Best Apps for Anyone Living With Anxiety

Anxiety is a mental illness that can harm even the most emotionally strong people once it takes root. I ought to know; I've got trauma-induced anxiety alongside PTSD, and have been struggling with it for years.

I also am aware that I am not alone in the struggle. Anxiety disorders are currently the most common type of mental illness in the United States, with around 18 percent of all Americans suffering from some form of anxiety at one point in their lives.

Thankfully, tech has saved the day. These days, your phone can be loaded with anxiety-relieving apps that can help you stay mellow, even when you are tempted to go into a full-blown panic attack.

Looking for the best ones? According to the experts, these are the best apps for anyone living with anxiety.

Pacifica Labs proudly makes one of the best apps for anyone living with anxiety—and they call it Pacifica for Stress and Anxiety. This app works by giving you psychologist-approved tools that allow you to recognize your stress, learn to talk yourself out of it, and also cope with anxiety in a healthy way.

All of the tools are based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, one of the most successful therapy forms out there when it comes to coping with anxiety.

Ever hear the term "bad headspace?" That's what a lot of wellness experts call that feeling when you find yourself being bombarded with intrusive, negative thoughts. Headspace is an app that works to help guide you towards a healthier, less anxious mindset through meditation and easy-to-follow exercises.

Headspace is one of the best apps for anyone living with anxiety because it's designed to be usable anywhere and anytime. It even has an "SOS" button if you're having a stress meltdown or anxiety attack, and specialized kids' features, too.

True story—breathing exercises have been scientifically proven to work when it comes to alleviating stress. That's why Breathe2Relax is one of the best apps for anyone living with anxiety.

All of the exercises in this app are designed to help you relax, focus on your breath, and also focus on how the exercises make you feel. The apps also react to your own moods, which makes this a great pick for people who may also be coping with a mood disorder.

You know what anxiety makes really, really hard to achieve? A feeling of calm—and that's precisely what Calm is for. This app is all about bringing mindfulness and meditation into your life.

This is one of the most useful apps for anyone living with anxiety on the market, and not just because of their guided meditations. It also has sleep-inducing stories, breathing exercises, and relaxing music to help you quell your negative thoughts and get centered.

Managing anxiety just got easier with Self-Help for Anxiety Management, also known colloquially as SAM. This app has a lot of awesome tools that help you learn about the thinking patterns that make you anxious, and also work to allow you to master your anxiety.

Many users have noted that the app's "Picture Peace" toolkit is extremely useful when it comes to pulling people away from having a near panic attack.

Almost every list of apps for anyone living with anxiety, stress, or PTSD will have Worry Watch as an entry. Why? Because it's one of the best journaling apps on the market, and gives anxiety sufferers a great way to learn how to avoid triggers—and also shows you why the things you're worried about probably aren't that big a deal.

Simply put, this turns your worries into the minor issues they really are and that's phenomenal. It's one of the only journaling apps that's specially designed to help people coping with anxiety.

Another app that's specially tailored to help you cope with anxiety is Relax Lite. In 2014, this app got voted Top Mind & Body App of 2014 by leading doctors in the industry—and since then, it's only improved.

This simple app offers two ways to help you get centered and worry-free: mindful meditation and breathing exercises. From there, you get to toggle what kind of music, guiding, and timing you get to chill out to.

No matter what options you choose, it's clear why Relax Lite is one of the best apps for anyone living with anxiety. It works, and it works well.

MindShift is one of the best apps for people who just realized that they are suffering from anxiety and want help with both understanding it and learning how to cope with it. This app is geared towards teens and young adults with anxiety, and helps teach you different coping mechanisms to overcome anxiety spells.

The whole premise of MindShift is to teach users how to face anxiety, tackle it, and win at life doing it. That alone makes it one of the best apps for anyone living with anxiety, youth or otherwise.

If you're tired of inhaling and exhaling your way to serenity, we really can't blame you. That probably gets boring once in a while, right? Well, Anxiety Relief Hypnosis offers a different option for folks coping with anxiety or PTSD.

Simply put, this is an app that uses the power of hypnosis to get you into a calm trance and help you cope with anxiety in a healthy way. Regular listening is all you need to do, and with over six million downloads, it's also one of the most popular apps on this list.

Perhaps one of the most "zen" apps for anyone living with anxiety is Insight Timer—a mindfulness and meditation app with a little something for everyone.

This is an app that works to encourage people to get into the habit of meditation, while offering an absolutely massive library of guided meditation to choose from. Don't want to have a guided session? No worries, they also have timers you can use for your own meditative state.

Insight Timer is part social media app, part support group, and part meditation tool. Whether you're coping with anxiety or just learning to meditate for the benefits, it's a great app to choose.