I told myself I’d at least do the two weeks it keeps recommending to me but today I haven’t even finished the morning steps and I don’t know that I ever want to open it again…
First, Charley asks me, as always, to turn off my notifications so we can focus together. There’s no option to say no. I don’t turn off my notifications unless there’s a genuine reason because I have three children, one of whom has sporadic non-verbal episodes and who uses her tablet to “speak” to me if she needs something… And that’s not even mentioning the other people who rely on me who I don’t live with. Some of us don’t have the luxury of going off grid for what is turning out to be an increasing amount of time every morning (more than that in a minute!)… Furthermore… I just don’t want to. This app is triggering my demand avoidance more and more every day.
Next Charley gives me “gentle reminders” to do the bits of the programme it decided I needed and won’t let me say no to but will let me say I’ll “do it later” or “do it tomorrow”… So now I’ve had three mornings in a row of it remind me to listen to a fifteen minute podcast on anxiety that I can’t help but feel is going to be more of the trite nonsense that excludes me and people like me and will not at all soothe any of my anxiety! In fact, I’m fairly certain that this app is adding to my many sources of stress and contributed to last night’s nightmare, which included a robot going around telling people my secrets and how psychotic and pathetic I am… Because random members of my family or people from my childhood doing it in my dreams weren’t enough, now they’ve outsourced the job to a robot! Just like Charlie Bucket’s poor dad! Isn’t there any job that won’t be given to a robot? No, there isn’t anything in the bloody bagging area! I digress… As usual…
After asking me my mood, telling me they’re sorry for it and can I describe it… So I describe it… And we move on as if I said nothing… I can’t help but feel that my sympathetic nervous system has a bit of whiplash here!
Every morning Charley reminds me of not just the tiny habits they want me to create but also every other thing it mentioned the day before so what started off as apparently a fifteen minute a morning commitment then spread to half an hour in the morning and then sending me reminders in the afternoon and then spending some time with me in the evening to journal… This is becoming a real time commitment that I was in no way prepared for, both in the sense that the app misled me and the fact that I’m not ok with spending that much time doing something that, at the moment is really starting to piss me off…
I turned the app off not long after this, without completing the basic functions of the app, which is these, so called, tiny habits, because the app, once again with no thought to accessibility, has informed me that I’m doing thirty seconds of squats. I can’t do squats and have actually been advised not to do them by three physiotherapists (because I’ve been getting physio on a semi regular basis since I was about thirteen)… So not only is this app completely unconcerned with whether or not it’s suggestions are mentally and physically accessible etc, yesterday it announces it’s going to use a therapy based technique on me, which I couldn’t opt out of, there’s no function to allow me to do so, with no regard for the fact that a golden rule of therapy is to not do more than one kind at once without approval or strict supervision! Now, there seems to have been no thought to medical advice or that medical advice could even be a thing!
I just genuinely can’t get my mind around a so called well-being app that hasn’t considered the human condition in any way, shape or form. Is this the 80s? Are we in one of those retreat wellness programmes that assumes everyone there is a white, rich, able bodied, size zero stay at home mum who is placated by trite nonsense that boosts their ego and a night out with the girls to get wasted on cocktails?! I don’t think the creators of this app have been outside and looked at the world since then!
Ok, that may be a little uncalled for but I went into this excited and ready to really buckle down to their programme to boost my well-being. I wanted to engage in this completely! And my inability to do so is based on their complete lack of understating about literally anything. It’s a huge shock to my nervous system to go into something feeling good and be left feeling attacked, unwanted, unconsidered and erased by not only a resource meant to make me feel better but something that’s come out of my own university, who I feel a lot of love, respect and loyalty toward…
You could argue that they shouldn’t be expected to cater to absolutely everyone and I clearly have a complex mental and physical health profile… But it’s the basics here that they’re getting wrong… They’re getting mental and emotional consent wrong, they’re completely undervaluing they allocation of emotional labour. They’re not even considering, for a second, physical access issues. There’s no respect or even hint at consideration to cultural differences in what constitutes connection, relaxation techniques or anything like that…
I’m beyond disappointed… And now I find myself in a situation I hadn’t at all anticipated which is to just put it down and not pick it up again to protect my well-being from a resource that was supposed to improve it… Which leaves me feeling that I’ve failed, left something unfinished, am once again too much a freak to live in a normal world and… Perhaps worse than all that… I didn’t anticipate the sense of loss I’d feel at being unable to discuss this with the creators and open a dialogue that addresses these issues in order to make this a safer, more diverse, relatable and usable resource… But mostly safer…
I regret to end this review with the following – I absolutely cannot recommend this app. If you’re in therapy, suffer from low mood or are susceptible to low mood manifesting, if you have low self esteem, anxiety, any mental health concerns at all, this is not a safe app for you. If you are physically disabled, this app is not accessible for you. If you’re not a privileged person financially, mentally, emotionally or physically, this app is not for you.
I’m so sorry to say this… I’m going to have to go and find something else to review that makes me feel better now because I don’t see my therapist until Tuesday and I can’t help but feel that this was a stupid thing for me to have done…
I am so utterly disappointed and let down…
Goodbye Charley…
The Neurodivergent Bee 