The dawning of a new year doesn’t require a new you in order to get yourself centered mentally. Sometimes it simply takes the click of your smart phone to tap into some self-care apps that will help you tune into what you need to take care of your mental health.
After holding down a hectic year, dealing with difficult family members, or stressing over the daily headlines, self-care is essential.
Thankfully there are dozens of self-care apps that can help you recharge and bring balance back into your life to break the vicious stress cycle.
Here are our top ten suggestions for the best self-care apps this season.
(App Store)
So, who’s in your circle? Who’s your squad that you can call up and tap into? Sometimes a call to your mom will just lend her more time to lecture you. That’s when you can opt to tap into Shine, a free self-care app that offers daily pep talks when you’re feeling overwhelmed and anxious and ready to pull out your kinks and curls. Shine sends inspirational messages that’s real talk, to give you the mental jolt you need to keep it moving. Some three million people use it on a regular basis like self-care guru Tara Pringle Jefferson, CEO of the Self-Care Suite, an online community for women.
“I use the Shine app and I love it. I love the daily tips on how to thrive and their article library somehow always knows what I’m going through and it has a remedy for that!” Pringle-Jefferson told TheGrio.
Calm
(Google Play, App Store)
What do you do when you need to woosah but want to scream at the top of your lungs? Keep Calm with this app that helps you to meditate, and learn mindful slow body movements and stretching techniques to help align your body and mind. Calm offers 100+ guided meditations covering anxiety, focus, stress, sleep, relationships and more. There’s also a catalog of music and sleep stories to help you fall into a deep sleep like when you were a child.
Calm is also very popular app which won Apple’s App of the Year award in 2017.
User Amber Wright lives by the app to help give her balance. “I enjoy the Calm app for meditation,” Wright said. “The Sleep Stories feature is a life saver and the guided meditations really help me center myself, relax, and focus.”
Five Minute Journal
(App Store, Google Play)
If you’re consumed with an overwhelming routine helping family, kids and everybody else, then when are you taking time out to relax, relate, and release?
The app Five Minute Journal gives you an outlet to jot down your thoughts and give praise to the things that makes you happy by asking you poignant questions that encourages you to answer in a meaningful way. Psychology Today reports that journaling can have a positive effect on your behavior. That’s important when you’re trying to get to the core of the stuff that’s making you most unhappy. This app also allows you to add pictures so you can have visuals of the ones you love, or photos that help you put your life’s vision and goals into perspective.
Mend
(App Store)
It’s winter time, aka cuffing season, and Spring is just a flower bloom away and then all bets are off as winter relationships go to the wayside. But no worries because there’s a self-care app for breakups too.
Mend, which was recently selected as one of Apple’s Best Apps of 2018, is reportedly the number one breakup app that guides you through that rocky and hurtful aftershock of having your heart broken. When you need more than a shoulder to cry on, Mend promises to be the best friend in your pocket during heartbreak. Elle, the voice inside Mend, walks you through a series of questions and asks you about your past behavior and if it is contributing to behavior that makes it difficult for you to cut ties with your ex. Mend also holds you accountable for engaging in self-care activities that you have to log like exercise, writing or just going outside to get yourself in a good headspace.
My Fitness Pal
(App Store, Google Play)
You’ve got a friend in MyFitnessPal, a smartphone app and website that tracks diet and exercise to determine optimal caloric intake and breaks down nutrients to help you reach your weight loss goals. It also boasts having the largest food database of any fitness app.
Because self-care also means working on you from the inside out, My Fitness Pal offers nutritionist-approved recipes so you can incorporate healthy cooking habits into your life. It also teaches you how to use food for its nutritional purpose and not for comfort.
Strides Habit Tracker
(App Store)
We all want to care for ourselves more and make ourselves a priority. But what happens when you fall back into the same unhealthy habits that knocked you off your square in the first place?
Self-care is how you take your power back and the Strides Habit Tracker holds you accountable. You can’t pour from an empty cup, so leave it to the Strides Habit Tracker to remind you to fill up and drink more, get your sleep in and take charge so you don’t wreak havoc on your body. With this app you can build a perfect routine for yourself with four unique tracker types — Habit, Target, Average or Project. According to the app, the dashboard shows how you’re doing on all of your goals & habits, and Daily Goals makes it easy to focus on the next step to take.
Relax Melodies
(App Store, Google Play)
Being sleep-deprived is often what gets in the way of semblance of mind, body and soul. Relax Melodies allows you to create your own sleep soundscape to quiet your mind and lull you into a sweet slumber.
If you suffer from insomnia, night time anxiety or tinnitus, you can serve as your own DJ and mix melodies to your liking that takes you on a sound journey. This app also includes two binaural beats, an alarm and a timer system.
My Possible Self
(App Store, Google Play)
This is a mental health-focused app with clinically proven content to help you improve your mental health and well-being with a cache of tools.
This app incorporates proven psychological methods such as cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology, to help equip the user with skills they need to lead successful lives. There are three areas the user can focus on: emotion, lifestyle and activity and track every day. And most importantly, the app teaches coping mechanisms on how to handle challenging life situations you’ll encounter. Being your best possible self means taking the time to care for yourself.
Pacifica
(App Store, Google Play)
There’s no blueprint on how to manage stress, anxiety and depression, but the Pacifica app helps you to track your moods that could be the culprit that sends you into a downward spiral. This app uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help teach you how to think differently. There’s a variety of health care settings, including both mental and physical health to help users identity their needs and set goals to address their mental state.
Think Dirty
(App Store, Google Play)
This Think Dirty app is not what you think. This is about thinking dirty in a good way that will help make you more conscious about the toxins we allow into our bodies that ultimately can affect our overall well-being.
With this app you can learn about ingredients in your beauty, personal care and household products by simply scanning the product’s barcode. The app helps you tap into easy-to-understand product info and offers options to shop cleaner. Believe it or not, some of our issues are not only due to what we consume but what we put in and on our bodies.
If you want to get your mind right, just remember to put yourself at the top of your to-do list every single day in the new year.