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universe everyday heroes we have a very interesting uh video today for those of
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you who have a phone so that's all of you we have some apps that i think you will enjoy so without
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further ado let's run the intro [Music]
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good afternoon everybody my name is rob this is my showwatch universe everyday heroes the series that covers the more
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informational and educational topics today it's one that everybody will use
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because as i said at the beginning we all have a phone but we can't do this alone so let us
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bring on i know her mom you might know hers karen here she is
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and you might recognize it for other shows too so you know there's that too hello son
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hello mother um so before we start we are going to be doing a similar show on our other
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channel so our new one of one of the new series because we have two
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mining and mental health which goes over all sorts of mental health topics inclusion all that
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is going to do an episode on mindfulness and meditation and what that connects to this is we're going to have some
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products i believe a couple of them are apps as well um among other cool stuff that you're
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going to be able to check out while we talk check it out on the 16th at 12 30 so
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that is two weeks from now to look at my calendar because i don't know time
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and in case you're interested the link is going to be in the chat check out the amazon list that we made
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and it has all sorts of goodies we have yoga mats we have music we have our all of that good stuff so that'll be
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there so while you're watching feel free to browse and peruse so this we're going to get from a
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website i like a lot called verywellmined.com uh they have a slew of topics and
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resources on everything from add to ocd and everything in between just a
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bunch of letters at this point uh they have categories of self-improvement psychology their own podcast as well
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and a lot of numbers to call on as too so this particular blog that they wrote
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is some of the best mental health apps that they recommended for 2022.
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now i always am under the impression where if you like an app enough and you downloaded it maybe three years ago it's
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still a good app but i do understand a lot of people kind of want the here and now so i went to look for a resource
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that was new ish you know i mean a couple of these we've actually
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used before personally so we'll be able to give you some details on as well so the first one up here i actually just
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learned about this today it's called mood fit um it's a free app that tracks your moods
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and gives you exercises to address negative emotions what's nice about this website are they actually no i'm going
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to put this link up here too because they actually give you a list of pros and cons
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that's not what i wanted come on computer you know better than that
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yay technology okay so there's the list if you want to check it out so one of the biggest pros obviously is
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it's free we all like free they say that it's adaptable based on your goals ability to track your daily
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progress visual insights with actionable exercises daily reminders to keep you on track
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and customize customizable based on your needs the cons that they listed are there's no
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specific professional help which you'll notice a lot of these don't have but keep in mind most of these are for your personal use
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so you're not going to have that therapist or doctor connection unless it's specifically
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that um they say it could lead to self-diagnosis which we can talk about in a second has to be not so hot
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sometimes um if you do want some extra features even though it's free there's those hidden costs
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uh tracking moods can be time consuming and lack of progress can make you feel frustrated if it's not leading to what
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you want to do so this is kind of the beginner's app this is one of those things that i've you know i've done with stuff like this
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before because it looks cool and then you get through it and you realize if you're not on it constantly
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you're really kind of lacking in it so really i would say if you've never used an app of this sort try it out see what
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it is i'm to the belief that you know the self-diagnosis stuff like that to each their own
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if you're going on one of these apps my guess and i could be wrong 98 of the time you already kind of know what
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you're trying to get done and this thing is kind of just going to help you make it better so
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it's interesting that they called this their overall choice because of the ones on here i don't think i'd pick this as
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an overall but this is the one that these guys picked as their did they say why
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um i was looking through um they do kind of you know they break down their
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synopsis of it but nothing really other than more description does it say
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why they think it is so my guess is it's probably a bunch of them sat around the table said okay we have 50 million apps
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pick 10 that you think make the most sense it's ease of use maybe it's easy to use yeah simple it doesn't get too
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complicated you know who knows that can be found on google play and the
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app store and the reason actually and it's funny because you said are these only iphones so i changed the title to
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phone because i believe some of these can be downloaded to you know your samsung your pixel because they're not
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just one place to download them so if you do have a google phone you can probably pick it up at the google play store on an android i use an android so
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oh okay there you go i'm gonna be for an iphone or an android android it's the operating system so
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regardless of whatever other things you have but i've never heard of that app before so that's something i'm gonna look up yeah i might try to check it out
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and see but i feel like from their description i'm probably going to get very bored because it's probably
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something that's going to be like you have to literally be touching it every minute of the day to
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you know now this next one here i use so i know this one very very well it's the better
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help app and this one is actually therapy and they're calling this best for therapy so this one you do pay for
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um it varies from 250 to 600 depending on what you use but what my plan what it
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allows me to do is i can get once a week my regular session so i pay for
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four or five depending on how many weeks are in the month of those sessions for me the main thing is what i like
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about it is the fact you do it from home or from anywhere so that's the first pro that they have communicate via audio
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video or text i can text my therapist whenever i want even if i'm not having a session
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you send unlimited messages you can pick it up on all the app stores apple and google and most of the people liking it
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are giving it a high user satisfaction the cons are session lengths vary and i
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believe that's probably what you pay for if you pay for the lower end you're probably going to get a shorter mine i
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believe is 45 to an hour which is what i get for my money not too bad um only one
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subscription plan available which to me is not really a con because i feel like if you're going in for
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therapy you already know the plan you want so if this is not going to work you would find an app that does
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uh they don't have any medication management which again for those who use it might be problematic and there's no
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free trials you kind of just jump in and do it however i believe the first time i used it
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she i think gave me the option to either cancel with her or pick a new one so
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theoretically you do have kind of a try before you buy and they will cancel the payment if you
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do a session and realize you know it's not for me my understanding also and again i know that
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you use the app um and i've heard a lot of good stuff about it is that if you don't like your therapist you can change
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yeah so if you decide to stick with your plan and keep paying let's say you do five sessions you're like okay this
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isn't working you can go in there that you know they say anonymously but obviously it's not because you know your
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therapist knows you but they basically make it easier for you okay you know you don't like this person cool we'll put
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you with somebody else there's not that weird feeling of like why aren't you coming back to me that's important rob i
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think that's really important because you don't get that sense of oh i'm stuck now you know it doesn't work and when
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you go away basically they're saying it's it's different you know different people like different things
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and so you have to find that right person and once you find the right person as you did obviously
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you know that it's going to be beneficial so i think it's it sounds it's like a great app so if you haven't guys if you haven't checked this out you
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really should um yeah and i mean even for the you know i know 240 250 is a lot but even for the lower end compared to
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what you probably would i don't know it's probably changed since you know the 90s but i know i'm pretty sure doing a
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regular session is going to be much more than what this is right yeah and that's even just per like some places you have
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to pay per your thing this one at least is giving you your monthly 401 fee which
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is also nice because you don't have to remember like oh did i pay did i you know right and and in some places first of
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all and i if i recall rob um your regular insurance you had a lot of trouble just finding a therapist on your
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regular plan you couldn't find they didn't return call i mean and we know that there is a shortage of therapists
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right now um people are not going into the field so if you're thinking if you want to go in the field it's really a great field to go into right now
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but but that i think that was why you actually reached out and researched and
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found this company which in fact you got started almost immediately and um and
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you've stayed with them so this is a really cool you know kind of tool to have is as as you know rob your dad also
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does telepsychiatry as well because this is kind of this is called telepsychiatry or telus therapy meaning you're doing it
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either on the zoom or a phone you're not going in person and this is the wave of the future i think uh specifically i
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think because of what what happened with the pandemic and it's still going on and people just not comfortable going out so we're going to see more and more and
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more of this so check it out it's good stuff yeah i definitely yeah i mean if you guys haven't tried it uh try it out
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and you know if you don't like you don't like it but definitely give it a shot and see if it works and yeah like you
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said it's much it's nicer to be like oh time for my session walk upstairs go into my thing and i'm there like i
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literally walk from one room to the other and i'm at my my um all right so the next one on the list
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and they call this the best for learning coping skills it's called mood mission uh they chose it because it's research
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backed and gives you missions to improve your mood and mental health skills uh this does cost for ios it's 4.99 for
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android 5.99 lucky you you get to pay a dollar more than me the pros are developed by professionals
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so this is backed by mental research supported by randomized controlled
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trials there are in-app rewards to increase motivation mood boosting activities as well as evidence-based cbt
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which we've talked about with the cards before the cons are the initial questionnaire can be overwhelming and when i read that
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that's one thing i hate when you get an app for anything whether it's this or something else and they're asking you to
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figure out what you want it's like an hour-long thing of questions of like this is i didn't download this for this
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stuff why are you asking so right it is annoying i get it um options are limited to their pre-selected missions so even
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though there's things to do they're kind of already set there is no actual professional help even though it's
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backed by professional help uh requires regular use kind of like the first one to actually increase personalization
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and some of the activities may be time consuming or difficult depending on who you are so just to kind of give you an
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idea of what a mission is there's emotion based such as breathing exercises
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behavior based such as knitting or sewing so an actual physical activity
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physical activities like push-ups or other exercises and thought-based such
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as reframing negative thoughts so it's a little bit better than the first
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one however and it might just be me possibly you the
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motivations or the rewards are kind of i like giving to myself so for instance
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when i do my exercise it's knowing that i did it and then you know go grab a snack afterwards because i just worked
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out that's more rewarding than whatever they might have on here and again i couldn't find specific rewards
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but they're probably not going to be very motivational personally
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unless you're into that and i've done apps before where it's like oh you know you got five coins now you can buy a
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sticker or change your avatar does that work for you does that work for you do you like that i mean i i play so many
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regular games with character and stuff like that it loses its meaning and purpose because there's no point to having them other
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than if you're that person who likes to collect you know the digital and you're not even they're digital stickers they're not even real stickers right um
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so it's fun and it's silly but i don't know if the activities would spur me to
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download to learn coping skills right i think when i think which what
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you're saying is is that everybody has their own thing that propels them forward and so that particular app may
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have things that would be interesting for someone that needs that motivation
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like the you know the coins and things like me not so much i don't actually i do not need to be rewarded for that in
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fact when i when i start new programs or journals or things and that's one of the things in there like i'm out because i
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don't need i don't need that i need to be internally motivated so if they can figure out a way to internally motivate
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me and give me that then you don't i don't need coins i just need one example is because we do the challenge calendars
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at home and each you know each month so what our motivation is at the end of the month we get ourselves a little a little treat at the end of the month we're
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doing 30 days whatever so maybe it's you know a candy maybe it's a little toy
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that to me is more of a thing but it's not so much getting the treat it's the
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30 days of whatever and now i get a prize but i'm just like
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feel good yeah cool exactly so this next one here you'll probably appreciate me you know you're like
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stress relief uh this one is called san velo san veo i'm not sure how you pronounce it
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uh they chose it for their cognitive behavioral therapy tools to help treat mild to moderate anxiety and depression
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the basic version is free however if you want the good stuff it's eight bucks in the store
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the pros they have are effectiveness backed by research costs actually may be covered by
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insurance which is interesting not many apps will do that for you so that's kind of cool uh provides different options based on
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what you're looking for allows you to connect with others who are going through similar things kind of like i
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guess a chat room type of deal and the ability to access a therapist if you need which i guess makes sense why
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it's covered by insurance because there's probably that connection the cons that they have may not be appropriate for very severe conditions
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so if it's something more than just kind of general anxiety may not be the best it does require a
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monthly subscription for the advanced features uh there are add-ons that you know you pay for
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um and those would be pricey if not covered by insurance so it's kind of like a pro and a con together
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uh lack of clarity on the credentials of the coaches as they put in parentheses
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and therapy option itself is not a thing so while there are people you can talk to and while it is covered by insurance
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apparently those people aren't real and they're just kind of there because they're there and but on their list this
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is one of the choices they're saying even though they're one of your favorites and the the mission is is labeled as helping people build the life
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skills they need anytime anywhere in any way they choose it kind of sounds like a fast food restaurant you know get your
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food anytime anywhere different strokes for different folks dif every something for everyone the
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chinese menu right i'll take one from column a exactly so i do it is cool to
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see one that actually is possibly covered in again we say possibly because they don't know what your insurance is
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so they're going to say check your insurance before but it seems kind of silly to have access to a therapist
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but not actually have the therapy associated and also not really knowing their credentials either
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better help the person i have when you look at their profile it tells you their mbas it tells you their phds it gives
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you the list of everything so i kind of know what they studied i guess though if you kind of want the
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therapy without the therapy this is the in between eye do it
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yourself and and for me and actually you know i have the topic that i wrote down earlier
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about the chat room thing and if a chat room for this kind of stuff works i don't know if that's really the the best
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idea generally you know just personal opinion here i don't mind sharing thoughts and you know if somebody has a
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thing you know i don't mind phil you know giving my two cents but i don't know if sitting down with a random
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person that i don't know and saying oh these are my deepest darkest feelings that's not really comfortable
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for most people i would think me neither i'm on i'm with you on that i
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mean because then that it sounds like people become armchair therapists that don't have the actual
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degree science ability knowledge and all of a sudden they're giving you some helpful
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suggestions that may not be so helpful and that's a curious thing to me
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so i mean hey these guys you know the website is pretty good i you know they're not always going to be on my
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side so hey there's going to be one app that i'm going to be like nope and that'll be the one i guess but um you
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know but seriously i mean if you guys do want to check it out check it out see if you like now the next one i will give you the full range because i know you
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use this one a lot i use it on youtube they're calling it the best for meditation and it is your favorite calm
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path so let me uh give you the pros and cons of what they say then i'll pass it over so they offer a seven day free
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trial and then a membership is around 70 bucks or if you want meditation for life you can pay 400 for indefinite access
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that sounds like a lot of money uh pros app offers individual exercises less
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structured calming sounds in the background simple to follow the only cons they say
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are subscription needed to use and the app isn't the most intuitive in their
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opinion so that's so interesting i will give you that right there so first of all calm the call map um is
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something that uh kaiser gives to their um
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subscriber their patients their the consumers they give them for free that's number one and it's actually why
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i started using it because i used to use insight timer i used to use a different app which is also similar what i like
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about comb and tamara levitt she is their resident um
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calm person she's the one who creates the the daily calm meditations and she's the one
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who does a lot of the courses um i used to pay for this and i would it was i thought very valuable i would have
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paid continue pay for it and then i found out that it was free which is kind of cool for that
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but i use it every single day and i use it because you can literally search for
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what you're looking for so in the morning i just want something to get me going in the morning i don't really want
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to sit for too long for my daily meditation it's 10 minutes you're in and out for many people you might think that's
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too long maybe because you've never meditated but after a certain time 10 minutes actually is not too long i i
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used to meditate for hours at a time literally when and i would just go into the zone now the idea of sitting for an
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hour just like oh i can't even imagine but calm is a great app um you're going to be able to do music as they said you
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can do music you can do guided meditations you can do visual meditation so you can look at the pretty uh just
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the the stream and the trees flowing as you're doing but then they also tell you supposed to close your eyes so i'm not
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really sure how you're supposed to look with your eyes closed there is that um but again it's getting into routine you
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can track it you can track your moods on this so some of the other apps you were sharing you know about tracking your
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moods this is just part of it so when you listen to a meditation afterwards it'll say how you feeling
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before you do the meditation will say how you feeling so that you can track it and of course the rewards on this is
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that you're checking it off every day you're not getting anything but when i log in every day i'll see oh i've done
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six days in a row or i've done it and that to me is motivational not the treat
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it's knowing that i've maintained something and i've continued to do it and it makes me feel good about me so it's a great great app i don't know if
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you have insight timer on that list but that is another one that i would highly suggest insight timer and there
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is a lot of free stuff on there you can do they have free stuff that they do on there well i saw the call map and i was like
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you talked about all the time so yeah i will give you the stage for that um yeah and then funny enough on youtube because
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they have a channel as well and that's where i get mine um you can watch the same uh one over and over again but i
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believe they upload uh a semi regularly new one probably from
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and a gal so the uh the gal i love it she's the voice you hear her
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voice they bring in celebrities to do stories they do like sleep stories which
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that doesn't do anything for me but i know a lot of people like to go to bed with a sleep story i guess and then they have a guy
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i can't remember his name but he's got a very soothing voice too and so he's the male voice and he does a whole series of
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stuff because i think that's something to talk about some you know we all if you're doing meditation abs you want
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to make sure the person talking to you you can relate to it's soothing you know
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it doesn't work you want to go you're going what did he say you know the or the accents thicker or
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whatever you're not you're not and if you have to try you hard you might as well not do it so i like the idea that there's a man and a woman and sometimes
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i like the male voice and sometimes i want a female voice so you have a choice and and they all work really well one of
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my favorites well there you go all right um if you haven't told it already there you go if you guys are just popping in
22:54
we are listing down some of verywellmind.com favorite apps to use we're also going to uh show you the end our our new series
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coming up so stay tuned to the end for that one more uh there all right the next one on here is the best fun app called happify which i
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vaguely have heard of before i haven't used it yet but it's science back to games that help you reduce stress build
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resilience and overcome negative thoughts now there's kind of lots of pros and
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lots of cons which never really bodes well for anybody but you know their pros are great activity
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integration focusing on a variety of goals different tracks that focus on specific areas
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developed by experts including therapists and coaches or as i say therapists and coaches
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helps you better understand your moods encourage you to feel more present and live in the moment
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the cons it is premium so you do have to pay 15 bucks a month there is a free version but it offers
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limitations so you know why bother more expensive than some of the other ones at 15 and the challenges and
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deadlines can be stress inducing so the stress uh lessening can be stress inducing that makes sense
24:03
these ones are a little weird because i've played a few and i've done and some of them are silly some of them are cool
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but you end up doing and you know of course i wasn't buying them so i was doing the same activities over and over but
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it was very lacking of creativity you know and it goes back to what we said before like if
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i'm going to make an activity i'm going to make an activity that i want to do that's going to get me more fulfillment and i'll be happy about the end and
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that's all that matters if you're going to say oh let's go hike today i'm like i can't it's 120 degrees that's not a good
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idea but there's no other choices to do what are you going to do so this one i can see for those who
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maybe do need more of the help to get the ideas flowing this would
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be a good choice to do now it is 15 bucks which for anybody you know is a little bit high but i
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think if you're in the mindset to play games like this you're probably going to
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appreciate it more right the next one here we're going to do quickly it's more of a self-help guide than an app but
25:01
it's you download it it's depression cbt self-help guide and it's really a
25:08
i guess an e-book more or less on the app with cbt-based exercises tools and other
25:14
things to manage your depression um teaches simple activities is one of their pros promotes comac calm with
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activities and audio elements kind of like your com app it offers feedback on symptom severity which is interesting
25:28
it contains a lot of mental information because again it's more of a reading than it doing and there's free access to
25:34
all content the con which actually works for you but not for me it's only on android devices
25:39
so you can give it a try it lacks information about components of cbt
25:45
which again goes against the title of the app some users may struggle to identify what
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they're actually trying to identify with may lead to self-diagnosis again and no
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access to actual professional help it's free for a reason i think because
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this is what you can get off of google or anything else if you want to just read so the fact that you're going to
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download an app when you can do this without downloading an app seems a little silly to me but interesting
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that's only on android when it's usually always only on ios and it's usually not android yeah i wonder why
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you know i i would like to ask these people why you know we'll see um all right so best for bipac
26:29
which is what does that stand for
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okay black indigenous and people of color so this is an emperor for people of color uh it's called shine it
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empowers people of color by offering community support and tools that specifically address them
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and their difficulties pro it is 65 bucks a year so it is on the higher end
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you have access to peer support you have multiple tools and activities to use topics are specifically focused on them
27:05
common tools for crisis moments and activities based on empirical research
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the cons are not designed for very serious conditions no professional support
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requires a purchase and as they said before some of the activities could be more stress inducing than helpful
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i would say of any reason behind it having an app that does it for that is probably you know interesting enough for
27:32
i don't know if that would be offensive to somebody and being like why are you giving me one just for that but i would
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think maybe that would be more supportive to only talk about
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issues and challenges that might be for them people of color communities yeah so
27:51
that's an interesting one um i'm trying to go through i think oh okay i'm gonna skip down to the bottom now
27:57
because this one i really want to go over the todoist and this one i thought about you because it's for adhd so maybe
28:04
for me too so okay so you know about okay so it's a organizing tool that helps people with
28:10
adhd stay focused the basic version is free pro is three books a month business
28:15
is five the pros are organizing tasks any way you like reminders sharing tasks and setting up
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recurring cons optimal spacing features cost money shared projects sometimes
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don't sync so i think we'll end up with that one i'm definitely losing my voice right now
28:33
but we'll end with that one but i i thought it was so you've used that one then i have used it i don't use it anymore i use some i use a different app
28:40
that's called that's a task it's called the task board and it's the same thing it's for keeping your lists together and
28:47
sub lists and and you can categorize them and all and i do that and it has a
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standalone app that you can put on your computer in addition to it being on your phone so that you can again sync it you
29:00
sit in front of your computer all day so do i um and i i like not having to always have to go to my phone to get
29:06
certain things so it's an interesting platform it's it's it's supposedly the number one
29:11
list program to-do list program task manager all right well there you go
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so there are a few more that you can go over again the website is here at the bottom it'll be in chat so you can go
29:22
ahead and click that um it'll send you right to the websites too so you don't have to google anything it will just go
29:27
right to the home page and as we did the beginning let's just give you a reminder we are going to have a show from our new series mining and
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mental health uh this particular episode is going to be covering mindfulness and meditation
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it'll be premiering on the 16th live at 12 30. pacific time pacific time oh
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pacific time excuse me pacific time and if you guys want to check out some of the cool goodies that we like the amazon
29:52
list will be in chat forever as well and there you go so this was pretty
29:58
informational um i was shocked at some of them even though i already read the list i know you were shocked at a couple
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of them too um i would agree calm is a good one better help obviously i'm biased i use it i
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like it that's why i like it um but there are some interesting ones on there that i think i might have to go uh at
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least download really quick and see you know maybe not buy the full thing but rob i think the message is here is
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there's a lot of things out there that can help us try them pick the one that works best
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for you leave the rest there is something out there that will help you you just have to
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take a little time and try it out this is a great list i'm really happy to see this i haven't heard of several of those
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things so i too and we're going to go check them out there you go and hopefully you guys watching who are watching live we'll check it out if you were
30:44
able to pick up live check us out on youtube twitch and twitter while you're there hit that subscribe hit that bell and poof we will
30:51
be on your phone computer laptop whatever it is we you show up on and
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nowadays um as i mentioned before we got more shows together money and mental health more episodes of ultra universe
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live as well which for those of you who watched already they're just as fun but just more goodies and
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so much more so until next time guys we have a brand new week starting tomorrow um you can check out karen on everywhere
31:16
podcasts are sold now i gotta go take a nap because it's got a lot of information for me all
31:22
right guys thank you so much for joining