Sep 9, 2016 5 min read

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From traffic jams during your morning commute to dealing with crowds at the grocery store while taking care of weekly shopping needs, there are plenty of things that could make you feel anxious. Fortunately, getting relief is as easy as reaching for your iPhone.

Apps and other methods of self-treatment shouldn’t be used as replacements for seeing a mental health specialist, but they could help you feel calmer between sessions or make it easier to fight back during periods of extremely high stress. Keep reading to learn about five awesome anxiety-alleviating apps for the Apple iPhone.

Stressful times may make you feel like a professional worrier. The things occupying your headspace might range from wondering whether the outfit you’ve chosen for work is stylish enough, to feeling upset about going to the doctor for a checkup tomorrow and possibly receiving bad news.

However, if you’ve ever stopped to count how many of the things you’ve worried about actually came to pass, you’ll probably discover many of those worries were unfounded. The Worry Watch Anxiety Journal app encourages you to keep track of the things on your mind, then come back to the app and record if the worries became realities. Over time, you’ll naturally create statistics to view and gain a greater understanding what you worry about and why.

The app costs $1.99, and after paying for it once, you can use it across other iOS devices, like an iPad. It also has offline functionality, allowing you to make notes about your worries without a Wi-Fi connection. After using Worry Watch for a while, you’ll likely see there’s no need to feel anxious about many of your worries, because statistics show they don’t materialize.

This free app guides you through breathing techniques to reportedly get anxiety under control in just five minutes. Musical cues help you transition between different breathing phases, and there’s a guided meditation feature that focuses on relaxing various body parts under 10 minutes.

As you take part in each guided session you’ll naturally have a slower respiration rate, and your heart rate and blood pressure will go down. If you find the Relax Lite app works especially well in keeping anxiety at bay, there’s an option to buy paid content geared towards more advanced users.

While experiencing bouts of high anxiety, people often begin hyperventilating, which makes them more likely to spiral into panic attacks and have difficulty remaining calm. If you can relate to that reality, this app could be just the thing to coach you about deep diaphragmatic breathing techniques. Purposeful, deep breathing deactivates your body’s fight-or-flight response, and triggers a relaxed response from the parasympathetic nervous system. Once you get accustomed to the proper breathing methods, it’s theoretically easy to calm down wherever you are.

This app uses principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, to teach you how to identify thoughts that make you feel anxious, and replace them with better ones. Although you can’t always control the things that happen to you, changing how you feel about them is a goal within your grasp.

While using the Stress and Anxiety Companion, you can create picture cards associated with things you learn, then share them with friends. There are also visual and audio exercises within this complimentary app that aid you in controlling breathing and relaxing your muscles.

When you’re interested in learning meditation to relieve anxiety but aren’t sure how to get started, Headspace is for you. Designed for beginning meditators, Headspace familiarizes users with some of meditation’s foundations by taking them through 10 free modules.

If you finish that content and liked how it minimized your anxiety, consider purchasing themed paid modules within the Headspace app. Regardless of if you want to focus on being more appreciative or feeling happier, Headspace offers fee-based structured meditations that make it simple to move beyond using meditation as a coping mechanism for anxiety.

Because it features content based on CBT and Acceptance Commitment Therapy, What’s Up? is an excellent companion if your mental health specialist uses one or both of those methods to empower you against anxiety. Use the Catastrophe Scale to achieve a better perspective when life feels out of control and you can’t help but feel anxious.

Also, check out metaphorical content that allows you to break negative thought cycles and make positive replacements. The What’s Up? app even features forums where you can connect with people from all over the world and talk about what you’re feeling, without dealing with the highly visible nature of social media sites like Facebook. While using the journal feature within What’s Up?, you can rate your feelings on a ten-point scale to track moods over time.

If your iPhone is an indispensable part of your life, you have a perfect opportunity to use it to tame anxiety. By keeping your smartphone easily accessible, you’ll be able to start managing anxious feelings as soon as they strike, thereby increasing the likelihood you’ll conquer them and enjoy authentic calmness.