No matter what manner of office ninja you are, daily stress and anxiety come with the territory. In fact, being able to handle all the things that your role demands of you is what makes you rock. However, too much daily stress and anxiety can be hazardous to your health. As someone who suffers from (sometimes comical amounts of) chronic worry, I can say that managing it has been hard for me.

Being mindful of your stress and working to understand what causes it can be the first step towards better stress management. And since this is 2015, there is, naturally, an app for that! Pacifica features a variety of tools to help you manage daily stress and anxiety. The app is based around Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and works to help you understand your issues and change patterns of behavior over time.

The app is comprised of five main activities: Mood, Relax, Thoughts, Experiments, and Health. Each activity allows you to reflect on your daily moods and thoughts over time, as well as challenge yourself to face your anxieties head on and push through them.

Mood

The mood tracking activity allows you to rate your daily moods and recognize patterns over time. The app will send you notifications at various points throughout the day asking how you’re feeling. Along with rating your mood you can add a note explaining why you are feeling a certain way. This can help identify any triggers or scenarios that may lead to certain moods.

Relax

The relax feature allows you to choose from three relaxation activities: positive visualization, muscle relaxation, and deep breathing. You can also select from a variety of relaxing soundscapes to accompany your activity of choice. This feature is amazing for those times during the day when you feel your anxiety ramp up, or at night when you find it difficult to turn off your brain and fall asleep.

Thoughts

The thoughts activity allows you to record your daily musing and helps you work through and process patterns of thought and behavior. Plus, the daily quotes is awesome in getting inspired and setting your focus for the day.

Experiments

This activity is different than the rest as it challenges you to face your anxiety. Choose one of your goals, identify a small step towards this goal, and then rate how difficult you think it might be to achieve it. Whether or not you get a chance to complete the experiments, simply writing them down and reflecting on the triggers that cause you anxiety throughout the day is useful.

Health

The health activity features seven categories to rate yourself on everyday: sleep, exercise, eating, water, caffeine, alcohol, and outdoors. Over time you can use this feature to identify correlations between these health factors and your levels of stress and anxiety.  For example, you may find that your stress levels are higher on days where you didn’t get enough sleep the night before, or lower on days when you work out in the morning.

As an office ninja you may not be able to control what gets thrown at you throughout the day, but you can, over time, learn to control how it affects you. With Pacifica you can take your stress and anxiety into your hands and show it who’s boss!

Pacifica is available for iOS and Android devices and is free with limited features, $3.99 for a 30 day trial, and $29.99 a year.  

Office ninjas, how do you manage your daily stress and anxiety?