Top 6 Phone Apps for Those Who Struggle With Mental Illness

As someone who has struggled with mental illness for over half of my life, I'm always looking for innovative ways to help myself cope. More recently, I've been using different apps that I've found on the app store and offer different things. If you're interested in or curious about apps that can help those with mental illness, I've written a little something about my favorites and those which have helped me, personally.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER!!!!!
I am NOT a mental health professional! These opinions are mine and my own. These apps do not substitute getting professional help, rather they can compliment and accompany whatever professional help you are using. 

Happier
This was one of the first apps I downloaded to help manage my anxiety and cultivate a grateful attitude. The tagline of the company is "Celebrate the Good Around You", which I think is super cute. You can put moments and memories into the app that, well, made you happier! I like putting in when I have lunch or coffee with friends at school and what specific moments made me happy in our fellowship. It also reminds you of them via notifications, so every once in a while, a "Remember when..." will pop up and give you a nice memory. You're even able to categorize the moments by different things. My most frequently used ones are family, friends, and faith, but you're able to personalize them in any way you want. Check out the website here

Pacifica

Pacifica is my all-time favorite app. I love it so much that I actually pay a fee for full access, although the free version is great, too! The makers are also always updating the app and improving it. It's based off of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and you can track your mood anywhere between "awful" and "great". You also are able to do various activities that are guided by the app, including "relax", which has various meditations paired with calming soundscapes, and "thoughts", which acts as a journal of sorts.You can also join various communities based off hobbies and lifestyles and communicate with others similar to you. You can also track your health habits, such as hours slept, if you took your medication and showered, and, time spent outside, with friends, or exercising. A new feature is that you can add your own healthy habits, so I added the rosary to mine. You can then track your progress, and see how different things, like the activities offered and health habits, affect your overall well-being. It's great if you know there are certain "signs" that you're not in a good place, or if specific things can help you out. For example, when I'm really depressed or anxious, I don't do well with basic things like showering or brushing my teeth, and I notice that the more time spent with people, outside, exercising or praying, the happier I feel overall. You can download Pacifica here.

Color Therapy
Adult coloring books are all the rage nowadays. They have coloring books for almost anything imaginable, including Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Donald Trump, Harry Potter, The Psalms, New York City, Frozen, and much much more. Coloring is super helpful when you're feeling anxious or stressed, and I have a pretty impressive collection of adult coloring books in my dorm to prove just how enticing they are. However, lugging around all our coloring tools and books is difficult to do, and sometimes you don't want to do it while you're on a train or waiting in a doctor's office. Enter the color therapy app. It has a variety of things that you can color in, and every color imaginable. Now you can relax by adding color to a beautiful image anywhere! You can download Color Therapy here.

Mood Track Diary




This was one of the first apps I used to handle my mental illness. My therapist suggested that I start tracking my moods and the events/people surrounding them, so I did some research on the handy dandy App Store. This was the best one I found. I like how it tracks your emotions on a graph-like thing, and you can also share with others, which creates a nice community. It lets you put in whatever emotion you want, and then you can rank it as the "best" to the "worst" with five options. I love that it tracks your emotions over time with the option to write in whatever comments you'd like. You can also share the diary with others, which is really helpful if you're in therapy or on medication. You can download Mood Track Diary here.

ThinkUp
This is one of my newest discoveries. It's an affirmation app that comes pre-loaded with tons of positive affirmations for various aspects of life, including (but not limited to) body image, fitness, spirituality, studies, pregnancy, relationships and creativity. You also have the ability to enter your own positive affirmations, so I like to use some from The Littlest Way. You then say the the positive affirmation and record it in your own voice. You can play it back a few times with soundscapes in the background. I think it's super helpful. I've fallen out of the habit of daily affirmations, but I want to get back into them, and then will probably write a post about the power of them in our lives and the difference it made in my life. 'Till then, download ThinkUp here

Stigma

This is another app I found relatively recently. It markets itself as a personal and gratitude journal. You put an entry in and you can put important key words in the entry so that you can see trends in how specific people, places, things, events, and even weather has an effect on your emotional well-being. I've only used it a few times, but so far, I really like it. They just added an "anonymous penpal" option, which I don't think I'll use, but if something like that will be helpful for you, by all means, give it a try! You can download Stigma here.

An Open Letter to Porn.

Dear Porn,

It feels weird to be writing a letter to a thing... but I have some things to say to you.

First, you suck. You really, really suck. You warp the minds of those who succumb to your addictive self into thinking that humanity, real humanity off the screen, isn't good enough, because you have created these stupid, unrealistic standards for humans to meet.

You ruin lives and relationships, and yet you still remain proud and defended by many.

Even people who see the damage you do in their own lives and communities still turn to you and your lies. Because you are good at lying. You are good at making people feel good about themselves, yet not good enough all at once.

And I hate you for it.

I hate for what you've done to the people I love. I hate that you break people down and make them into shells. You make people forget their children. I hate that I can't look at certain people in my life because I know that they flirt with you and put you above all other actual relationships.

I hate knowing you've affected other people that I love and I don't even know it. You're tricky. You tell this little tale that you are both acceptable and shameful. And so no one will reach out, oh no, no one will admit they struggle with you.

I hate what you've done to society. Women are now held up to porn-star standards in sex, looks, beauty, whatever. The women on screen are preferable to real, actual, breathing women.

I hate what you've done to the human body. No longer is the human body a good in and of itself, it is the end to a means: pleasure. You have warped the human body from a beautiful gift, a temple of all things good, to something that should simply bring pleasure to others.

I hate what you've done to me. I hate how I feel like I'm tethered to you. I hate how I relapse and go back to your lies and then think that this is how my life will be forever. I hate how I hate myself because I have turned into the person I've never dreamed of being. I hate knowing that you will forever have an impact on any intimate relationship I may have. I hate knowing that maybe I'll never actually get over you and that our relationship will hurt the people I love.

But the one thing I don't hate is knowing that people are starting to recognize how harmful you are. It's amazing to see people speak up against the toxic form of intimacy you market. And I know that this opposition is just the beginning. You will not win. Love always wins, over hate, over indifference, and over lust.

Eff you.

Katie

Good Friday in Our Lives

Think about your worst moments. The worst moments of your life. Rock bottom. Despair. Hopelessness. Whatever you want to call it. Think of the moment that life seemed unbearable and you didn't think you would make it.

I don't know what this time is for you, but I think mine was one night (just around a year ago), as I stood at the top of a flight of stairs and contemplated taking my own life. I thought about how easy it would be to simply throw myself down the stairs and end everything. It didn't cross my mind that this might not even kill me. All I cared about was that it could.

This was my Good Friday. When I looked at life and wondered what could possibly matter. If anything could actually have a purpose. If life was actually worth it. If you had asked me then, I would have said that it wasn't. It felt like I was drowning in a dark ocean with no bottom in sight. As much as I looked for light, I couldn't find it. It seemed hopeless.

But it wasn't. Eventually, the sun started to shine. Hidden at by the obstacles in my life, but still there. Slowly, the sun became more and more prominent.

We're each going to face a "Good Friday" in our life. Maybe multiple. The time when we can't find God anywhere and He is gone from our lives.

But He will not leave us wanting. He is never gone. If we experience a Good Friday, surely, we will experience an Easter Sunday, too.