Feeling stressed and anxious, to some extent, is a normal part of daily life. For instance, it can occur when a driver suddenly cuts in front of you on the road, when you face an impending deadline, or when you accidentally spill coffee on your laptop. Such stressful situations can range from being unpleasant and bothersome to severely impairing. Furthermore, these negative emotions can escalate rapidly, leading to a sense of helplessness.
Luckily, several contemporary solutions are available that make stress management much more accessible.
Thanks to technological innovation, various stress management apps have been created to aid individuals with managing stress. In essence, these apps typically offer electronic versions of techniques and strategies that have been traditionally used for stress management, such as mindfulness meditation or deep breathing exercises.
Mesmerize is an app that provides an exceptional meditation experience for users with its aesthetically pleasing visuals, soothing music, and well-produced narrations. In addition, the app's unique audio-visual experience can aid in the reduction of pain by providing guided meditations. The hypnotic visuals, psycho-acoustic music, and visual breathing features are based on clinically proven concepts, helping your body to relax and suffer from less chronic pain. They relieve associated psychological symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and stress.
If this sounds like something you would be interested in trying out, Mesmerize is available for download on your iOS and Android devices.
Pzizz is an app that essentially aids you with managing your sleep and power nap schedules. Other than that, Pzizz is also a useful app for reducing your stress levels. It accomplishes these by employing effective psycho-acoustic principles that create dreamscapes, thereby helping users fall asleep quickly and wake up feeling fully recharged for the new day.
In essence, the user-friendly app offers three modules, Sleep, Nap, and Focus, to help users relax, improve performance and concentration levels, as well as stay focused on work. Having mentioned that, Pzizz is recommended by many prominent public figures ranging from athletes to journalists and even authors.
If this sounds intriguing to you, you can download the free trial of Pzizz on the App Store or Google Play to kickstart your stress relief journey without any hassle.
Mindful breathing can significantly reduce stress, anxiety, and pain while also enhancing immunity, detoxifying the body, and boosting our energy levels. However, deep breathing can feel boring, and maintaining focus might become a challenge.
Fortunately, Bliss, the visual breathing app, is an innovative way to practice breathwork, enabling you to gain balance, restoration, and inner calmness. By using visually appealing graphics and soothing audio, Bliss guides you through breathing at your resonant frequency, which has been scientifically proven to alleviate anxiety, stress, and depression symptoms. On that note, you may download Bliss on the App Store and Google Play and start with the free trial version to experience the app's benefits before committing to a purchase.
Simply put, Pacifica is a tool designed to help you tackle stress and anxiety gradually through the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and relaxation techniques. The app is simple to use, allowing you to track your daily activities either by writing or recording some voice notes.
By analyzing your activities, the app helps you identify what triggers your behavior and emotions, particularly those associated with stress and anxiety. Its purpose, then, is to help you understand what is causing your stress so you can break the vicious cycle. Besides that, the app also provides emotional homework and goal-setting exercises, and it is refreshingly straightforward compared to many other self-help apps available.
The Self-Help Anxiety Management (SAM) app is a collaborative effort from psychologists, computer scientists, and students. Its purpose is to assist users in identifying sources of anxiety or stress, followed by offering strategies to alleviate them. Furthermore, the SAM app provides a comprehensive range of external resources, including information about anxiety and techniques for mental and physical relaxation. In addition, it also offers guidance on how to implement these techniques effectively. With the app's help, users can self-monitor their anxiety levels and track their progress over the long term. You can download the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Happify is an app that offers brain-training exercises to enhance your mood using positive thinking. Based on scientific research, the app's philosophy emphasizes that although we each have a genetic set point for happiness, we can still alter it. This means that we have more influence over our own happiness than we might think.
In essence, the Happify app's main objective is to assist users in setting specific goals and provide suggestions to achieve them. It offers various positive-thinking activities, including games, posting something you're grateful for, and putting yourself in someone else's shoes to imagine a situation. On that note, by practicing certain interventions and training designed to cultivate positive emotional qualities such as mindfulness and kindness, we can control our thoughts, actions, and behaviors. With consistent practice, these positive choices can become habitual and gradually enhance our happiness and resilience.
For a relaxing phone game that eases stress, individuals should consider trying the Personal Zen game app. To put it simply, the game is set in a garden where two faces, a happy and an angry one, drop into the ground. Your task is to quickly trace the grass trail left behind by the happy face with your finger. With each play, you become more adept at spotting the happy face amid the two options, all while accompanied by soothing background music.
Believe it or not, this simple game is actually rooted in science. In particular, it is based on a cognitive treatment for anxiety called attention-bias modification training (ABMT). More specifically, ABMT aims to educate individuals on how to disregard threatening stimuli, such as angry faces, and instead concentrate on non-threatening stimuli, like neutral or happy faces. All in all, these studies have demonstrated that this type of training can effectively lighten the stress levels in individuals with high anxiety.
Headspace is an excellent app for guided meditation sessions, particularly for those who are new to the practice. Generally speaking, meditation is a great way to reduce stress, and Headspace provides guided sessions that can help you effectively meditate and quiet your mind.
The free version of the app includes Take10, a starter course consisting of ten 10-minute meditation activities intended for beginners. Users can opt for a monthly subscription priced at $12.99 to unlock additional and longer meditation sessions, as well as sessions with specific goals such as stress reduction and mindful eating.
Taking a moment to reflect on things we are thankful for can be a simple yet effective way to relieve stress. Multiple studies have demonstrated that maintaining a gratitude journal can lead to increased alertness, attentiveness, enthusiasm, determination, and energy levels.
Fortunately, the Gratitude Journal app is available. It prompts you to document the highlights of your day and even enables you to take photos of these things as a visual reminder of what you are appreciative of.
My Mood Tracker is a widely recognized stress management application that is available for free. It assists in monitoring your emotions and daily activities to identify the stressors that affect you. Other than that, the app allows you to log your daily sleep patterns, medication intake, and monthly menstrual cycle. Although the full version of the app comes at a cost, there is a free lite version that is available for users to download.
The Breathe2Relax app was developed by the National Center for Telehealth & Technology, a branch of the Department of Defense, to teach soldiers and their loved ones various breathing techniques to cope with stress. Nonetheless, the app is useful for any individual dealing with stress-related issues. Moreover, the app also provides valuable resources and information on anxiety and depression management. Therefore, the next time you feel overwhelmed, try using this app to help guide you through a few practical mindful breathing exercises.
In accordance with the "letting go" approach from the Buddha Board app, WorryBox allows you to document and relieve all the sources of stress in your life. Essentially, the app draws from cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, which are scientifically validated to alleviate and manage symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.
As a result, the app enables you to work through each of your personal issues, listing out practical steps to manage any controllable concerns. Alternatively, the app also provides a list of coping statements to assist you in approaching unmanageable issues from a new perspective.
Research indicates that performing simple acts of kindness can boost a person's mood, and incorporating novelty into these acts may be linked to happiness.
In support of this concept, the Pay It Forward movement developed an app that motivates users to engage in acts of kindness every day. In particular, the Pay It Forward app generates a shortlist of suggestions each morning, such as buying a coffee for the person next in line. Following that, the app tracks your progress and facilitates sharing recommendations with others, including friends and family who have downloaded the app.
While the app's interface is straightforward, it serves as an excellent reminder to contribute to the world in small ways each day. What's more, the prompts from this app also offer great suggestions on how you could start your day.
If yoga is your preferred stress-relieving activity, then the Simply Yoga app may be just what you need to achieve a more relaxed state. In essence, the app is designed to suit both novices and experienced yoga practitioners, teaching beginners the proper form for different yoga poses. On the other hand, for advanced practitioners seeking a more challenging yoga practice to relieve stress, the Simply Yoga app offers full yoga routines of varying difficulty levels and durations.
Calm is a stress management app offering a "journey to a calmer mind" with various techniques to help you get there.
Regardless of your level of expertise, the app provides comfort and convenience by offering guided meditation lessons and mild stretching exercises that can be adjusted according to your schedule. Meanwhile, the app also provides stress management resources on topics like relationships, low self-esteem, gratitude, work mindfulness, and more. In addition, the app features music compiled by experts to help you unwind. Not to mention, tracking your progress with the app enables you to monitor your stress levels and work towards alleviating them.
The Mindfulness App offers a vast range of more than 300 meditation practices, ranging from basic to advanced levels. Other than that, the app also allows users to select from a variety of meditation types, mindfulness reminders, soundtracks, and durations ranging from 3 to 99 minutes. What's more, with a premium subscription, users may benefit from unrestricted access to guided meditations, courses, and up-to-date content.
The Sanvello app offers various features based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), including breathing exercises designed to reduce stress levels quickly. On top of that, it provides a mood tracker that allows users to monitor their mental state and identify factors that significantly impact their general well-being.
At the end of the day, whether you experience infrequent or persistent stress, it is crucial to bear in mind that you are not alone. Multiple resources exist to aid you in battling stressful thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, including professional counseling, medicines, and stress management applications. Although apps such as Mesmerize, Pzizz, Bliss, and others are not a replacement for seeking mental health treatment or taking medication, they can serve as additional beneficial tools to assist you in finding relief from your stress.
Stress management is the practice of utilizing tools, strategies, and/or techniques to diminish stress and alleviate its detrimental effects on a person's mental or physical health. On that note, a range of methods can be implemented to manage stress, including psychological, emotional, and behavioral approaches. By practicing stress management techniques regularly and using them in response to stressful situations, we enhance our overall well-being.
Efficient stress management assists in breaking the grip that stress has on one's life, thereby allowing for greater happiness, health, and productivity. All in all, the ultimate objective of effective stress management is to achieve a well-rounded life, with a balance of time devoted to work, relationships, leisure, and enjoyment, as well as the ability to remain resilient under pressure and confront challenges confidently.
A variety of circumstances can give rise to stress, with the most frequent being related to work, financial issues, as well as personal relationships with partners, children, and/or other family members.
Other than that, stress may also arise due to significant life changes and events such as divorce, unemployment, relocation, and loss, or through a succession of minor annoyances, such as feeling unappreciated at work or engaging in arguments with family members. Meanwhile, on certain occasions, there may not be any clear triggers for stress.