Anxiety has a memory problem. In a calm moment, last week feels half as bad. In the acute moment, it feels like it was always this way. Both versions deceive you. An anxiety journal replaces the feeling with data: how often, how strong, in which situations, with what trend.

InnerPulse is built as a therapy companion, not as a calming app with breathing exercises. It gives you the GAD-7 for structured self-assessment over time, a factor system that surfaces your triggers, and a correlation engine that finds links you would not see yourself. This page shows you how to use it concretely.

A clear boundary up front: the GAD-7 in InnerPulse is a tool for observation and self-assessment, explicitly not a diagnosis. An anxiety disorder is diagnosed by a qualified professional. What the app provides is the evidence that makes that conversation go better.

The GAD-7: a standard measure of anxiety, read over time

The GAD-7 (Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item) is an established, short self-assessment questionnaire with seven questions. You answer how often, over the last two weeks, things like nervousness, uncontrollable worry, or tension have bothered you. That produces a score.

The real value comes not from a single result but from repetition. A GAD-7 of 14 says little on its own. A trajectory from 14 to 11 to 8 over six weeks says a great deal: it is improving, measurably. That trajectory is exactly what InnerPulse makes visible.

Alongside the GAD-7, InnerPulse includes other self-tests: the PHQ-9 (depression, which often accompanies anxiety), the PHQ-4 as a 4-question rapid check, and the K10 for general psychological distress. You can take the GAD-7 weekly on a fixed day, for example, and build a clean trend line instead of relying on how you feel right now.

Surfacing triggers: factor correlation

Anxiety often feels like it comes out of nowhere. Usually it does not. It hangs on triggers that are invisible in the moment, because the brain is busy with the symptom, not the cause.

InnerPulse has more than 85 pre-built factors across ten categories, fully editable, plus custom categories. The on-device correlation engine compares them against your mood and reports the links as plain-language sentences, for the same day and for the next day (lag analysis). Four factor groups are especially revealing with anxiety:

Caffeine

Caffeine and anxiety are a classic pair: it amplifies a racing heart and restlessness, which the brain misreads as danger. If you log coffee, energy drinks, or late tea, an insight might appear like "On days with a lot of caffeine, your calm score is lower." That is your personal evidence, not a generic warning.

Sleep

A bad night often means thinner skin the next day. The lag analysis captures exactly that next-day effect: "After days with little sleep, your calm is lower the next day." In your head you rarely connect the restless Thursday with the short night on Wednesday. The data does.

Social situations

Add factors like "large group," "conflict," "presentation," or "phone call," or create your own. Over weeks you can see whether social occasions systematically coincide with higher tension, and which ones. That helps distinguish avoidance from a real trigger.

Work

Work stress is a common anxiety driver. With factors like "deadline," "overtime," or "meeting day" you can see whether your scores tip on high-load days, and whether the effect is immediate or shows up the day after.

With the optional intensity slider (1 to 5 per factor) you can record not just that something happened, but how strongly. That sharpens the correlations.

Five dimensions instead of one smiley

Anxiety is not simply "bad mood." It hits specific areas: inner calm, sleep, sometimes energy. InnerPulse separates the mood score (1 to 10) from five sub-dimensions: energy, calm, focus, sleep quality, and social energy.

The calm dimension is the central axis for anxiety. You can show: "Mood was actually okay, but calm sat at 3 for a week." That is exactly the distinction that helps in a conversation with a therapist, because it isolates the anxiety symptom instead of letting it vanish into a single good-bad axis.

Bridging the wait for therapy

In Germany, the average wait for a therapy slot is around 142 days. With anxiety, those are months in which the symptom keeps running unobserved, and in which it is easy to feel there is nothing you can do.

InnerPulse gives that waiting time structure. Instead of waiting and hoping, you build evidence: GAD-7 trajectory, trigger patterns, mood data. When the slot arrives, you do not show up with "I have not been doing well for a while," but with data that shortens the first sessions. Tracking itself is not treatment, but it makes the wait less passive and the first session more productive. More on this on the bridging the wait for therapy page.

CSV and PDF: the handover to therapy

When therapy begins, your documentation is worth gold. InnerPulse exports as CSV (including per-question), JSON, and as a PDF report: GAD-7 trajectory, PHQ-9 trajectory, mood timeline, and the factor relationships.

Instead of reconstructing things from memory in the first session, you put a report on the table. That saves time and is more accurate, because anxiety distorts memory. How to bring the data into therapy concretely is covered on the InnerPulse in therapy page.

Crisis contacts during acute distress

Anxiety can escalate. InnerPulse has a three-tier flag system that classifies your answers in the self-tests. During acute distress, the app surfaces crisis contacts for the DACH region: AT 142, CH 143, and DE 0800 numbers.

This is deliberately not a diagnosis and not a pressure-inducing alarm. It is a calm pointer to real help in the moment when tracking is not the priority. An app should not stand between you and a person in a crisis, it should shorten the path there.

Privacy as the basis for trust

With anxiety, the barrier to logging honestly is already high enough. Add the question of where this data ends up, and you simply will not write down the uncomfortable things.

InnerPulse runs entirely on device: no account, no cloud, no analytics or tracking SDKs. With an HTTP proxy you can verify in minutes that nothing goes out. The app can optionally lock with Face ID or Touch ID. Made in Europe, GDPR-native. The honest flip side: there is no cloud of its own, so without an iCloud backup or an export, losing your device means losing the data. In exchange, it is guaranteed that your anxiety records exist nowhere else. More on this on the InnerPulse privacy page.

This trust is not a side effect. It is the precondition for tracking honestly enough that the data is worth anything at all.

A recommended tracking pattern

Daily, under ten seconds: mood score plus the calm dimension. Tap the factors that stand out, above all caffeine, sleep, social occasions, and work.
Weekly: GAD-7 on a fixed day, for example every Sunday. This builds a clean trend line.
After three to four weeks: check the insights. The trigger patterns become readable.
Before an appointment: export the PDF or CSV and bring it.

Missed days are no drama: InnerPulse deliberately has no streaks, and you can backfill days. A tool for hard phases must not become an extra source of pressure.

If you are currently waiting for a slot: bridging the wait for therapy.

If therapy is already underway or starting soon: InnerPulse in therapy.

If the comparison with a clinically positioned alternative interests you: InnerPulse vs MindDoc.

How InnerPulse handles your data, in detail: privacy.

When you are ready: InnerPulse is a one-time €4.99 on the App Store. No subscription, no account, no cloud. Anxiety becomes easier to handle when you can measure it, instead of only enduring it.

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Anxiety Journal App: Track GAD-7 and Triggers