Breakup coach Mend, which was just voted one of Apple’s best apps of 2018, focuses on the emotional impact of a split by encouraging users to prioritize self-care. “Self-care is built into our training program on the app because we know how crucial it is to the mending process,” said Mend founder and CEO Elle Huerta. The app helps users build healthy habits to decipher and work through their emotions with daily check-ins, audio trainings from mental health and wellness experts and guided journaling.
Huerta explained that the “daily check-ins and audio trainings strike a delicate balance between science, emotion, and practicality,” offering users a more holistic approach to heartbreak. “All of the resources I found online felt cheesy and outdated, and none of them addressed the science of what’s actually happening in your brain and body during a breakup,” said Huerta.
Breakup Boss, which launched in 2017, addresses the technological temptations that come with a breakup. The app discourages users from contacting an ex, offering “all of the tools and techniques (and lots of lectures – cute!) to deal with all of the stages of your break-up, and just as you need them: in your phone, as you’re about to call your ex/have another shot of Tequila.” And Rx Breakup offers a 30-day program that “rolls clinical expertise into a smart, stylish guide for moving on in the digital age.”
At a time when the negative effects of technology on emotional and mental states seem inescapable, these apps are offering an optimistic alternative. “We do everything else on our phones, why not do a little therapy on our phones, too?” Rx Breakup cofound Jeanine Lobell asked. Breakup Boss creator Zoe Foster Blake agrees: “[Apps] can inspire you to exercise, meditate, eat and sleep better, heal your broken heart. And they’re just going to get better.”
