Hate is a strong word, I shouldn’t say I HATE my cellphone. I just hate how addictive they are, and how they are contributing to a lot of mental health issues these days. But that is a topic for a different post 🙂
On the other hand, there are a bunch of advantages to phones these days. Connecting with people, obviously. Facetime, Obviously. I’m not a huge cellphone gamer, but there are a few apps that have really helped with my mental wellness
Daylio
Daylio is a basic mood tracker. As a person living with a mood disorder, my moods can be all over the place. I’ve learned that it is much easier to self correct once I start seeing patterns around moods and activities, which is exactly what this app helps with.
The app allows you to select a mood with the click of a button. I set mine to pop up at regular intervals throughout the day.
Once you select a mood, a screen appears allowing you to choose an activity that is happening. I subscribe to the paid version which lets you customize the activities and categories.
It’s easy to view your moods in a ‘list’ view…
And the analytics are great! It is really easy to see an overview of your moods in different ways. This screen shown is the month overview, which shows a calendar view with mood totals at the bottom.
There are multiple views of similar data, and everything is share-able, so its easy to send to your counselor, if that’s your jam.
Calm
I have been using Calm for several years now, and it is awesome to see how the app has evolved. Not only does Calm offer meditations on every subject imaginable, they also have Sleep Stories, workshops, breathe visualizers, and different nature sounds or white noise – with beautiful graphics.
There is a new meditation every day, dubbed ‘Daily Calm’ that discusses different meditation concepts. Additionally, the app has different tracks of meditations depending on what you are ‘working on’.
‘Sleep Stories’ are one of my favorite features. Everything from fictional stories to ship reports, there are plenty of spoken tracks to help occupy your brain as you drift off.
Another great feature is the ‘Music’ section. Popular music is remixed in different ways to help facilitate sleep.
If you are into more visual type meditations, the app offers a ton of different scenes to choose from, complete with nature song tracks. I often leave it open on my phone when I am reading or working, and it makes great relaxing background music.
It’s been great to do a ‘digital detox’ over the past 6 months and be using my phone less. I plan on adding more to this list when I find ones I like 🙂