Mindfulness practice is one of the core components to dialectical behavior therapy (or DBT). In fact, DBT wouldn’t be as effective as it is without it. That’s how important mindfulness is when it comes to helping people to manage both their thoughts and emotions.
For most people, learning how to be mindful will take a lot of practice. While you don’t need to devote hours each day or week to practicing these skills, two minutes here and five minutes there every day there should be enough time to help you notice a difference in a month or two. Consistency is the key to when it comes to noticing the benefits of mindfulness.
One of the reasons why I love recommending mindfulness apps is because they give us a place to start that is fairly easy to access.
Here are five app ideas to help you establish a daily mindfulness practice. My hope is that you’ll find one that encourages you to take your mindfulness game to the next level.
Calm
Getting a good nights' rest, relaxation, and meditation can all go a long way towards alleviating symptoms of both depression and anxiety. The Calm app is one of the more popular mindfulness apps out there. Their guided meditations are great for users of all levels, from brand new beginners to seasoned meditators. The app lets you pick how much time you want to devote to app usage every day. When you deal with anxiety, a good night's rest is one of the first things to get problematic. The app gives you a long list of daily meditations you can use every day. One special feature that Calm offers its users includes its sleep stories and nature stories. Yes, you can listen to bedtime stories before you go to sleep, just like when you were a kid. These two features can help you get a restful slumber night after night.
MindShift
MindShift helps teens and young adults gain basic skills to manage their anxiety symptoms. This free app can help reduce mild symptoms of the following anxiety disorders:
• Generalized anxiety disorder
• Social anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Phobias
This app can also manage worry, performance anxiety issues, perfectionist tendencies, and test anxiety. The skills that you can learn on this app can get applied to emotional, physical, behavioral, or cognitive versions of anxiety. It provides you with more balanced ways of thinking about life situations that scare you.
The app does a great job of offering long lists of coping strategies that depend on the type of anxiety you have. The strategies and information that you get are really simple and clear. Mental imagery, breathing exercises, and mindfulness strategies can be accessed in both text and audio format. You can use the "Quick Tips" feature to help you with anxiety in the moment. On the app, you can even "favorite" the anxiety fighting methods that you liked the best. MindShift won't help you if you want to track your anxiety symptoms over time. You will also have a hard time with the app if you're overwhelmed with the presentation by a lot of choices.
You can find the MindShift app here.
Sanvello
Sanvello teaches anxiety-fighting methods such as deep breathing, the identification of cognitive distortions, behavioral exercises, and the use of more positive thinking patterns. As an app, users find great benefits from using it between sessions with their treatment provider. Sanvello does a good job of personalizing the cause of your anxiety through voice recordings. It also introduces cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) methods as well as reinforcing different app exercises between therapy sessions.
Check out Sanvello here.
WorryWatch
If you deal with anticipatory anxiety, constant worry, and generalized anxiety disorder, WorryWatch will give you good self-monitoring exercises as well as the documenting of your worrisome moments through a menu featured in the app. You'll also get a tool that categorizes your moments of worry through different factors. You will also be prompted by the app to think about whether the moment of worry in question was really as bad as you originally stated.
The app was created by a developer who has generalized anxiety disorder. While the app can't replace therapy completely, it can serve as a supplement to treatment. Don't download WorryWatch if you have trouble working with graphical data. More users might get more benefits from the app if there was a tutorial that taught people how to use WorryWatch's main features. However, the app does do a wonderful job of giving you the visual evidence of the frequency, intensity, and the duration of your cognitive distortions.
Click here to learn more about WorryWatch.
Nature Sounds Relax and Sleep
Some of the bigger symptoms of anxiety include ruminating and racing thoughts. But you can breathe deeply, slow down, and clear away all of your thoughts with the sights and sounds of nature. Nature Sounds Relax and Sleep features both of these things. From rain and thunder to bird sounds and crackling fires, there really is something for every type of user with anxiety and sleep issues. You can set the app's timer to "listen" while you slowly drift off to sleep. You also have the opportunity to set one of the app's nature tracks as your morning alarm. This way you can start your day with a slightly more charming track than that incessant beeping that comes with most clocks and phones.
Click here to download this app on Apple.
Remember: No app, free or paid, can replace the help and assistance of a trained mental health professional. If you have questions about using your DBT mindfulness skills, it’s okay to ask for help.
If you’re looking for additional information about DBT, check out these resources and ideas:
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