How We Feel vs BActivate

How We Feel is a free app created by scientists, designers, engineers, and therapists to help people better understand their emotions and find strategies to help them navigate their emotions in the moment. Conceived in conjunction with Yale University's Center for Emotional Intelligence and based on the work of Dr Marc Brackett, How We Feel helps people find the right word to describe how they feel while tracking their sleep, exercise, and health trends using HealthKit in order to spot patterns over time. Founded as a science-based nonprofit, How We Feel is made possible by donations from people who are passionate about bringing mental wellbeing to the widest possible audience. Our data privacy terms are clear and easy-to-understand: all of your data is kept on your device unless you opt-in to send an anonymized version of your check-ins to be used in research to help more people. Whether you are downloading this app in order to build better relationships, make your emotions to work for you, not against you, improve how you handle stress and anxiety or simply to feel better, How We Feel will help you identify patterns through daily HealthKit tracking and find emotional regulation strategies that will work for you. The How We Feel friends feature allows you to share how you feel with the people you trust most in real time, strengthening your most important relationships. Filled with step-by-step video strategies you can do in as little as one minute on themes like "Change Your Thinking" to help you address negative thought patterns with cognitive strategies; "Move Your Body" to express and release emotions through movement strategies;"Be Mindful" to gain perspective and minimize the negative impact of misunderstood emotions with mindfulness strategies; "Reach Out" to build intimacy and trust, two important tools for emotional wellbeing, with social strategies.

BActivate is a mobile phone application for adults who are participating in behavioral activation for depression. It is designed to augment psychotherapy with a healthcare professional. While BActivate can also be used independently, it is not designed to replace psychotherapy for those who need it. This application is designed to provide basic education around depression and behavioral activation and walk you through how to develop more helpful and healthy habits to improve mood through scheduling and tracking positive activities. This application includes both real-life and virtual reality activity ideas, as research has illustrated that engaging in simulated activities in virtual reality is as effective in improving mood as engaging in activities in real life. This application also includes an optional reminder function, as we know how busy people are and how helpful a reminder can be! This application is evidence-informed and based on the research of Lewinsohn and Graf (1973) and Jacobson et al. (1996) and was created by Stanford University researchers, Margot Paul, Psy.D., Kim Bullock, M.D., and Jeremy Bailenson, Ph.D. It was developed by Frederick Feraco.