App Review: Rootd, for mindfulness, anxiety and panic attacks

The perfect app for dealing with anxiety and panic attacks along with guided meditation and self-calming

Rootd is a cute mindfulness app amongst various others that is assisting people suffering from anxiety to deal with their stressors and panic attacks.

The app offers five features, each providing a service to help its users become more mindful and calm, when feeling disoriented.

The 'Journal' feature of the app helps users pen down what they’re feeling with the help of emoji and guided questions to reflect on accomplishments of the day, what weighs them down, and what they feel grateful for.

The feature offers an additional pointer that will enable you to record your journal, with the speech-to-text microphone. Users can add additional notes of up to 2,000 characters.

The 'Breathr' is a perfect tool to practice deep breathing daily to calm oneself down when stressed. This technique is often used by psychologists and therapy counselors to regulate body tension and relax the mind.

Users can set a timer according to how many minutes they want to practice the technique while sitting in an undisturbed and quiet setting. The exercise guides users to breathe through their nose and exhale through their mouth while keeping their shoulders and muscles relaxed. The app plays an optional calming sound along with vibrations to keep you grounded

The 'Visualizr' is another feature that prompts users to employ the technique of grounding with body scans or visualisations. The exercise includes various audio prompts to choose from that guide step by step, using different visualisations, such as the five senses, the golden ocean, and a calm evening.

The premium subscription to the app gives access to a greater variety of audio libraries to choose from. Audios include calming sounds and music, along with a voice explaining the exercise.

To get a good night’s sleep, the app provides calming sounds from nature and music, to help relax you if anxiety keeps you up. The audios range from campfire, to forest birds and sleep affirmations, to ensure you get the best and most comfortable sleep.

A red panic button dominates the bottom half of the app, in the centre, which can be clicked when experiencing a panic attack. On pressing the button, Rootd will ask you how you’re feeling, providing two options, not good and confident.

After selecting the correct option, the app begins firing affirmations one by one, along with an audio version, to help assure you that you’re fine and will be okay. The app checks up on you after every few affirmations to inquire if the panic attack has ended or continues.

You can record your journey and collect points every time you use a feature or complete a streak. The app is driven to provide their ‘Warriors’ with the best service to conquer their fears and anxieties.

Rootd is available on iOS and android, and offers a free version with the basic features all available easily. The premium subscription, for Rs7,800/year or Rs. 850/month, gives you access to a greater variety of audios, affirmations, and sounds.