FreeCBT – Open source thought diary for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

[App] FreeCBT

FreeCBTFreeCBT is an open source thought diary for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the “gold standard” of psychotherapy and is widely considered to be one of the most effective, evidence backed treatments for depression, anxiety, and panic. If you go into just about any therapist or psychiatrist, CBT will likely be one of the first treatments they try.

FreeCBT is a companion and self-help app for one of the most common formats of CBT. You may have heard it called “the three column technique” or “catch it, check it, change it.” Your brain is really good at making you feel exactly what you’re thinking. Often, we find ourselves thinking “automatic negative thoughts” that lead us to fume on something that may not be true. That can cause us to feel depressed or anxious.

CBT helps you record “automatic thoughts,” challenge them with cognitive distortions and then train your brain with an alternative thought. If you do it enough, you can change your thoughts, your moods and your behavior.

FreeCBT, a fork of Quirk, is open source under the GPL. You can find the code on Github at: github.com/erosson/freecbt

FreeCBT user reviews :

This little labor of humanity and love is great. It really helps me keep track of anxious obsessions and turn them around. The only thing that could make it perfect is maybe a reminder notification to track distortions. If you get caught in a bad headspace, you might struggle to remember to log. Other than that, I love it and it helps me.

I like this app. and I realize it’s a tiny 1 person job, but I wish it had a few more things. I would like to see “fallacy of change, fallacy of fairness, always being right, and selective abstraction” added to the list of cognitive distortions. I would like a night mode feature. And I would like for the entry pages to reset when the current entry has been saved instead of closing and reopening the app. to add a new entry. But great experience overall.

It’s amazing how helpful this is. I’m using it in conjunction with another app. I’m really surprised how CBT seems simple, yet is deep and effective. This app really helps you feel better on a foundational level because you’re working through what you feel, distortions in your thinking and how to challenge the way you think and replace those thoughts with more helpful ones. The question button on the left contains a really accessible list that explains different distortions.

I thought this was too simple to work. Like I really didn’t believe in it and it would be like yelling to the clouds and not at all satisfying because it’s just an app, but wow does this help me when I’m going down a thought spiral like nothing else has! Amazing! It helps my overactive brain work with me instead of against me and it really does alleviate a lot of overwhelming emotions when they arise. I highly recommend to anyone!

So far, really good at changing my thinking patterns. I always heard of CBT, but if it starts with this, I should have looked a little deeper. The app asks the right questions – simple enough questions but enough to allow me to challenge my mind.

Exactly what I was looking for. Negative automatic thought→cognitive distortion→evidence against the thought→alternative thought. Interface could be designed a little nicer but it definitely still looks pretty enough for me to enjoy using it, and functionally does what is required (w/o additional in app purchases like all the other similar apps)

This is a fantastic app. It’s pretty much exactly what I have been thinking about building myself, but would never have had the time and energy to accomplish while having the blues. The only thing I don’t get is why the entry textarea is so small in height. Makes me scroll more than would be needed. Thanks to everyone who helped build this and the app that it’s forked from!

I don’t want to rate this too low because I know its solely one developer, but two big things it needs: Dark Mode and Reminders. The worst time for negative thoughts is late at night, so opening the app to document these thoughts is blinding and I give up. And it would be hugely helpful to be reminded 2-3 times a day to document my feelings.

Very powerful. Please add a feature to do a statistical analysis of the thoughts such that personal growth can be seen. Tracking thoughts can be great for reflection and introspection.

Simple and helpful. No bells and whistles, which is what I like in an app, because it makes it easier to get started with using the app. Also has instruction link you can go to, to understand how to use cbt/app. Sending a big thank you to the creator(s) for making this very useful, practical app.

Contact developer :

Email

Download FreeCBT from Play Store

Leave your feedback regarding FreeCBT

Leave a Comment

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close