Last week I wrote about coping between therapy sessions and mentioned a fab new app I’ve been using called Therachat. Today, I wanted to tell you a little more about Therachat and it’s features, and how it could benefit you if you’re struggling with anxiety, depression or any other kind of mental health issue at the moment.
Therachat is aimed at two potential groups. Firstly, it’s a fantastic tool for individuals to use between therapy sessions or as a standalone resource for journaling and recording various aspects of their daily lives, to help discover and improve their emotional wellbeing. But secondly, Therachat can also be used by professionals as an additional aid alongside therapy or counselling sessions.
For individuals
The app is totally free and available for Apple and android devices. As I said last week, it’s so straightforward to use and easy to navigate. Once you’ve downloaded and registered you will gain access to three menus – Activities, Library & Profile. The Activities section is where you record daily entries under the following categories:
- Emotion Tracking – The Emotion Tracking is beautifully simple & intuitive. It asks you to select which emotion you feel from Happy, Sad, Disgust, Anger, Fear & Surprise and when you click the emotion it asks you to rate the intensity (using a very simple slider) and then gives you a series of related, additional words to add if you wish. Then you simply save.
- Open Journaling – free writing space to record whatever you wish
- Self-Care Journaling – again, very simple, just asks you to record one thing you did for yourself today which is a great reminder that we need to prioritise this!
- Gratitude Journaling – this section asks you to free type three things you’re grateful for
- Sleep Tracking – here enter the number of hours you slept last night
- Trigger Tracking – this is space to free type what has triggered you today.
This information is then stored in the Profile section where you can quickly and easily refer back to previous days.
The Library section contains additional options including:
- Be A Contributor – sharing acts of kindness
- Daily Self-Confidence Reflection
- About Your Self-Confidence
- Ask A Friend
- Compliment Exercise
- Healthy Body, Healthy mind
- Explore New Interests
- Increase Positive Activities
- Character Strengths Survey
- Recognize Self-Critical Thoughts
The resources in the Library are only available to premium users but this is only $1.99 a month and the tools are all created by therapists themselves.
What I love
- Simple & easy to use
- Calming, pleasant colour scheme
- Everything recorded in one place (I wish Therachat had been available when I was struggling as it would have saved me hunting around in lots of different notebooks and my phone notes section!)
- Tracking and journaling is incredibly quick – I think lots of people are put off by the idea of daily journaling because it can seem so labourious and it feels like just one more burden when you’re already feeling overwhelmed but all the daily Therachat journals can be completed in well under five minutes
- Useful for tracking recovery and building confidence
- You’re shown an inspiring quote after each entry
- The option to turn on alerts so a friendly reminder pops up on your screen to prompt you to record your entry that day.
For professionals
As I said, Therachat can also be used by therapists themselves, delivering pre-made clinical homework assignments straight to the client’s phone, which helps to get a better understanding of the client’s needs and saves valuable admin time during sessions. Therapists also have the option to create their own homework assignments and can send to clients immediately or schedule ahead of time. For professionals the price is $39 per month for up to 30 clients.
I’ve really enjoyed using Therachat and consider it really useful for anyone currently struggling with their mental wellbeing. Recording mood, gratitude and positive thoughts was a huge part of my own recovery and Therachat offers a one stop shop for those exercises. If you’d like to find out more visit their website here or search for ‘therachat’ in your device’s app store.
Disclosure: This is a collaborative post with Therachat, words and opinions are all my own.
Related posts:
How To Get The Most Out Of Therapy
I would not recommend this app to any client after the experience we all had. I paid for a year, the app was buggy and has serious lag issues, no customer support, then worse of all clients of mine were getting baited to pay for things in the app with yellow stars indicating if they pay they would get that option!!! AFTER I PAID FOR THE WHOLE YEAR!!
I am appalled and disgusted, I would not recommend this app it caused great frustration with me and the clients. I would recommend getting your own hippa protected email account, which is cheaper anyways