Hey everyone, hope you are well! I hope you had an amazing Christmas. If you don't celebrate it then I hope you had a nice week and if it was a difficult time for you I hope things get better for you. ♡
Today's post is a review for a Mental Health app called Thrive. I was asked if I would use it for at least 3 weeks and then write a review.* This is an honest review and all opinions are my own.
I'm a big fan of mental health apps, they've really helped me when I needed it. I often struggle to sleep and I always get that feeling where my chest feels super tight and it stops me from sleeping so I use an app where I usually do some meditating before going to sleep.
For an example, on this one I put it close to the sun as I was feeling pretty good and clicked onto 'something good that happened recently' as I've had a lovely Christmas break, 'your family' and 'your friends' as I've spent some time with everyone, and I also clicked 'how you look' because I recently have dyed my hair and I feel good about it. I really like this part of the app as it really gets you thinking, and sometimes I often feel negative but if someone were to ask me what's wrong, I'd probably say I don't even know. So with this and the bubble options it gets me thinking, it then gives you a little message like - "Well done! 'Just because one thing is not perfect it does not mean everything is ruined. Make an effort to see what is working out.'"
Zen points and Goals ~
As you complete activities on the app you also get Zen points which after collecting a load, you level up. I am currently at level 3. You also get goals set for you to complete, at the moment mine are:
Use Meditation, Go for a walk, and use Applied Relaxation on the app. I love that some of the goals are outside of the app too, I completed one that was to only have drinks with caffeine in them twice a day, because too much can be bad for you and can affect your mental health. You can also set reminders to complete your goals, so I forgot to do this at first, but when I had the drink less caffeine goal some days I'd forget to go onto my goals to tick the day so it's handy that you can give yourself a reminder.
Activities ~
This is probably one of my favourite things about the app. I don't know many mental health apps where it includes mini games to keep your mind busy or to help you feel distracted when you need it. At the moment there is two activities, but there looks to be more on their way.
The first activity is called Wise Words and honestly I love playing it. When you click into the activity it explains: "This is a fun word game you can use for distraction if you are feeling anxious in the moment. It also trains you to look out for the positives in life." - If you find positive words you get bonus points!
The longest word I've found at the moment is 5 letters, but it has different difficulties where you can click what word length you want to do. So at the moment I've done 15 of the word lengths of 3 letters, and the I've done a few of the 4 and 5 word lengths. So, there's a lot to do!
The other activity is called Message in a Bottle - which I love. What you do in this one is you can send a positive message to anyone, you don't select who it goes to, but I'm guessing whoever has the app may end up getting a lovely message. You don't write the messages yourself, it gives you a selection of options and you click the one you like and you send! I've had two messages in return and it's such a positive thing to add to the app. It's good to be kind.
Sessions ~
There's so many sessions on this app which is amazing. I'll admit I haven't had the chance to use them all but the sessions include:
Breathing
Meditation
Deep Muscle
Self Suggestion
Applied Relaxation
In most of them they advise that it's better with headphones as they all have a voice that talks to you through the session - or the beginning anyway, and then they go silent for you to carry on by yourself.
Breathing: When you click into this one you can choose how many minutes you want the session. The voice then goes through a breathing exercise with you, so if you feel like you need to calm down this can really help. If I'm feeling panicky or like I'm close to having a panic attack breathing exercises often really help me. However, often I struggle to do them just by myself. Sometimes my boyfriend will sit with me and tell me to breathe in, he'll count to 3 and then I'll breathe out. Of course, he's not always going to be there with me, so having an app that can help you through it is very helpful for me.
Meditation: There is so much in this session. When you click into it, it has several options as there's many different ways to meditate. The other night I actually did the one that's just titled 'Meditation' as I was trying to go to sleep but was struggling, and often that's because we have things on our mind, so as meditating is all about clearing your mind, I find it's brilliant to do before I go to sleep. It also relaxes me so much! Similar to the breathing one you can choose how long you want the session to be, and then it begins.
The voice will start you off and then it usually goes silent for you to finish off the meditation by yourself. I'll admit at first I didn't like that it just goes silent for the rest of the minutes at the end because I have used other apps before and I was so used to hearing the relaxing music in the background or a voice coming back every so often. My boyfriend on the other hand preferred this one because he said sometimes on the others the voice coming back would disturb his meditation. However, last night I loved this one. I cleared my mind so much that I actually fell asleep hehe. (Although, you don't normally meditate lying down, it's advised to always be sitting up.)
Deep Muscle: Which helps you to relax your muscles, it guides you through relaxing your body one muscle at a time which in result really helps to relax your mind. I actually really like these kind of relaxation sessions, as well as relaxing your body I find it makes me feel chilled and peaceful too.
Self Suggestion: This helps you to link words with being calm, so when you're feeling stressed at any point you can use that word to bring you back into a calm state. With this one for me anyway, I need to practise this a good few times before I can do it easily.
With this exercise you get yourself calm to begin with, and then you pick a word or a phrase that you just repeat over and over again until you hear the voice on the app again. As I said above, I found this a little bit tricky, because even though I repeated a word over and over, when I opened my eyes again, I felt like even if I said my word or phrase again it didn't really do much for me. But I know for any sort of meditation you have to practise it again and again.
Applied Relaxation: With this session you have several steps to work through. I really like the idea of having several steps because it takes time to teach your mind to do these kind of things. The first step is a little overview of what to expect and it introduces you to key concepts to help you with your understanding of anxiety.
This session once you have mastered it is meant to help you get yourself calm when you need it. They advise you to practise these exercises twice a day.
I'm looking forward to completing more of the steps and hopefully it will help me when I need it.
♡♡♡♡
There's so much more to the app, if I wrote about everything this would be an extremely long blog post, but I just wanted to give you a quick little tour of the app and what I thought of it. There are quite a few apps out there and I have actually done a post on a few before, but this app has gone to the top of my favourites. I think the fact that it has activities for you to do, and has a goal system as well as all the sessions you can do, it really overtakes so many apps in my opinion. I'm also a big fan of the whole layout and the colours of this app, you can see by the pictures it's all pastel colours so it looks so pretty and it's really relaxing and calming on your eyes.
I have really enjoyed using this app and I have found it so helpful and calming. If you're interested then please do go have a look, you can see more on their website here.
Like most of these apps there is a subscription fee for full access, they have to do this so they can continue to run it, the only other way for something like this to be fully free is through ads however, it's studied that having such ads on these things can also be bad for mental health hence they went down the subscription route.
You can also find them on social media here:
Twitter
Facebook
Today's post is a review for a Mental Health app called Thrive. I was asked if I would use it for at least 3 weeks and then write a review.* This is an honest review and all opinions are my own.
I'm a big fan of mental health apps, they've really helped me when I needed it. I often struggle to sleep and I always get that feeling where my chest feels super tight and it stops me from sleeping so I use an app where I usually do some meditating before going to sleep.
How are you feeling?
When you first go into the app it will ask you 'How are you feeling?' And it's just a simple slider that you can move up towards the sun or down towards the cloud with rain. Mine's been a bit of a mixture, but recently it's pretty positive which is great to see. Once you select how you are feeling, it then gives you some bubbles and asks why you might be feeling like that.
For an example, on this one I put it close to the sun as I was feeling pretty good and clicked onto 'something good that happened recently' as I've had a lovely Christmas break, 'your family' and 'your friends' as I've spent some time with everyone, and I also clicked 'how you look' because I recently have dyed my hair and I feel good about it. I really like this part of the app as it really gets you thinking, and sometimes I often feel negative but if someone were to ask me what's wrong, I'd probably say I don't even know. So with this and the bubble options it gets me thinking, it then gives you a little message like - "Well done! 'Just because one thing is not perfect it does not mean everything is ruined. Make an effort to see what is working out.'"
Zen points and Goals ~
As you complete activities on the app you also get Zen points which after collecting a load, you level up. I am currently at level 3. You also get goals set for you to complete, at the moment mine are:
Use Meditation, Go for a walk, and use Applied Relaxation on the app. I love that some of the goals are outside of the app too, I completed one that was to only have drinks with caffeine in them twice a day, because too much can be bad for you and can affect your mental health. You can also set reminders to complete your goals, so I forgot to do this at first, but when I had the drink less caffeine goal some days I'd forget to go onto my goals to tick the day so it's handy that you can give yourself a reminder.
Activities ~
This is probably one of my favourite things about the app. I don't know many mental health apps where it includes mini games to keep your mind busy or to help you feel distracted when you need it. At the moment there is two activities, but there looks to be more on their way.
The first activity is called Wise Words and honestly I love playing it. When you click into the activity it explains: "This is a fun word game you can use for distraction if you are feeling anxious in the moment. It also trains you to look out for the positives in life." - If you find positive words you get bonus points!
The longest word I've found at the moment is 5 letters, but it has different difficulties where you can click what word length you want to do. So at the moment I've done 15 of the word lengths of 3 letters, and the I've done a few of the 4 and 5 word lengths. So, there's a lot to do!
The other activity is called Message in a Bottle - which I love. What you do in this one is you can send a positive message to anyone, you don't select who it goes to, but I'm guessing whoever has the app may end up getting a lovely message. You don't write the messages yourself, it gives you a selection of options and you click the one you like and you send! I've had two messages in return and it's such a positive thing to add to the app. It's good to be kind.
Sessions ~
There's so many sessions on this app which is amazing. I'll admit I haven't had the chance to use them all but the sessions include:
Breathing
Meditation
Deep Muscle
Self Suggestion
Applied Relaxation
In most of them they advise that it's better with headphones as they all have a voice that talks to you through the session - or the beginning anyway, and then they go silent for you to carry on by yourself.
Breathing: When you click into this one you can choose how many minutes you want the session. The voice then goes through a breathing exercise with you, so if you feel like you need to calm down this can really help. If I'm feeling panicky or like I'm close to having a panic attack breathing exercises often really help me. However, often I struggle to do them just by myself. Sometimes my boyfriend will sit with me and tell me to breathe in, he'll count to 3 and then I'll breathe out. Of course, he's not always going to be there with me, so having an app that can help you through it is very helpful for me.
Meditation: There is so much in this session. When you click into it, it has several options as there's many different ways to meditate. The other night I actually did the one that's just titled 'Meditation' as I was trying to go to sleep but was struggling, and often that's because we have things on our mind, so as meditating is all about clearing your mind, I find it's brilliant to do before I go to sleep. It also relaxes me so much! Similar to the breathing one you can choose how long you want the session to be, and then it begins.
The voice will start you off and then it usually goes silent for you to finish off the meditation by yourself. I'll admit at first I didn't like that it just goes silent for the rest of the minutes at the end because I have used other apps before and I was so used to hearing the relaxing music in the background or a voice coming back every so often. My boyfriend on the other hand preferred this one because he said sometimes on the others the voice coming back would disturb his meditation. However, last night I loved this one. I cleared my mind so much that I actually fell asleep hehe. (Although, you don't normally meditate lying down, it's advised to always be sitting up.)
Deep Muscle: Which helps you to relax your muscles, it guides you through relaxing your body one muscle at a time which in result really helps to relax your mind. I actually really like these kind of relaxation sessions, as well as relaxing your body I find it makes me feel chilled and peaceful too.
Self Suggestion: This helps you to link words with being calm, so when you're feeling stressed at any point you can use that word to bring you back into a calm state. With this one for me anyway, I need to practise this a good few times before I can do it easily.
With this exercise you get yourself calm to begin with, and then you pick a word or a phrase that you just repeat over and over again until you hear the voice on the app again. As I said above, I found this a little bit tricky, because even though I repeated a word over and over, when I opened my eyes again, I felt like even if I said my word or phrase again it didn't really do much for me. But I know for any sort of meditation you have to practise it again and again.
Applied Relaxation: With this session you have several steps to work through. I really like the idea of having several steps because it takes time to teach your mind to do these kind of things. The first step is a little overview of what to expect and it introduces you to key concepts to help you with your understanding of anxiety.
This session once you have mastered it is meant to help you get yourself calm when you need it. They advise you to practise these exercises twice a day.
I'm looking forward to completing more of the steps and hopefully it will help me when I need it.
♡♡♡♡
There's so much more to the app, if I wrote about everything this would be an extremely long blog post, but I just wanted to give you a quick little tour of the app and what I thought of it. There are quite a few apps out there and I have actually done a post on a few before, but this app has gone to the top of my favourites. I think the fact that it has activities for you to do, and has a goal system as well as all the sessions you can do, it really overtakes so many apps in my opinion. I'm also a big fan of the whole layout and the colours of this app, you can see by the pictures it's all pastel colours so it looks so pretty and it's really relaxing and calming on your eyes.
I have really enjoyed using this app and I have found it so helpful and calming. If you're interested then please do go have a look, you can see more on their website here.
Like most of these apps there is a subscription fee for full access, they have to do this so they can continue to run it, the only other way for something like this to be fully free is through ads however, it's studied that having such ads on these things can also be bad for mental health hence they went down the subscription route.
You can also find them on social media here:
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