How to Use Your Tech to Reduce Anxiety

We’re all feeling a bit more anxious than usual these days, so we wanted to share a few tricks that can help bring back some peace into your daily routine. If you’re working from home, unexpectedly homeschooling your kids, or supporting the community in another way, you might want to try turning to an unexpected source for help: technology. 

There are a lot of well-known ways to support yourself and your loved ones during this time (meditation, video calls, going for walks), but one great way to take care is using tech mindfully. Technology often gets a bad reputation for negatively impacting mental health, but technology can also help us break bad habits, make new good ones, and connect us with our support system, which is especially important in these times.  

For anyone who’s looking for ways to add something new to their mental health routine, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite ways that you can use technology to alleviate anxiety, fear, and general uncertainty:

Take care of your needs when it makes sense for you.

Whether you’re trying to squeeze in a workout, a quick meditation or a therapy session, technology has made it easier than ever to hit reset when you need to. Pent up energy? Play a quick at home workout on YouTube. If you’re feeling panicked, take a minute to hit pause and process your emotions with meditation apps like Headspace and Calm. You can also use services like Talkspace to talk to a therapist via text anytime you need.

Set yourself up for success.

Get ahead of anxiety by letting tech take care of the tasks that typically stress you out. If you’re prone to lose your phone or keys in the house, Tile can help you find them without a panicked search. If you struggle with sticking to your morning and evening routines, use smart lights like LIFX to turn on when you want to get up and off when you want to go to sleep. You can even automate digital household tasks with IFTTT to minimize the amount of time you spend making your technology work together. 

Track what works well for you and what doesn’t.

One powerful way to take control of your mental health is to take time to notice how you’re feeling each day and pinpoint any factors. You can track your emotions over time with apps like Moodtrack Diary. Try combining that with a habit tracker like your Fitbit to monitor how much you’re exercising, your sleep schedule or how much water you’re drinking. Pay attention to what activities correlate with less anxiety and a better mood. When you put these two together you can start to identify trends. Use your data to make smarter decisions.

Set reminders to do the important things.

It can be easy to let healthy habits slide when you’re nervous. Put your phone to work, set reminders for yourself ahead of time so when you’re tired, you can still follow through. Set standing reminders to actually take your lunch break, to text your friend on their birthday or to make time for exercise. You can also use an internet timer if you tend to lose hours to Netflix binges or watching TikTok after TikTok. 

Stay connected to your community.

This final one is a big one. Technology makes it possible for us to connect to people we can’t see on a regular basis. Instead of passively watching your friends’ live feeds on social media, maintain those meaningful connections. Text your group chat just to see how everyone is doing. Set up a weekly video call with your family. Whatever works best for your schedule, make time to talk to the people that matter most.

It can be hard to take care of your mental health at times like this with all of our routines being upended and not all of these methods are right for everyone. Be patient with yourself as you try out new habits and figure out how your technology can best help you combat nerves in a stressful time. 

Do you have any other tips and tricks for keeping anxiety at bay with your technology? Let us know here. We always love hearing from you.