The app

Cathexis helps you notice the patterns your nervous system has learned, and work on them.

A pattern is something you learned to expect. You learned it from what you’ve lived through. Patterns like this can change.

The app is the digital proof of concept of the HEF and HES.

For iPhone, with iOS 26.1 or later.

A new version of the Cathexis app launches soon. This page describes that version.

Free

Your morning and your evening

Twice a day, the app asks you a few short questions. In the morning, it asks what you notice in your body. It also asks how you’re feeling as the day starts. In the evening, it asks how the day actually felt. Then it shows you your morning and your evening next to each other.

Each set of questions takes a few minutes. There’s no score, and there’s no wrong answer. After a week or so, your answers may start to show what repeats in your mornings.

Five practices

There are five short practices you can do any time, for free. A voice tells you what to do, one step at a time, and you can stop whenever you like.

Looking AroundTurns your attention to the room you’re in.
The Long ExhaleYou breathe out a little longer than you breathe in.
Waking Your BodySmall movements, for when your body feels heavy or numb.
Holding SteadyYou pick one thing that doesn’t move, and focus on it during a strong feeling.
Guess the SensationYou pick one part of your body and guess what sensation is there, like tightness or pressure. Then you check what you notice.

When you feel on edge, or your body feels numb, it’s hard to change how you feel just by thinking. Changing what your body is doing, like your breathing or where you look, can change how you feel. Over time, you learn which practice helps you most.

Two free programs

Still Here and New Ground are free programs. They use the same method as the paid programs, and they’re shorter. You open them from the Practices screen, any time, without the twenty minutes of questions a paid program starts with.

Still HereFor times when you’re thinking about ending your life, or you’re afraid you’ll act on those thoughts. You make a plan for those times. The plan starts with the first thing you notice when a time like this begins. You can use the plan, and change it, whenever you need to.
New GroundFor when your world has changed all at once, like after a disaster, losing your home or your work, or having to leave your country.
Read more
You find one way to steady yourself that you can use anywhere. You also write down, in your own words, the people and things that are still part of your life.

If you’re thinking about ending your life right now, call or text 988.

Paid

Paid programs

Each paid program helps you work on one pattern in your daily life.

If you start a program, you first answer about twenty minutes of questions, like the ones a therapist asks at a first visit. Some of them are about hard things, like thoughts of hurting yourself. You can stop on any screen. When you return, you start on the same screen.

Seeing a pattern doesn’t change it. It changes when you try something different in a real moment, and feel how it goes. In a program, you do that one small step at a time.

Every program has a short practice you do again and again. It also has steps you take in your real life. There’s no score, and the app doesn’t count how many days in a row you’ve used it. If a step goes badly, the program makes the next one easier. You decide how long any of this takes.

The programs

Insights

Insights shows what you’ve told the app as one map. A drawing of a body is in the middle, with circles around it for the parts of your life. Over weeks, the map shows what repeats, and what’s changing. Nothing on the map is a score, and nothing on it is a diagnosis.

With a paid program, you can also ask about your map in your own words, and the app answers from your record. Your question is answered on your phone, and nothing leaves it.

Records

Records shows what you said, as you said it. To export your record as one file, or to delete it, go to Settings.

Support

Support is a list of free phone and text lines you can use right now, to reach a person. Tap the life preserver button at the top of any tab to open it. 988 is first, and 911 is there if someone could get hurt.

If your answers show you’ve had thoughts of hurting yourself, the app opens Support for you. The app can’t keep you safe, but it can show you who to call or text right now. The app doesn’t call or tell anyone.

What it costs

Cathexis Program

$12.99 a month

It gives you every paid part of the app, including the paid programs. Two paid programs at launch: Living in Threat, and Living in Addiction and Compulsion. Four more come as updates. You can cancel any time in your Apple account, and everything free stays free.

Free

Everything else is free, and it stays free: the morning and evening questions, the five practices, Still Here and New Ground. There’s no free trial.

Your record

What you tell the app is kept on your phone, and it belongs to you. There’s no account to make. No one at Cathexis Health can see your record, and nothing in it is sold.

If you allow it, the app can read some data from the Health app, like how long you slept. It reads this data on your phone.

Cathexis isn’t therapy, and it doesn’t diagnose. If you see a therapist or doctor, you can use Cathexis alongside that care. Cathexis doesn’t replace it.