The other week, a lovely person contacted me on LinkedIn, offering me the chance to try out the ‘Stress Free App‘ for free.

I was admittedly somewhat sceptical at first. To start with, I’m scared of technology. For someone who blogs, and spends too much of their life on Twitter, I’m not all that good when it comes to apps. I only got a phone that doesn’t freeze about a month ago, my brothers frequently despair at my complete inabilty to understand Snapchat, and I have been known to reply to a text two weeks later – you get the picture. So you could say I’m a bit of an app novice!

I am also someone who has had depression/anxiety/whatever else for years, who has tried many interventions and many medications, who has spoken to a fair number of people, had tonnes of appointments, and is generally pretty jaded by ‘the system’. In summary, if someone tells me to ‘just breathe’, it makes me want to hit them.

So you could say, I approached this app with a bit of a ‘this probably won’t do anything’ attitude.

Given all that, I have been pleasently surprised!

When you first open the app, it takes you through a series of questions which assess your mood. These are pretty standard – anyone that’s ever been under services will have filled in something similar. If you score at a certain level, it recommends you speak to your GP, go to NHS online, or go to the Mind Helpline Page (not only does it recommend it then, but it also repeats that recommendation on a daily basis depending on where you rate your mood, which is really good).

It then asks you to rate your mood on a scale, then to put in where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and whether there’s another way you can think about it. After that it makes certain recommendations on activities you can do within the app. It repeats this exercise every day, and eventually builds up data which can help you identify how your mood has changed, what might have contributed to your mood being that way, and how else you could think about things

With regards to the activities themselves, there are a few different ones you can try. A lot of them centre around breathing and relaxing. I am a hater of mindfulness in the typical sense – I always focus on my breathing, forget to breathe, and get more stressed (not ideal!), but I must admit, the tasks were pretty relaxing, and focusing on the little guy on the screen really helped because it meant I didn’t forget how to breathe. I did it before bed one night and it was really good because it relaxed me enough to begin heading off to sleep (and I’m someone who has a lot of problems sleeping).

There are also a few other things in the app. One is the message in a bottle – that’s really cute. It just pops up with a nice little message or quote every now and again. There is also a ‘zen garden’ which is a little app-based sandpit – you can fill it yourself with water, shells, a sandcastle, a starfish, and you can rake the sand. I found myself spending a fair bit of time listening to the music, raking the sand, and completely chilling out.

I don’t know how much this app has helped me on a large scale – I think that would be difficult to quantify over a few weeks. I also have a lot going on in my life at the moment and a long history of illness which does make things a bit more tricky. However, I would say that it’s really good for helping you to manage your breathing, to slow down a little, and to de-stress. I think that the daily mood-and-activity check in could be really useful – you could even share it with a counsellor or mental health team. I like that it refers you to your GP if it feels as though that is necessary, particularly because it doesn’t just flash up once (it’s very easy to press ‘x’!), but a number of times.

Additionally, I’m a fan of the chilled out music, and I think I’ve fallen a little bit in love with the little alien dude who takes you through each task.

Overall, if you’re looking for an app to help you log your mood, reframe some of your thinking, and generally chill out, this app could be the one for you.

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