alleviate specific symptoms, after which teaches you the way to actually alleviate that pressure.
Why we like this app: Acupressure literally helps you are taking your well-being into your individual hands.
What We Love
- You’ll get actionable instructions on the way to engage pressure points for self-healing — in 8 languages.
- Tell the app what’s ailing you, and it can let you know where and the way to add helpful pressure.
Limitations
- Some users feel the identical few pressure points are advisable to deal with many maladies.
11. Presently: A Gratitude Journal
- Price: Presently is out there totally free.
- Available for: Android
Sometimes, all it takes to alleviate a few of that constructing stress is to reflect on what we’re grateful for. In any case, there are lots of studies on the market proving that keeping a gratitude journal can lead to higher alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, and energy.
Presently is a much-talked-about and highly-rated gratitude journaling app. It lets you hop in and make notes, then hop right back out to live in your conscious moments of gratitude.
Let’s be real: With 4.9 out of 5 stars, why not do this one?
What We Love
- Presently permits you to record your moment of gratitude, then go enjoy it without getting distracted by your phone or the app itself.
- Presently has a neutral aesthetic that doesn’t pry your eyes with garish color.
