Every tool here is a simplified form of an evidence-based technique. If you're curious, how each one works is here — but you don't have to read it: a technique works even if you don't know how.
You give what you feel a name — roughly at first, then the exact word.
An unnamed emotion is carried like a vague weight; naming it turns it into something recognizable. Being able to tell emotions apart by their exact word — is it hurt, or disappointment? — goes hand in hand with the skill of managing them: it's hard to regulate what you can't identify.
Its name in the literature: affect labeling and emotional granularity
You mark how strong the emotion is right now, from 1 to 10.
Measuring intensity breaks the feeling of "I'm always like this": the same anxiety can be an 8 one day and a 4 the next — that difference is proof, in your own data, that the emotion is temporary. Being able to see "a bit better" is the feeling of progress itself.
Its name in the literature: the subjective units of distress tradition (SUDS) / self-monitoring
You write down the event and the sentence that went through your mind, exactly as it was.
What shakes us is usually not the event itself but the interpretation that sticks to it in the moment — and it arrives so fast it gets treated as fact before it's noticed. A thought put into writing is easier to examine than one inside your head: what is visible can be questioned.
Its name in the literature: the ABC model / thought record
The shortcuts the mind takes under pressure are so similar in everyone that they have names.
Each trap's definition and its noticing question open from the "What is this trap?" line on the trap cards.
Its name in the literature: cognitive distortions
At the end of the analysis you're left with a single question, not an answer.
"It's not actually like that", said from outside, rarely convinces; the answer you find yourself does. A good question lets you look at your thought from one step back — and because you produced the answer, it's yours. That the app doesn't hand out advice isn't a gap; it's the technique itself.
Its name in the literature: Socratic questioning / guided discovery
You write, yourself, a new sentence that looks at the same event more fairly.
The goal isn't rose-tinted glasses — it's breaking the monopoly of a single interpretation: even seeing that the same event has a second reading can move the emotion's intensity. Writing the sentence yourself matters — an alternative you produced is more believable than one handed to you. Leaving it blank is fine too; some days, just noticing is the day's gain.
Its name in the literature: cognitive restructuring
You write down what your anxiety predicts, then write what actually happened, and look at the two side by side.
Catastrophising and fortune-telling are claims about the future, and a claim isn't argued with — it's tested. Reasoning with anxiety often feeds it; putting your own prediction next to what happened ends the argument. Even when the prediction comes true there's something to gain: then the problem isn't the prediction, it's the preparation. "Partly" is there on purpose: anxiety's usual mistake isn't whether something happens, it's how big it will be.
Its name in the literature: behavioural experiment
If you want to try itYou mark, with one tap, how your new sentence made you feel.
Seeing on yourself that when the thought shifts the feeling moves too is this approach's evidence, made personal. "The same" or "harder" is valid data as well — not every sentence works every day; knowing that is part of the learning.
Its name in the literature: re-rating
Without changing the thought, you put it in a frame: "My mind is telling me…"
Some thoughts are too fresh or too intense to argue with; wrestling with the content in that moment pulls you into the mud. The frame moves the thought from the "fact" shelf to the "a sentence my mind is producing right now" shelf — the content stays the same, but its grip loosens.
Its name in the literature: cognitive defusion (ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
You don't suppress the worry; you give it an appointment for the evening.
Worry shouts "this must be solved now"; trying to suppress it makes it stronger. The appointment does neither: it says "I will attend to you", and the mind can stop re-reminding you. When evening comes, you see on your own list that most worries have shrunk — that is the technique's real lesson.
Its name in the literature: worry postponement
If you want to try itYou don't refuse the urge; you tell it "not now — in ten minutes".
An urge behaves like a wave: it rises, peaks, and comes down on its own — the peak usually passes within ten to twenty minutes. Refusing is wrestling the wave, and the wrestling itself grows the urge; delaying sets up no battle of will, it simply puts time on your side. The answer you give to the single question ten minutes later usually shows up in your own data.
Its name in the literature: urge delay
When your mood is low, instead of working on the thought you do one small, concrete thing.
Low mood feeds inaction, and inaction lowers mood further — that's the loop. The shortest way to break it isn't thinking but an action too small to fail at; getting moving is usually the cause of motivation, not its result.
Its name in the literature: behavioral activation
As the day closes, you write a few things that were good — however small.
In hard times, attention tunes itself to catching the negative; the good isn't invisible, it just goes unrecorded. This practice deliberately turns attention the other way — it changes not the day, but the habit of scanning it.
Its name in the literature: three good things (positive psychology)
If you want to try itIn a calm moment, you prepare short notes for your hard moment.
In a hard moment, thinking space narrows: no new ideas come, and long text doesn't get read. The only thing that works then is the short, concrete reminder you left for yourself while calm. The card teaches nothing new; it puts what you know in front of you at the moment remembering gets hard.
Its name in the literature: the coping card
If you want to try itYou breathe in equal counts of four: in, hold, out, wait.
In anxious moments breathing speeds up and gets shallow, and the body amplifies the "danger" signal; deliberately slowing the rhythm breaks the same loop from the other end. The counting itself is part of the work — while attention goes to the numbers, it steps out of the thought spiral.
Its name in the literature: paced breathing / box breathing
If you want to try itIn for 4, hold for 7, out for 8 — the exhale deliberately long.
The heart naturally slows on the exhale; lengthening it keeps the body's "rest" system engaged longer. That's why it's favored before bed — but in an intense moment it does the same job in daytime.
Its name in the literature: extended exhalation (parasympathetic activation) / 4-7-8
If you want to try itYou come back to now through your five senses: what you see, touch, hear…
In intense anxiety the body is here but attention is not — the mind runs the threat scenario. Turning to the senses one by one physically fills the attention channel; the mind can't run the scenario and count the sounds at the same time.
Its name in the literature: sensory grounding (5-4-3-2-1)
If you want to try itYou deliberately tense muscle groups one by one, then let them go.
Tension collects in muscle, and once it's constant it stops being noticed — it gets mistaken for "normal". Tensing the muscle first teaches, by contrast, what release feels like when you let go; that's why the release phase is kept long. When the body eases, the mind's arousal follows it down.
Its name in the literature: progressive muscle relaxation
If you want to try itWithout suppressing the urge or obeying it, you watch it in your body like a wave.
Fighting an urge locks attention onto it and makes it more visible. Watching changes the relationship: the feeling is still there, but it's now an observation, not a command. Seeing the wave rise and fall in your own body is the shortest way to test the prediction "this won't pass" against your own experience.
Its name in the literature: urge surfing
If you want to try itBefore bed you write down what's circling in your mind and leave it for tomorrow.
A mind that tries to solve problems in bed turns the bed into a desk. Leaving the thought in writing gives the assurance "it won't be forgotten" — only then can the mind stop repeating it. The notes coming back in the morning is that promise being kept; you also see there how thoughts that grew at night have shrunk by morning.
Its name in the literature: structured worry time / brain dump (CBT-I)
A few short principles for keeping the bed a "sleep" signal for the body: the bed is for sleep, get up if you can't drift off, don't try to sleep.
Lying awake and problem-solving in bed slowly turns the bed into a "wakefulness" signal; the principles protect the pairing. All of them are on the Sleep page.
Its name in the literature: stimulus control (CBT-I)
If you want to try itIn the morning you tap a single question: how rested did you start the day?
The question deliberately looks at the morning, not the night — scoring your sleep feeds anxiety about sleep, while the feeling of restedness is today's data. As entries build up, you see in your own data how restedness relates to that day's emotions.
Its name in the literature: subjective restedness report (the sleep diary tradition, without the friction)
Once your entries build up, you look at your patterns: which context, which hour, which emotion arrives with what.
What can't be seen from inside the day becomes a pattern seen from behind — "tension in the evenings", "work on Mondays". A connection built from your own data convinces more than any generalization said from outside; it also shows you what to pay attention to.
Its name in the literature: self-monitoring feedback
If you want to try itYou pull out a random one of the good things you wrote before and read it again.
Memory tends to surface the memories that match the current mood: when morale is low, good memories aren't erased — they become unreachable. A dated note doesn't leave that access to remembering. The note arriving at random is deliberate too: if you tried to choose which one to read, the chooser would again be that day's mood.
Its name in the literature: savoring — reminiscence
If you want to try it