Premium skills
Unlock →Evidence-based therapy skills beyond the crisis tools — picked by a mental-health clinician. Each one traces to a published protocol (ACT, CBT-T, NHS IAPT).
Anxiety & body regulation
Six skills for taking the edge off — somatic, breath-led, polyvagal-informed.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
~5 minJacobson, NHS IAPT
Guided tense-and-release through seven muscle groups with optional calming voice.
Anxiety, panic, or pre-sleep tension.
Resonance Garden
~2 min eachLehrer, coherent breathing
Breathe at six per minute and watch a plant grow. The garden keeps growing across sessions.
Daily ritual for anxiety and HRV.
Heartbeat Tapper
1 minSchandry interoception task
Silently count your own heartbeats for a minute. A one-of-a-kind interoception practice.
Emotional numbness, dissociation, alexithymia.
Worry Stone
Stay as long as you likePrice & Hooven 2018; Harricharan 2020
A polished stone to drag, rub, and feel under your thumb. No timer, no goal — just somewhere for your hands to be while your nervous system catches up.
Restless hands, pacing anxiety, the moment before a crisis.
The Hum
4 min · live micPorges Polyvagal (2011); Rosenberg (2017)
Hum into the microphone and watch a column of warm light rise with every long exhale. Audio stays on your device only.
Anxiety spike, panic onset, post-argument dysregulation, before sleep.
Pendulum
2 min · visual or hapticLevine SE (2010); Ogden Sensorimotor (2006)
A slow two-minute swing between neutral and uncomfortable. Eyes-closed haptic mode for when screens are too much.
Trauma activation, freeze states, dissociation onset, body numbness.
Thoughts, values & emotions
Skills for stuck thoughts, decision paralysis, and getting unhooked from a feeling.
Leaves on a Stream
~5 minHayes (ACT)
Place a thought on a leaf, watch the stream carry it away. Nothing is saved.
Intrusive thoughts, rumination, defusion practice.
Worry Postponement
Capture + 15 minBorkovec, CBT-T for GAD
Park worries as they arrive; review them all in one 15-minute slot.
Chronic worry colonising the rest of your day.
Feelings Wheel
~2 minWillcox 1982; Kashdan 2015
Name what you feel more precisely than 'bad' or 'stressed'. Eight primary feelings open into shades; each shade suggests a free skill that fits.
When you can't quite say what's going on, or when you want the right skill first time.
Values Compass
~90 secHayes ACT (2012); Lundgren Bullseye (2012)
Find your true north in 90 seconds. Sort 40 values, place six on a bullseye, commit one tiny act.
Stuck, depressive flatness, decision paralysis, 'what's the point' moments.
Opposite Action
~60–90 secLinehan DBT (2014) ER 10
Name the emotion. Check the facts. Choose: ride it, or act opposite. A DBT decision flowchart in your pocket.
Emotion 6/10+ when the action urge would worsen things — anger to lash out, fear to avoid, shame to hide.
Mood & self-compassion
Practices for low days, self-criticism, and the long road back from a hard time.
Three Good Things
Nightly · 2 minSeligman 2005 RCT
Three things that went well today — grows into a wall you can read back on hard days.
A nightly lift for low mood.
Compassion Letter
~10 minNeff & Germer MSC; Shapira & Mongrain 2010
Write what you're struggling with, then write what a friend who loves you unconditionally would say back. Save it. Re-read it on a hard day.
Shame, self-criticism, low mood that won't lift. The longer version of the Self-Compassion Break.
Body Scan Map
~5 minKabat-Zinn MBSR (1990)
Tap a body region, pick a sensation (warm / tight / heavy / numb), then run a gentle release pass. Interoceptive attention on a tappable silhouette.
Carrying tension you can't locate, after a difficult day, winding down for sleep.
Inner Letters
Two-stage · ~10 min eachYoung et al. (Schema, 2003); Gilbert CFT (2009)
Write to your younger self. After a while they write back, in your own hand. Letters live on a quiet shelf to re-read.
Self-criticism, shame, 'I am broken'. Trauma-anniversary dates.
Sleep & nighttime
The CBT-I course plus four standalone tools for nights, nightmares, and 3am brain.
CBT-I — insomnia programme
7 sessions · 1/dayNICE NG237, NHS first-line
Full CBT for Insomnia — psychoed, sleep diary, stimulus control, sleep restriction, cognitive work, wind-down, relapse prevention.
Chronic insomnia that hasn't responded to self-help.
Cognitive Shuffle
5–10 minBeaudoin
A random neutral word every few seconds — visualise it, let it go, wait for the next.
3am brain won't stop — interrupts pre-sleep rumination.
Fall — bedtime walks
~6 min eachGuided imagery / CBT-I
Slow narrated imagery walks — beach, forest, or cabin. Built to be abandoned halfway as you drift off.
Pre-sleep wind-down, pair with CBT-I session 6.
Nightmare Rewriter
~5 min · rehearse before bedKrakow & Zadra IRT (2010); APA PTSD 2017
Rescript a recurring nightmare. Sketch the dream, find the turn, write a new ending. Rehearse before sleep.
PTSD nightmares, recurring bad dreams, dread of sleep.
Sleep Constellation
30 sec each morningCarney et al. Consensus Sleep Diary (2012)
Five taps each morning. The last 30 nights show as a private sky — patterns emerge as constellations.
Daily — first thing on waking. Pairs with CBT-I, stands alone.
Creative absorption & focus
Tactile, repetitive, absorbing — for when you need somewhere for your hands or attention to be.
The Candle
1–10 minMBSR focused-attention
A slow flame to stay with. When your mind drifts, notice, come back.
Scattered attention, racing head.
Sand Tray
Open-endedLowenfeld 1939; Kalff 1980
Drag archetypal objects onto a sand surface to build a scene — tree, door, mountain, water, key, heart. Save scenes, come back to them. No interpretation from the app.
When words aren't enough. Trauma processing, grief, stuck emotional states.
Mandala Maker
~15 minCurry & Kasser 2005; van der Vennet 2012
Draw one stroke and the symmetry mirrors it around the centre. 6-, 8-, or 12-fold. The repetition is the point.
Anxiety, restless mind, when you need something for your hands that doesn't demand attention.
Trauma, exposure & relational
Slower work for trauma activation, exposure to fear, and the people closest to you.
Voice Vault
Up to 90s · keep, listen or shatterPennebaker 1986/2018; Wells MCT 2009
Whisper a worry into a glass jar, seal it, decide later whether to keep, replay, or shatter it. Audio stays on this device only.
Intrusive thoughts, 3am rumination, things you can't say out loud yet.
Exposure Ladder
Plan + climb at your paceFoa & Kozak (1986); NICE CG31
Build a private staircase out of fear, one rung at a time. The rungs fill with colour as you climb.
OCD compulsions, phobias, social-anxiety avoidance, post-trauma avoidance.
The Externaliser
Open-ended · talk back over timeWhite & Epston (1990); Maisel et al. (2004)
Give your problem a name, a shape, and a colour. Have a written dialogue with it. Build a menagerie.
Self-blaming narratives, internalised criticism, eating-disorder voices, identity-fused depression.
Bridges
4 sessions · your paceKlerman & Weissman IPT (1984; 2012 update)
Guided walks for grief, transitions, conflict, and loneliness. The path through fog clears as you walk it.
Bereavement, breakups, role changes, retirement, friendship endings.
Two-Person Tide
3 min · two phonesPorges Polyvagal (2017); Helm/Sbarra/Ferrer (2014)
A tide rising and falling at 5.5 BPM. Sync side-by-side with a 3-2-1, or with a shared 4-digit code.
Co-regulation after conflict; supporting a partner; long-distance reconnection.
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