YORK, Pa. — If you type the word anxiety in the app store on your smart device, you will find a plethora of apps claiming to be able to help track your anxiety.
"It's cool because some of these apps provide strategies right built in with it, so when you do see this data and this information, they can help you through guided meditations," said Liz Reihm, life coach and wellness expert. "They can teach you breathing exercises and techniques."
We had her try out one of the apps to see if she felt it could help people.
"So what it did was use my Apple Watch to track my heart rate," she said. "It also asked me questions throughout the day to kind of track my mental state. Then it provided tools to kind of increase my mindfulness around things, as well as calm down if it noticed that it was heightened."
By telling you how anxious you are throughout the day, the apps can help you understand what in your environment triggers anxiety. That way, you can try to make adjustments.
Most of the apps work the same. They offer you a chance to keep a diary and choose the things you want to track. You can even set up reminders and create a goal.
Unfortunately, most of them do have in-app fees. Reihm says it's a small price to pay, if it helps.
"I think it could be really useful," the life coach said. "I found it funny because I actually used mine during the week of Christmas, and it showed my highest state of stress was actually the Friday night before where I was out finishing my Christmas shopping and getting everything ready, and then my calmest state was actually the morning of Christmas at the time that I was having Christmas brunch with my family, so it was actually pretty accurate in my heightened state versus my calm state."
Reihm says it's also important to know when it may be time to see a professional, versus trying one of the apps.
"Anytime you begin to see it impeding their daily functioning, whether that's creating so much heightened anxiety that you cannot go to work or you're struggling to parent or interact with a partner or a friend, anything, and then again the physical symptoms—if you're noticing a lot of digestive issues or sleep disturbances, those kinds of things where you all of a sudden now where you could function pretty normally, you're seeing it's really starting to cause problems," she said.
She also said there are a lot of practices you can do without an app to help you lower your anxiety, which includes yoga, meditation and journaling, to name a few.
If you'd like to contact Reihm, you can do so by clicking here.