Welcome to the Vida Thought Tracker
A big part of overcoming low mood or anxiety is learning how to balance your thoughts. To help you with this important skill, we’ve created a digital thought tracker to guide you through the process. As you gain more knowledge and become more comfortable with balancing your thoughts, your thought tracker will adapt to your abilities.
To help you get started, this article explains the functionality of our thought tracker, how to use it, and what to expect. If at any point in time you need additional help with your tracker, please do not hesitate to reach out to support@vida.com
Quick Links
Getting Started
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First you'll need to enable the Thought Tracker. Follow these steps to enable the Thought Tracker:
- Open the Home Screen
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Navigate to Trackers and tap Edit Goals
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Tap +Add More Weekly Goals
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Tap Balancing Thoughts
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Tap Thoughts
- Adjust the amount and/or frequency of the tracker
- Tap Create Weekly Goal
- Ta-da! Your thought tracker is now enabled and ready to use!
Using Your Tracker
Once you’re inside your tracker, there are a few things to know.
First, the questions we ask will be based on your knowledge around balancing your thoughts. Reading (and completing) certain lessons will unlock more questions in the thought tracker. For example, when you read the Thinking Traps lesson, the Thinking Traps question in the thought tracker will begin appearing. Likewise, when you read Finding a Remedy, the final reframing and mood question will appear.
Second, you can find more information about each question by clicking the i button next to the text. This will bring up a page with guidance and prompts for how to answer the question.
Third (and finally), clicking the blue Okay button that appears at the bottom of each question is how you complete your question. Clicking Okay will automatically take you to the next question.
Now, let’s talk about the different questions:
How are you?
When you first open the Thought Tracker you will be asked How are you? Simply click the face and text that most closely aligns with how you are feeling at the moment. Once you make a selection the system will automatically advance to the next question. If at any point in time you want to change your questions just hit the < button at the top left-hand corner of the screen to continue
Recent Thoughts
You will then be asked, What is running through your head? Here, you can write freely about how you might be feeling at this moment. When you start typing you will also see a dropdown of your 5 most recently logged thoughts. You can conveniently select from this list if you are experiencing the same thought again.
Situation
After you write down what's going on in your head, you will be asked What was happening when you had that thought? Once again, please use this section to write freely about what was going on in your life at that time. If you have used the tracker before, the top 5 most recent answers for this section will be displayed for you to choose.
Emotions
In the next section, you will be asked to tell us a little bit more about the emotions that came up for you during this situation. Simply tap on one or more emotions that correspond most closely with the way you are feeling in that moment.
Thinking Traps
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Once you have completed the Thinking Traps Lesson in your Vida program, you will be able to then select these thinking traps in your Thought Tracker. You can select one or more trap that relates to your thoughts and emotions for the day.
Reframe
Once you have completed the Finding a Remedy lesson in your Vida program, and you have been able to properly identify and mark your Thinking Traps you will be asked What's a more realistic way of thinking about the situation without the thinking trap? This will give a chance to think about the situation and then write out in your own words how you could have thought about the situation without falling into a thinking trap.
How are you now?
Once you have reframed your thinking without using traps, you will then be asked again how you are feeling. This will give you one more chance to express your mood after you have gone through your thinking exercises.
Setting a Weekly Thought Goal
Now, you can also set a weekly thought goal! Once you and your coach have established your wellness plan, you can create your own weekly goals. Start by opening the Vida app, and selecting the Home screen.
Next, scroll down to the "Trackers" section and tap the Edit Goals icon located in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Select to +Add More Weekly Goals. Goal categories will appear in the middle of the screen. Look for the Balancing Thoughts Category.
You will be taken to a new page opening up different trackers within this category. Simply select Thoughts. Here you can modify how many times a week you’d like to keep track of, and the amount you would like to keep track of. Once you’re done, simply press Create Weekly Goal located at the bottom of the screen.
You will be taken back to your weekly goal page. Look! You have a new Thought goal! To return back to the Home screen, simply press the X icon located at the top right-hand corner of the screen. You will see your new tracker!
To view your Thought history, tap View Dashboard under the Thoughts tracker.
All of your previously entered thoughts from the last 60 days will be shown here. The more you log, the more you will have to share with your coach. You can also log thoughts directly through this screen by pressing the + icon next to the Log Thoughts tab.
In case you have any issues with your thought tracker, please contact support@vida.com