Using Technology for Support Between Therapy Sessions

Imagine you come out of your therapy session feeling good and ready to tackle your stressors. Something else stressful comes up, and it feels like everything you learned in therapy went out the window. Now you don’t know what to do. 

How do you make the therapy stick once you’ve left the session? Let’s talk about it!

I love providing clients with resources they can use between sessions to help them practice their skills and continue to progress and process. 
Some of the most useful resources that will help my clients further their coping skills, maintain their motivation, and enhance their self-care between sessions are available right on their phones. I have compiled a list of some of my favorite options. 
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Please note that I am not associated with or sponsored by any of these resources; they are simply options that have benefited me and my clients. Additionally, using apps that collect information and data is a personal choice and one that you should consider individually before using apps like these. 

1. Motivation: Finch
​Finding motivation, accomplishing daily tasks, and prioritizing self-care are difficult when we are struggling with our mental health. Finch is an adorable app designed to help with exactly that. With this app, you raise a little bird by fueling it with energy from the tasks you complete and sending it on adventures around the world.

Additionally, you collect gems from your achievements to buy outfits and decorations for your bird and birdhouse. You can incentivise yourself to prioritize certain tasks by connecting them to the hatching micropets, which become your bird’s companion and are oh so cute. Finch also allows you to connect with friends who raise their own birds. When you connect with friends, you can send encouragement and gifts, see their bird’s growth journey, and invite them to your bird house. 
Finch also serves as a mood and motivation tracker and offers weekly insights. The app has a first aid kit for when your mood and motivation are low. It includes various breathing exercises, grounding techniques, opportunities to journal your feelings, affirmations, and body scans. Other features include: goal setting, a reflection journal, breathing exercises, soundscapes, movement suggestions, and ideas for acts of kindness.

For my neurodivergent folks, Finch is the ultimate dopamine fuel source, and I strongly recommend it. As someone who is neurodivergent myself, I struggle to start and maintain new habits, but have been using Finch daily for almost a full year. My neurodivergent clients who have started using it report finding it helpful. Finch is a free app with an option to upgrade and become a sponsor, however, the bonuses of that are mostly to unlock extra outfits and birdhouse decorations. When it comes to using the app’s resources, upgrading has little impact.

I honestly can’t say enough about this app. If you like a cutesy, dopamine-filled, mood-tracking, motivational tool, I would recommend trying this one out.

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2. Emotions: How We Feel
Understanding, processing, and coping with emotions is a huge part of the therapeutic process and something that can’t be accomplished in the span of a one-hour session. We must practice between sessions. 

How We Feel is an app funded by donations, with all the resources available for free. It has mood-tracking vibes, but is more of an emotions tracker. You check in and identify the emotions you’re feeling from a list of options, report what you were doing when you felt them, and write or audio record a reflection. If you want to process your feelings or explore ways to cope with them, you can utilize the AI function to deepen your reflection and discover insights that might help you cope with your emotions. You can also connect the emotion check-ins to the local weather, your movement and exercise, caffeine intake, water intake, alcohol intake, how much sleep you get, and how much you meditate. 
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The app provides several tools for working through your emotions, including positive quotes, affirmations, breathing exercises, emotional education, movement exercises, mindfulness videos, reframing strategies, and more. There is also a friend feature to this app where you can opt to share how you’re feeling and why. The app aesthetic is clean and simple, which some appreciate as opposed to more animated apps like Finch. I use and recommend both, due to the different purposes they serve. For example, Finch is more task motivation oriented, and How We Feel is more for emotional tracking.

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3. Meditation: Happier
When I bring up meditation in sessions, I’m met with comments like, “I hate meditation, I get too distracted, and it’s impossible for my thoughts to be quiet.” The mainstream understanding of meditation is that it’s somehow supposed to teach you to be totally devoid of thoughts, but that is simply unrealistic and, in my opinion, not what meditation should be used for. Instead, meditation is a powerful way to process and feel emotions, relax and recenter ourselves when stressed and overwhelmed, and expand our capacity for skillful coping mechanisms. 

Happier, previously known as Ten Percent Happier, is an app that was recommended to me by another therapist. It is now a resource that I use regularly, personally and professionally, primarily because of the quality and variety of meditation practices and tools it provides. The app has free meditations available, but you may choose to purchase their yearly subscription, like I did, for full access. 

The meditations cover many different topics and guide you through many visualization and reflection options. They also do a good job of setting a pace that allows time for reflection and still calls your attention back to the practice in case your thoughts start to wander. Whether you are experienced or new to meditation, this app is one that my clients and I find helpful.
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Other:
Outside of apps, I recommend Self-Compassion Practices by Dr Kristin Neff. The meditations found on that webpage are geared towards compassion, loving-kindness, and grounding. Her website includes helpful exercises as well, which I suggest checking out.

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4. Affirmations: I am
We have all heard about affirmations, and some of you probably roll your eyes when someone suggests them as a tool to improve self-esteem and efficacy. They have gained a bad reputation as cheesy, lame, superficial, awkward, etc., but they don’t have to be. “I am” offers customized affirmations geared towards your individual needs in an aesthetic and frequency you prefer. These affirmations sound less like “I am pretty” and more like “I see all the positive things about my body.” You can pay for more customization options if you’d like, but choosing the free version does not restrict your access to the affirmations. Regardless of how you feel about affirmations now, I encourage you to try them out. You might be surprised!

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5. Couples: Paired
Lots of people struggle communicating with their partners, and that is normal, even in a healthy relationship. The Paired app is designed to facilitate conversations that you may not think to have. These conversations revolve around topics like sex, sharing responsibility, finances, quality time, communication, LGBTQ+, and more.

​Each conversation prompt or quiz starts with a bit of psychoeducation about relationship dynamics. The prompts and quizzes have thoughtful questions designed to make you think and reflect so that you share insightful information with your partner via the app. You can not see your partner's answers until you submit your own, which I feel helps with authenticity. After each of you has answered, you can continue to discuss in the app with messages and emoji reactions, or if you prefer, you can continue the conversations in person to build on your understanding of each other’s answers. 

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6. Movement: Bend
Movement is another therapeutic tool! Moving our bodies, in whatever capacity, can have great mental and physical health benefits. Gentle movement, like stretching, is more accessible for some than going on a run or going to the gym, and Bend is a great way to guide yourself through that. The app has stretches categorized by body areas to stretch and by various intentions for stretching. It has guided routines that are as short as four minutes up to thirty minutes. You select a routine based on whether you’re looking for a wake-up stretch, a bedtime stretch, a mid-workday stretch, or you want to stretch your sore lower back, and it presents you with several options varying in length. You can pick according to the amount of time you have or the kinds of stretches it shows in the sequence, if you have a preference. 

Each option has an explanation of its specific focus. Before you start the stretch series, it shows you all the stretches in the order that they will be presented and the length of time intended to hold those stretches. Both before you start or if you need a refresher in the middle of stretching, each movement has a detailed description of how to get into the position (including a video demonstration showing you what it looks like), tips to help you find your footing and prevent injuries, modifications to accommodate movement restrictions, and the areas that benefit from that stretch.
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I personally love the way that the app guides you through the movements and provides ample support for executing each stretch. You can adjust the time that you hold each stretch if it is too long or too short, and you can pause any time if you need a break to adjust, reread the directions, or sip some water. The app will, of course, send you reminders to stretch if you set it up to, and as with most apps, there are more features available if you pay for the subscription. The unpaid version only does a full guided routine with the timer once a day, but it does not restrict your access to stretches or their instructions if you want to use them with your own timer or at your own pace. 

​Conclusion:
While they are not a fix for our mental health, nor a replacement for trained professionals and community support, apps are a great way to reinforce the things you are working on in therapy. The apps I recommend here may not work for you, and that is okay; they are just options to experiment with. If you find that these are not your vibe, that is just more information to help you determine what you do or do not need in terms of support. It’s all about finding what works for you!

​Author: McKayla Kagie Robinson, MS, PLMFT
McKayla is Provisionally licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with Healing Reflections Therapy, currently accepting new clients for individual, couple, or family therapy.

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