Doesn’t it always seem to be the way that anxiety and panic attacks have a terrible habit of striking at the worst possible moment?
Sure, there’s never a *good* time to deal with them, but more often than not the stress hits hardest when we’re far beyond our comfort zone, with our usual anxiety relief tools well out of reach.
Perhaps we’re at a friend’s house, on the train or at the store. Wherever it is, when an attack strikes of the stress of the situation simply becomes too overwhelming, we could all use something quick, simple and effective to help us through it.
That’s where the leading anxiety relief apps we’re featuring today come in handy.
Over the past couple of years, a whole host of tools have come onto the market to help those dealing with stress, anxiety and depression gain some respite from their symptoms wherever they are, whenever they need them.
On the face of it, this is certainly good news. It means that however stress and anxiety manifests itself for you, and however you prefer to regain your calm, there’s a tool available that you can download and use at a moment’s notice.
But here’s the thing:
With so many of these apps now available, finding one that’s truly effective can take a long time and a lot of work.
Of course, there is an easier way.
Here, we’ve rounded up the very best anxiety relief apps currently available, each one tried, tested and reviewed to help you pick the ones that are going to work best for you.
1. Calm
Deciding how to rank our top two anxiety relief apps was no easy task. Both calm and second-placed Breathe2Relax offer incredible value for a free app and have ultimately helped thousands of people to get their anxiety under control.
In the end, however, it was Calm‘s reputation as the world’s number one mindfulness and relaxation app which cemented its position at the top of the chart.
Voted Apple’s App of the Year in 2017 and currently the third most popular iPhone app in the category of health and fitness, Calm offers a plethora of relaxing meditations.
Each meditation comes with its own enchanting visuals and tranquil soundtrack, so you can always find one that’s just to your liking.
Also available for Android devices, the app allows you to choose meditations ranging anywhere from a quick two to twenty minutes.
Whilst the former can prove incredibly effective in an emergency, using the longer meditations on a regular basis can work wonders for keeping anxiety at bay and enjoying a greater sense of calm throughout day-to-day life.
Like most of the apps on this list, Calm is free to download and has lots of free content that you can use right away. However, there are some options to purchase subscription-only content if you wish to.
Best for: All-round stress-management and relaxation
Rating:
- iPhone rating : 4.8/5
- Android rating: 4.6/5
2. HeadSpace
With HeadSpace, you start off with a free trial version and then have the option to pay for premium content. Whilst that may not make it the ideal app for everyone, it does have plenty of benefits that make it a worthy inclusion on our list.
The free version provides a complete course that teaches basic meditation techniques that you can use in a variety of situations to feel calmer and enjoy mindful living.
Often, one of the biggest problems facing those with anxiety is that of racing thoughts; taking relatively benign situations (or those which would otherwise be only mildly stressful) and blowing them up into huge, terrifying ordeals.
Most of the time, these terrifying ordeals never actually occur in the real world, but because we’ve created such large, vivid representations of them in our minds, we feel as though they’re entirely real.
The result, of course, is heightened anxiety or a full-blown panic attack.
HeadSpace addresses this by focussing on mindfulness — bringing us back into the present moment through a series of guided meditations and enjoyable animations.
The latter help teach valuable mindfulness skills that can help not just with stress and anxiety, but in tackling everyday life situations such as eating healthy, exercising and getting a restful night’s sleep.
Best for: Mindfulness and meditations
Rating:
- iPhone rating : 4.9/5
- Android rating: 4.6/5
3. Worry Watch
Worry Watch is one of the few anxiety relief apps out there available exclusively for Apple devices. It’s also one of the few apps that you’ll need to pay up front to use.
However, if you have $2.99 to spare, then you’ll find it well worth taking a few moments out of your day to download this very useful tool.
Unlike other apps which help you to cope once the stress or anxiety is already at its peak, Worry Watch does something much different.
It helps you to track and identify the trigger situations that cause much of your anxiety in the first place.
Using the password-protected journal, you can log all the situations, circumstances, and people that cause you the most anxiety. You can even categorize different types of worry and note down how high the level of anxiety is that they cause.
In turn, this can help you develop new coping strategies or come up with alternative ways of doing things which avoid those trigger situations.
Revisiting these events, you’re also likely to see that the things you worried about the most never turned out even half as bad as you expected. In the long-run, this can help boost your confidence and reduce anxiety when going into similar situations.
Best for: Identifying anxiety triggers
Rating:
- iPhone rating : 4.5/5
Available for iOS
4. MindShift
Dealing with stress and anxiety can be terrifying and exhausting no matter what you’re age.
Yet for teenagers and young adults, it can be practically debilitating, preventing them from enjoying the best possible opportunities in life as they work their way out of high school into the wider world.
Developed by the Canadian charity, AnxietyBC, MindShift remains one of the best tools out there for helping young people overcome this crippling anxiety and develop effective coping strategies for almost all aspects of life.
Through a combination of learning exercises, meditations, and tools, MindShift helps users to change the way they think about anxiety and stop it from controlling their lives.
A highlight is the “chill out tools,” designed to aid relaxation and mindfulness. These can prove particularly effective in stressful situations or in helping youngsters whose sleep is affected by anxiety.
Elsewhere, breathing exercises and various strategies can be taught to tackle a series of issues including social anxiety, panic, conflict, and riding out the intense emotions that play such a big part in the lives of growing young people.
Best for: Teenagers, and young adults with anxiety
Rating:
- iPhone rating : 3.7/5
- Android rating : 4.1/5
5. Inner Balance
It’s unique, it’s innovative, and it’s very helpful, so why does Inner Balance rank so far down on our list?
One word:
Price.
Sure, the app itself is free to download, but if you’re going to actually make any use out of it, you’ll need to shell out around $130 for a wearable sensor.
If you have that kind of money available, then this is certainly worth the investment.
What it does is looking at the physical effects of stress and anxiety, and helping to get those effects under control in a way that promotes calm, relaxing feelings.
When stress is high, or when we’re in the midst of a panic attack, our breathing and heart rate shoots through the roof.
Inner Balance teaches users how to monitor this. It also teaches how to get breathing, heart rate, and emotions all in alignment, turning anxiety into calm and reducing the overwhelming sense of fatigue that can often follow an attack.
Best for: Tracking and improving the physical effects of stress or anxiety
Rating:
- iPhone rating: 4.7/5
- Android rating: 3.6/5
6. Rain Rain Sleep Sounds
Finally, we get to an aspect of our lives that can cause us the most problems when it is impacted by high-level anxiety.
All those racing thoughts, worries and stresses can often leave us tossing and turning through the night. This lack of sleep then affects our ability to function the next day and causes us no end of health problems. As a result, we often find our anxiety increasing, and thus the vicious cycle continues.
Rain Rain Sleep Sounds looks to break that cycle by providing a menu of endless soundscapes designed to help users drift away into a peaceful night’s rest.
Most of the tracks are different forms of rain (such as rain falling in the city or at the seaside), but a few, such as crackling fires and thunderstorms, may be more to your liking.
Choose one high-quality track, set it to play, and it will keep on doing so all through the night, lulling you into a restful state so that you can wake up fresh and ready to tackle your day.
Best for: Getting a peaceful night’s sleep
Rating:
- iPhone rating: 4.8/5
- Android rating: 4.4/5
The verdict: Picking an anxiety relief app that’s right for you
From physical health to mental and emotional anguish, anxiety can manifest itself in many forms.
The good news is that no matter which of those forms you’re struggling with the most, there’s an app that’s tailor-made to help you with it.
Finding it impossible to get out of a debilitating panic attack? Panic Relief is just the thing.
Need help maintaining a sense of calm throughout your day-to-day life? HeadSpace or Pacifica may be more to your liking.
That being said, there’s nothing to say you have to download just one app and stick to it.
Since almost all of the tools featured here are free to at least try out, why not choose a handful that look to be the most helpful and test them for yourself?
You never know, you may just find the one thing that makes all the difference when it comes to taking control of your anxiety and leading a happier, calmer life.
Featured photo credit: Unsplash via unsplash.com
