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5 apps to help you cope with stress


It’s #MentalHealthAwareness week and this year’s theme is stress – we all say we’re stressed now and then or refer to something as ‘stressful’ but what actually is stress? Scientifically stress is a surge of hormones in your body. These hormones help you deal with any threats or pressure you are facing – the flight or fight response. Everyone has a certain amount of stress in their lives which is completely normal and healthy. For some it’s what motivates them to meet that deadline or why they get out of bed in the morning but what happens when it all becomes too much? Too much stress can lead to physical and psychological problems, so learning how to cope with stress is really important. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the best stress management apps available:

1. Happify

Happify helps you improve your mood with de-stress games, quotes, motivational articles and audio clips from life coaches to help users overcome stress and negative thoughts, whilst building resilience. Set your goals on what you what to achieve and how you want to change the way you think and Happify will set you activities to help re-train your brain. With 86% of frequent users saying they felt happier within 2 months – we’ll be downloading it straight away.

2. Headspace

Meditation has been getting a lot of air time in recent years and there’s a reason why. It has been shown to reduce stress and help with anxiety and depression, as well as improving concentration and boosting your memory skills. Headspace is an app which offers guided meditation – perfect for beginners. 

3. Pacifica

Pacifica is similar to Happify and uses cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help you manage everyday stress and anxiety. It works by tracking your daily activities and asks you to log your mood and how you’re feeling every day. It uses this data to help you identify any triggers to stress and anxiety. It also has a whole host of goal setting and calming activities.

4. Calm

Based upon mindfulness and relaxation, Calm provides a range of guided meditation exercises covering the basics such as breathing. There’s also a library of calming music and noises such as rain falling, the ocean and a fire crackling.

5. Colorfly

Adult colouring is now all the rage but it’s not always possible to carry around a book and pencils – this is where Colorfly comes in. It’s an app where you can colour on the go and create your own masterpieces. Not convinced about colouring? Colouring has the therapeutic potential to reduce anxiety by allowing us to switch off our brains from other thoughts and focus on the moment and the task in hand.