14 ms·

Show HN: Roadmap – A Personal Growth Game for Social Anxiety

141 points by tolarewaju3 3y ago

voisin 3y ago
Looks great. The Apple App Store buttons don’t work. I’d love to download it. A few testimonials would be worthwhile, perhaps getting a researcher to run an experiment to see how well it works.
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  Are you sure? Just tested them again and they seem to work. What country are you in? I did have to recently fix the availability in certain countries
  - emi2k01 3y ago
    On Firefox with uBlock Origin it doesn't work. I gave it a quick look and it seems like Google Analytics is hijacking the `click` event in the `<a>` tag and it stops working because uBO blocked GA.
    - tolarewaju3 3y ago
      Oh wow. Thanks for looking into that. I'll have to fix this
- billfruit 3y ago
  Even the Android app store buttons does not work, looks like they don't even have an Android version ready for people to see as of now, but still they keep the Android play store button. I thought it was misleading, if they didn't have an Android version ready for people to see, then better not to show the Android Playstore "get it" button on.
darajava 3y ago
Nice app! I have an app in roughly the same vein (both introspection apps) which I’m also releasing. Would love to know your thoughts! https://audiodiary.ai https://audiodiary.ai What framework did you use for this?
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  I like it! Clean landing page. I'm also a big fan of practicing gratitude daily. It's great for stress relief and overall well being. I think the audio prompts are an easy way to get people started. My main feedback would be to get clear on the end result. Is it capturing life's moments or achieving goals? I'd also consider have a middle section with "How it Works" so people can visualize what they'll be doing. Like a 3 step process. For the framework, the iPhone app is written in objective-c with a bunch of open source controls from cocoacontrols.com Thanks for looking!
  - darajava 3y ago
    Really good point as goals have become more important... I consider goals to be future, capturing memories/entries as the past. But also the process of talking to it is therapeutic and I consider that the present. I want to capture this in its mission statement, so thanks for the feedback. Best of luck with your app.
- raybb 3y ago
  This is really fantastic! Ofcourse the techy in me wishes for a one time payment to selfhost the data but know it's the openai bits that are expensive :) I would love a way for this to be fed into my Obsidian daily journal. You're actually inspiring me to see if something similar is available for obsidian. One small feedback, if I'm on the add an entry page and I swipe back it closes the app.
  - raybb 3y ago
    Also please don't hide the iOS button from me when I'm on Android :) I had to double check from desktop if iOS was available before sending to a friend.
    - darajava 3y ago
      That’s a great idea. Glad you like it! You can actually export your diary on the profile page and it will give you a tree of mp3 and txt entries along with a nice pdf. Hopefully this will be enough for you to work with obsidian.
levitate 3y ago
I love how pressing the 'next' or 'continue' button in the iOS keyboard actually advances the page when you're recording a trip. It's little details like this that make the app so much more pleasant to use.
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  Thanks so much for the nice feedback! I'm glad you enjoy the little things like I do :)
1270018080 3y ago
Is it all work related goals?
- larusso 3y ago
  Also interested. My social anxieties show the most in every day life situations not so much at work or at least no longer. During company parties it’s the worst. I receive a strong flight reflex and only want to go home. The more people I know better but that doesn’t always help. Alcohol helps but that isn’t an alley I want to follow. What I found interesting: I traveled the West coast this summer and I have no real problem talking with foreign people in a different language. Maybe it’s because these are meaningless encounters anyway I don’t really understand it. Other interesting fact is, if you ask my friends (which I don’t count many.) they might tell you that they didn’t see this part of me. I can mask it pretty good. My wife sees it a lot. I tend to leave conversations I don’t like or put up phone calls and other things to the very last minute. But at work? I had luck to work very long with the same set of people. That gives me a great trust foundation. Starting somewhere new? Just the thought feels like a nightmare.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    One tip i heard from good ol jordan peterson is to force yourself to start making eye contact with people when you notice yourself slipping. It worked very well for me in party and on the street settings because it's a relatively easy task but such a simple gesture really opens the door to further interaction much wider. I never realized how much i was scowling and avoiding eye contact until i saw someone else doing exactly what i did. It was a terrifying experience and research afterwards was how i found this tip. It's very much in the realm of "just try this thing" type advice but i find that's what works best for me. All of a sudden I'm about to cut the spiral at the start and better engage with that "starting things" part of social life. I'm by no means perfect but damn i wish I'd learned more strategies in college when I'd regularly embarrass myself running from interest. I hope you find a strategy that works for you. I know how impossible it feels to get back in but making eye contact and forcing a smile is something pretty much anyone can do. People want to talk to someone looking and smiling and often times will start the interaction themselves, saving me all the hard work!
jasfi 3y ago
I like the gamified approach. I'm starting to think of doing similar for some productivity ideas I have. Too much going on to start something new though.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Ah but you don't have to; there's a number of gamified apps out there already. It doesn't sound like you need any help with productivity if you've already got too much going on though.
  - jasfi 3y ago
    Definitely a red ocean market.
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  I love games. I think they are (when done correctly) the single best way to motivate us to do good for ourselves
ksenzee 3y ago
This is essentially a medical device for administering behavioral therapy to treat social anxiety, and I don't see any indication that it was developed with any kind of input or review from experts in the field. I honestly feel that borders on irresponsible. A review from a psychologist specializing in social anxiety would be a good idea.
- deltoids 3y ago
  TLDR; creator should get a psychologist behind this project to avoid negative views. Disclaimer: I do not mean to belittle the author of the comment above in any way. I'm sharing my views on why I find it absurd to call a mental health tool like this irresponsible without a greenlight from a psychologist. I don't understand how people find these things so irresponsible. It's the same with using an LLM for therapy. Many therapists are furious with that, regardless of how effective it has been for many people. In the same way, the author of the comment above seem to find it irresponsible for the creator of this app to share this tool without having it greenlighted by a psychologist (the establishment). This is despite the fact that the creator has had amazing outcomes with his newfound method of dealing with social anxiety and is now sharing it with the world. In my view, his experience speaks for itself and it is up to users whether they want to trust his words and try it out. There's a clear tendency to demonize anything that contradicts or hasn't been greenlighted by the establishment. If you follow this logic to the extreme, we cannot as human beings share recommendations to others based on our own experiences when it comes to mental health. As absurd as that it, it's probably best for the creator of this app to get a psychologist behind it to avoid this negative discourse.
  - rocketbop 3y ago
    > It's the same with using an LLM for therapy. Many therapists are furious with that, regardless of how effective it has been for many people. I doubt therapists would get furious at people getting better, regardless of the mechanism, in the same way that doctors wouldn't be furious about a weird trick to cure rheumatism, the common cold, or any other malady.
  - ksenzee 3y ago
autoexec 3y ago
Apps that tempt people into placing their mental health issues, and the state of those issues, into networked devices designed to collect and leak their private data like a sieve is just irresponsible. I'm sure advertisers and data brokers would love to have this kind of information, but it's probably better for people who already have struggles with mental health if companies aren't exploiting those struggles for profit. Even if you don't plan on selling that data, it's operating on a platform that can't be trusted and is itself designed to exploit users.
- sjamaan 3y ago
  I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is absolutely an issue of today's mobile devices.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I suspect that at least a few people here earn a living by working on apps designed to collect detailed information about the mental health issues of users and they'd rather not be reminded of the fact that all of that data is being/will be used against those same users at every opportunity for the rest of their lives.
- deltoids 3y ago
  Do you believe that this app has been designed to leak users private data and exploit its users?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I didn't even see a privacy policy (not that those are in any way binding), but even it isn't doing that today who knows what will happen to the data they're collecting/have collected in the future, and like I said, smart phones aren't secure or private and they are designed to exploit users. If you need help with your mental health, please talk to a medical professional where you have at least some measure of protection under the law instead of handing real-time records of your struggles and vulnerabilities over to under-regulated companies looking to prey on you by using that very same information.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Uptrenda 3y ago
I appreciate the effort but can't help feeling the app trivializes and infantilizes the issue of 'social anxiety' with it's one-size-fits-all approach. There may be many reasons a person has social anxiety. Maybe they were severely abused and learned to be fearful of people. Maybe they have autism and find themselves anxious trying to communicate with neurotypical people. Maybe they're just... shy and haven't been in the world enough. We really don't know what the issue is and I do think the context matters if you're trying to help. Apps like this are asking for trouble because rather than having people invest in an approach that may work (like a clinical psychologist) they try something like this and end up coming away feeling alone and let down. Maybe now the person won't bother to seek real help because they feel it will be more of the same. I think if you're going to venture into ad hoc mental health treatment you ought to know what you're doing. And I can't say I think the author does here.
- throwhn84383 3y ago
  I fully agree, also on the practical side it's likely there are rational reasons why not to do a certain activity. E.g. about sharing a side project, maybe the person cannot really stand up for an idea, in fact it might be hard to explain without the right context and would stop the project despite being doable. Life isn't a computer game anyway...
- rocketbop 3y ago
  I share your concern about using an app to deal with a psychological problem, but I think a counterpoint to your concern about this app being one-size-fits-all is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The central premise of CBT is that it doesn't really matter what the roots of the behaviour a patient wants to change are. Reprogramming our behaviours is enough. This is really the opposite of the old Freudian ideas that a therapist must get to the root of the problem (which might have been in childhood) before progress can be made on the neurosis. Perhaps the author here is approaching social anxiety from the CBT perspective.
  - jon-wood 3y ago
    > I think a counterpoint to your concern about this app being one-size-fits-all is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT is absolutely a one-size-fits-all solution though, and in my opinion quite harmful in many ways. The core premise of CBT is more or less "it's all in your head". I'm sure for some people it is, but for many (myself included when I tried it), it is absolutely not all something I could just handwave away with positive thinking. CBT comes down to just sucking it up and accepting your place in life, when for many people it's that very place in life that is destroying their mental health and the right thing to do isn't to suck it up, it's to make concrete changes to their life and get out of that situation. However, CBT is cheap to provide, so is the darling of health systems the world over. Just do some colouring in while thinking about how great life is really folks, the world burning around you is keeping you warm.
xyzelement 3y ago
I probably had social anxiety when I was younger. Being “forced” into social situations (eg choosing to become a manager, choosing to attend business school) helped get over it to a good extent, which I guess is in line with this app. The key insight in retrospect is that ego and self centeredness play a big role. I used to think people really sit there and judge what and how I say and do. In reality that comes from assuming you are the center of everyone’s world, and you are not. People watch and care less than you think and there’s nothing to worry about.
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  Glad you were able to overcome it! Agreed. People are not thinking of us nearly as much as we think
beretguy 3y ago
Not every problem can or should be solved with some app. This one is a perfect example. Often social anxiety is a symptom of an underlying problem. This app seems to try to treat that symptom, which will do no good. If person wants to solve their social anxiety problem they should seek professional help from licensed professional who will try to fix the underlying problem.
- tolarewaju3 3y ago
  I've found that there is one common root for Social Anxiety: an extreme desire for approval. When we want others' approval so bad, we become anxious when thinking about losing it. This fear becomes a discouraging spiral. Fear of what you think --> Running from opportunities & ruin my life --> Regret & feel more discouraged And so, to combat this, we need encouragement to take even the smallest step to break that. Ultimately, I'm trying to create a success spiral. Take a small step --> Celebrate / track your win / see growth --> Get encouraged to take a bigger step Little by little, this rewires us to let go of people's approval, build confidence and live more fulfilling lives. Nothing is perfect, but sometimes simplicity can lead us to believe that it doesn't address a complex root.
swayvil 3y ago
I've had great results from vipassana meditation. Any of you experience similar?

141 points by tolarewaju3 3y ago

Looks great. The Apple App Store buttons don’t work. I’d love to download it. A few testimonials would be worthwhile, perhaps getting a researcher to run an experiment to see how well it works.

tolarewaju3 3y ago
Are you sure? Just tested them again and they seem to work. What country are you in? I did have to recently fix the availability in certain countries
- emi2k01 3y ago
  On Firefox with uBlock Origin it doesn't work. I gave it a quick look and it seems like Google Analytics is hijacking the `click` event in the `<a>` tag and it stops working because uBO blocked GA.
  - tolarewaju3 3y ago
    Oh wow. Thanks for looking into that. I'll have to fix this
billfruit 3y ago
Even the Android app store buttons does not work, looks like they don't even have an Android version ready for people to see as of now, but still they keep the Android play store button. I thought it was misleading, if they didn't have an Android version ready for people to see, then better not to show the Android Playstore "get it" button on.

darajava 3y ago

Nice app! I have an app in roughly the same vein (both introspection apps) which I’m also releasing. Would love to know your thoughts! https://audiodiary.ai https://audiodiary.ai What framework did you use for this?

tolarewaju3 3y ago
I like it! Clean landing page. I'm also a big fan of practicing gratitude daily. It's great for stress relief and overall well being. I think the audio prompts are an easy way to get people started. My main feedback would be to get clear on the end result. Is it capturing life's moments or achieving goals? I'd also consider have a middle section with "How it Works" so people can visualize what they'll be doing. Like a 3 step process. For the framework, the iPhone app is written in objective-c with a bunch of open source controls from cocoacontrols.com Thanks for looking!
- darajava 3y ago
  Really good point as goals have become more important... I consider goals to be future, capturing memories/entries as the past. But also the process of talking to it is therapeutic and I consider that the present. I want to capture this in its mission statement, so thanks for the feedback. Best of luck with your app.
raybb 3y ago
This is really fantastic! Ofcourse the techy in me wishes for a one time payment to selfhost the data but know it's the openai bits that are expensive :) I would love a way for this to be fed into my Obsidian daily journal. You're actually inspiring me to see if something similar is available for obsidian. One small feedback, if I'm on the add an entry page and I swipe back it closes the app.
- raybb 3y ago
  Also please don't hide the iOS button from me when I'm on Android :) I had to double check from desktop if iOS was available before sending to a friend.
  - darajava 3y ago
    That’s a great idea. Glad you like it! You can actually export your diary on the profile page and it will give you a tree of mp3 and txt entries along with a nice pdf. Hopefully this will be enough for you to work with obsidian.

levitate 3y ago

I love how pressing the 'next' or 'continue' button in the iOS keyboard actually advances the page when you're recording a trip. It's little details like this that make the app so much more pleasant to use.

tolarewaju3 3y ago
Thanks so much for the nice feedback! I'm glad you enjoy the little things like I do :)

1270018080 3y ago

Is it all work related goals?

larusso 3y ago
Also interested. My social anxieties show the most in every day life situations not so much at work or at least no longer. During company parties it’s the worst. I receive a strong flight reflex and only want to go home. The more people I know better but that doesn’t always help. Alcohol helps but that isn’t an alley I want to follow. What I found interesting: I traveled the West coast this summer and I have no real problem talking with foreign people in a different language. Maybe it’s because these are meaningless encounters anyway I don’t really understand it. Other interesting fact is, if you ask my friends (which I don’t count many.) they might tell you that they didn’t see this part of me. I can mask it pretty good. My wife sees it a lot. I tend to leave conversations I don’t like or put up phone calls and other things to the very last minute. But at work? I had luck to work very long with the same set of people. That gives me a great trust foundation. Starting somewhere new? Just the thought feels like a nightmare.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  One tip i heard from good ol jordan peterson is to force yourself to start making eye contact with people when you notice yourself slipping. It worked very well for me in party and on the street settings because it's a relatively easy task but such a simple gesture really opens the door to further interaction much wider. I never realized how much i was scowling and avoiding eye contact until i saw someone else doing exactly what i did. It was a terrifying experience and research afterwards was how i found this tip. It's very much in the realm of "just try this thing" type advice but i find that's what works best for me. All of a sudden I'm about to cut the spiral at the start and better engage with that "starting things" part of social life. I'm by no means perfect but damn i wish I'd learned more strategies in college when I'd regularly embarrass myself running from interest. I hope you find a strategy that works for you. I know how impossible it feels to get back in but making eye contact and forcing a smile is something pretty much anyone can do. People want to talk to someone looking and smiling and often times will start the interaction themselves, saving me all the hard work!

jasfi 3y ago

I like the gamified approach. I'm starting to think of doing similar for some productivity ideas I have. Too much going on to start something new though.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Ah but you don't have to; there's a number of gamified apps out there already. It doesn't sound like you need any help with productivity if you've already got too much going on though.
- jasfi 3y ago
  Definitely a red ocean market.
tolarewaju3 3y ago
I love games. I think they are (when done correctly) the single best way to motivate us to do good for ourselves

ksenzee 3y ago

This is essentially a medical device for administering behavioral therapy to treat social anxiety, and I don't see any indication that it was developed with any kind of input or review from experts in the field. I honestly feel that borders on irresponsible. A review from a psychologist specializing in social anxiety would be a good idea.

deltoids 3y ago
TLDR; creator should get a psychologist behind this project to avoid negative views. Disclaimer: I do not mean to belittle the author of the comment above in any way. I'm sharing my views on why I find it absurd to call a mental health tool like this irresponsible without a greenlight from a psychologist. I don't understand how people find these things so irresponsible. It's the same with using an LLM for therapy. Many therapists are furious with that, regardless of how effective it has been for many people. In the same way, the author of the comment above seem to find it irresponsible for the creator of this app to share this tool without having it greenlighted by a psychologist (the establishment). This is despite the fact that the creator has had amazing outcomes with his newfound method of dealing with social anxiety and is now sharing it with the world. In my view, his experience speaks for itself and it is up to users whether they want to trust his words and try it out. There's a clear tendency to demonize anything that contradicts or hasn't been greenlighted by the establishment. If you follow this logic to the extreme, we cannot as human beings share recommendations to others based on our own experiences when it comes to mental health. As absurd as that it, it's probably best for the creator of this app to get a psychologist behind it to avoid this negative discourse.
- rocketbop 3y ago
  > It's the same with using an LLM for therapy. Many therapists are furious with that, regardless of how effective it has been for many people. I doubt therapists would get furious at people getting better, regardless of the mechanism, in the same way that doctors wouldn't be furious about a weird trick to cure rheumatism, the common cold, or any other malady.
- ksenzee 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

Apps that tempt people into placing their mental health issues, and the state of those issues, into networked devices designed to collect and leak their private data like a sieve is just irresponsible. I'm sure advertisers and data brokers would love to have this kind of information, but it's probably better for people who already have struggles with mental health if companies aren't exploiting those struggles for profit. Even if you don't plan on selling that data, it's operating on a platform that can't be trusted and is itself designed to exploit users.

sjamaan 3y ago
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is absolutely an issue of today's mobile devices.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I suspect that at least a few people here earn a living by working on apps designed to collect detailed information about the mental health issues of users and they'd rather not be reminded of the fact that all of that data is being/will be used against those same users at every opportunity for the rest of their lives.
deltoids 3y ago
Do you believe that this app has been designed to leak users private data and exploit its users?
- autoexec 3y ago
  I didn't even see a privacy policy (not that those are in any way binding), but even it isn't doing that today who knows what will happen to the data they're collecting/have collected in the future, and like I said, smart phones aren't secure or private and they are designed to exploit users. If you need help with your mental health, please talk to a medical professional where you have at least some measure of protection under the law instead of handing real-time records of your struggles and vulnerabilities over to under-regulated companies looking to prey on you by using that very same information.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Uptrenda 3y ago

I appreciate the effort but can't help feeling the app trivializes and infantilizes the issue of 'social anxiety' with it's one-size-fits-all approach. There may be many reasons a person has social anxiety. Maybe they were severely abused and learned to be fearful of people. Maybe they have autism and find themselves anxious trying to communicate with neurotypical people. Maybe they're just... shy and haven't been in the world enough. We really don't know what the issue is and I do think the context matters if you're trying to help. Apps like this are asking for trouble because rather than having people invest in an approach that may work (like a clinical psychologist) they try something like this and end up coming away feeling alone and let down. Maybe now the person won't bother to seek real help because they feel it will be more of the same. I think if you're going to venture into ad hoc mental health treatment you ought to know what you're doing. And I can't say I think the author does here.

throwhn84383 3y ago
I fully agree, also on the practical side it's likely there are rational reasons why not to do a certain activity. E.g. about sharing a side project, maybe the person cannot really stand up for an idea, in fact it might be hard to explain without the right context and would stop the project despite being doable. Life isn't a computer game anyway...
rocketbop 3y ago
I share your concern about using an app to deal with a psychological problem, but I think a counterpoint to your concern about this app being one-size-fits-all is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The central premise of CBT is that it doesn't really matter what the roots of the behaviour a patient wants to change are. Reprogramming our behaviours is enough. This is really the opposite of the old Freudian ideas that a therapist must get to the root of the problem (which might have been in childhood) before progress can be made on the neurosis. Perhaps the author here is approaching social anxiety from the CBT perspective.
- jon-wood 3y ago
  > I think a counterpoint to your concern about this app being one-size-fits-all is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT is absolutely a one-size-fits-all solution though, and in my opinion quite harmful in many ways. The core premise of CBT is more or less "it's all in your head". I'm sure for some people it is, but for many (myself included when I tried it), it is absolutely not all something I could just handwave away with positive thinking. CBT comes down to just sucking it up and accepting your place in life, when for many people it's that very place in life that is destroying their mental health and the right thing to do isn't to suck it up, it's to make concrete changes to their life and get out of that situation. However, CBT is cheap to provide, so is the darling of health systems the world over. Just do some colouring in while thinking about how great life is really folks, the world burning around you is keeping you warm.

xyzelement 3y ago

I probably had social anxiety when I was younger. Being “forced” into social situations (eg choosing to become a manager, choosing to attend business school) helped get over it to a good extent, which I guess is in line with this app. The key insight in retrospect is that ego and self centeredness play a big role. I used to think people really sit there and judge what and how I say and do. In reality that comes from assuming you are the center of everyone’s world, and you are not. People watch and care less than you think and there’s nothing to worry about.

tolarewaju3 3y ago
Glad you were able to overcome it! Agreed. People are not thinking of us nearly as much as we think

beretguy 3y ago

Not every problem can or should be solved with some app. This one is a perfect example. Often social anxiety is a symptom of an underlying problem. This app seems to try to treat that symptom, which will do no good. If person wants to solve their social anxiety problem they should seek professional help from licensed professional who will try to fix the underlying problem.

tolarewaju3 3y ago
I've found that there is one common root for Social Anxiety: an extreme desire for approval. When we want others' approval so bad, we become anxious when thinking about losing it. This fear becomes a discouraging spiral. Fear of what you think --> Running from opportunities & ruin my life --> Regret & feel more discouraged And so, to combat this, we need encouragement to take even the smallest step to break that. Ultimately, I'm trying to create a success spiral. Take a small step --> Celebrate / track your win / see growth --> Get encouraged to take a bigger step Little by little, this rewires us to let go of people's approval, build confidence and live more fulfilling lives. Nothing is perfect, but sometimes simplicity can lead us to believe that it doesn't address a complex root.

swayvil 3y ago

I've had great results from vipassana meditation. Any of you experience similar?