A private journal to help you name what you feel
Somewhere to put a name to what you're feeling.
Two ways through, depending on the moment: a short pause that helps you name the feeling and let it go, and a slower reflection that questions the thought underneath it.
Private by default. Not therapy — and honest about it.
Out now on iPhone — search “Space to Feel” on the App Store. Android is still being built. No subscription. What you write isn't stored on our servers — it stays on your phone.
Acknowledge
Find a name for the emotion.
frustration
Hi, frustration.
It could be anger, sadness or fear — or something more specific. Whatever's closest to true.
Your reflections are written on your phone and stay there. We don't store them on our servers.
One
First, find the word for it.
Most of us run on the same three words — fine, stressed, tired. It's hard to deal with a feeling you can't name, so the app starts by helping you find the word: a vocabulary of a few hundred feeling words, gathered under core emotions. Everything else it does begins here.
Two taps, no slider.
First the core emotion, then the word that's nearest to true. Explore what meaning you have attached to it. You can type a sentence underneath if one arrives, or leave it.
Tap one — the core emotion
Tap two — the word
No scale from one to ten, and no right answer. The word is just yours.
Two
In the moment, a short pause.
For the feeling that arrives at the worst possible time. Three small steps — acknowledge, link, let go. You don't type much, and sometimes nothing at all.
Step one
Acknowledge
Notice where it sits in your body — a tense jaw, a racing heart, a buzzing head. Then find the name, and say hello to it.
Hi, frustration.
Step two
Link
Let the feeling make sense instead of arguing with it. Given the situation — and given everything that came before it — of course it's here.
It makes perfect sense you're here.
Step three
Let go
One hand on your chest, one on your stomach. Three slow breaths out. Then one practical question before you go back to your day.
What would help right now?
Then it's over. Nothing is saved and nothing is scored — it was a pause, not an entry.
And when it keeps coming back
Who would you be, without the thought?
Some feelings pass with three breaths. Some come back every morning, carrying the same sentence. The second process is for those.
Three
With more time, a deeper reflection.
Eleven quiet questions, on your own schedule. You write down the sentence you keep saying to yourself and ask whether it's really true. Then the same four questions, answered twice — once while you're believing the thought, and once as if you'd never had it.
The four questions
How do you feel when you believe that thought?
How do you treat other people?
How do you treat yourself?
What do you decide it means about you?
What do you decide it means about you?
That the window's closing. That I'm the only one still waiting to start.
That I'm a person in the middle of a life. Which is all anyone is.
The gap between your two answers is the whole exercise. The app never interprets it — it shows you both, in your own words, and gets out of the way.
The situation didn't move. The weight did.
That's the second process.
Neither exercise is ours, and we don't pretend otherwise. The four questions of the deeper reflection come from Byron Katie's The Work, which she has given away freely for decades. The short pause follows the acknowledge–link–let-go practice Pauline Skeates teaches in The Mindful Parent. We built a quiet, private place to do them — on a phone, at eleven at night, without telling anyone.
What it doesn't do.
Most of the design work on this app went into the things it refuses to do. They aren't settings you have to find and switch off.
No streaks, no reminders
It will never nudge you to come back. Use it every night for a hard fortnight and then not again for a year — nothing is lost and nothing is broken.
Nothing is scored
No mood graph, no trend line, no weekly report on your feelings. We are not building a picture of you.
Your words stay on your phone
Signing in is just for your access. What you write is never sent to our servers — it's stored on your device.
Read-only, and deletable
A saved reflection can be reread or deleted, never edited. Nothing gets quietly rewritten later — not by you, and not by us.
Nothing to share
No feed, no streak to post, no share sheet. This was never meant to be seen by anyone else.
What this isn't.
Space to Feel isn't therapy and isn't a substitute for it. It doesn't diagnose anything, doesn't assess anything, and won't tell you what your answers mean. It's a structured place to write down something you already know and read it back. If you're carrying something heavy, it's worth telling a real person too.
Questions.
How long does it take?
The pause takes about as long as three slow breaths — a minute or two, standing wherever you already are. The reflection takes ten minutes if you're quick, forty if a question catches you. There's no timer and nothing is submitted anywhere, so there's no rush and no penalty for stopping.
Which of the two do I use?
Whichever the moment allows. The pause is for right now — name the feeling, let it make sense, breathe it out. The reflection is for later, when you can sit down with the thought underneath it. Plenty of feelings only ever need the first, and the app never tells you which one to pick.
Do I have to write a lot?
No. Some answers are one word chosen from a list, and most of the pause is optional to write at all. Some people write three lines and are done. The questions are the structure; the length is yours.
What if I don't think this will do anything?
Fair. Try the pause once, the next time something lands on you — it costs three breaths. If you're still sceptical, do one full reflection and read your own answers back. That's the entire proposition — if nothing lands, delete it and nothing remains.
Where's it up to?
Out now on iPhone — search “Space to Feel” on the App Store. The Android version is still being built; the list below is how you hear when it's ready.
On Android? We'll write to you once.
Space to Feel is out now on iPhone. The Android version is still being built — leave your email and we'll tell you when it's ready. Not before.
On iPhone? Get it on the App Store
You're on the list.
One email, when it's on Android. Nothing before that.