It’s World Mental Health Day, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share a list of tools that have helped me:

• Wysa: A free app that helps you self-manage stress with an AI chatbot that’s great at its job and seamlessly integrates with various tools and actual human therapists. Wysa is the app I go to first when I need help. It may be a chatbot, but it always helps me out of whatever’s going on or at least sets me on the right path. It’s also one of the few mental health apps to get a good score on Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included.
• Apple Fitness+: This one is not free, but it’s also a lot more than mental health. Moving your body is a good way to break out of whatever is holding your attention. Besides that, there is a vast library of guided meditations, and their mindful cooldowns are a great way to de-chair your body and de-work your mind. Free trial opportunities pop up often, so keep a lookout and pick one up when you can.
• Labyrinthos: I know what you’re thinking, but Tarot gets a bad rap. It’s neither magic nor mysticism, but people pay a lot of money for that, so I guess they’ll keep that angle going. Tarot is best described as a solitary card game that presents icebreaker questions for yourself. You start with a question (“What’s bothering me right now?”), you draw cards, those cards and where you place them have incredibly vague meanings, and you use that to dive right into “What does that mean for me right now?” You’re essentially using icebreakers to walk yourself through whatever’s bothering you step-by-step. This free app helps you do precisely that, and if you want to dive even deeper, Sarah wrote a book I highly recommend.

That’s my toolbox! Combined with regular therapy, they’ve been an enormous help!

And if you’re in crisis right now, that’s ok! The 988 lifeline is available in the United States 24/7, and many other countries have their own national lifelines. For more specific help, The Trevor Project and The Trans Lifeline are here for you 24/7 too.