Banish anxiety and reinvent your mind with Thinkladder

Image by Nick Youngson

Struggling with anxiety or depression? Smartphone app Thinkladder might be for you.

New Zealander Mark Gatt has created smartphone app Thinkladder, to help people with depression and anxiety by offering empowering insights and perceptions for users to read and listen to, allowing their mindset to change.

For just £2.99, Thinkladder gives its users five themes to work on, with different symptoms and beliefs under each category to challenge. The current available themes are; comparing myself to others, correction & criticism, self-worth, people pleasing, and perfectionism – but there are up to 30 other themes that are set to come soon.

To use Thinkladder, choose a theme from the five available that you want to explore and then scroll through the symptoms and select one at a time to work on. Behind each symptom will be a set of unhelpful beliefs that might be negatively influencing you, which you can choose to challenge.

Once you have chosen an unhelpful belief you want to challenge you will be taken to a page full of insights, find an insight which resounds with you and save it to your gallery. You can visit your gallery whenever you wish, whether that be for a motivating refresher or if you’re feeling down. In your gallery is all the insights that you have saved; you can select weekly or daily reminders for specific insights and can even select location reminders, meaning that selected insights can be set to pop up if you’re near the location set.

The reminders are really what make this app stand out. If there are certain places that trigger any anxiety or unhelpful thoughts – such as your workplace, shopping centres or maybe a relative’s house – you can make sure an insight is set to pop up if you are near or at that location, therefore setting reminders for when you are more likely to need them.
The app works by slowly changing your mindset with positive and realistic insights; getting users to challenge their own negative beliefs with positive insights. The insights are there to break down the negative attitudes inside the user’s head, using repetition to do this.

Thinkladder also offer an audio version of your saved insights; this comes with either a long or short intro and the choice of a backing track. The intros and the backing track have a similarity to that of yoga, focusing on your breathing and your mindset while listening to a soothing backing track. You do have the option to skip either intro, which will take you directly to your insights. A calm voice will read out each of your insights – kind of like a reassuring friend – so if reading them yourself isn’t helpful enough Thinkladder have essentially provided someone else to be there to help you too.

Thinkladder is changing the way we can access help for mental health, bringing cognitive therapy to our smartphones.

The Thinkladder app is available on android and apple phones for just £2.99

If you are struggling with anxiety, depression or any other mental health issues please visit https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/helplines.htm to find appropriate organisations and contact details to help and support you.