The App That Allows You to Heal and Be Healed

A platform for expressing yourself anonymously

As much as we would like to admit otherwise, we don’t always share exactly what’s on our minds. We like to think that we have a few people with whom we may share just about anything, but there are certain parts of us which we keep to ourselves — locked and kept from our surroundings.

It takes a level of trust for humans to open up.

Ever since I can remember, I have had the need to share my innermost thoughts with someone else; someone who would try to put themselves in my shoes and I would equally place myself in theirs.

In the times I got lucky, I found people who understood, and claimed to feel me, and the feeling was very mutual. But I’ve also come to realize this: Empathy can never be fully harvested without putting all differences aside and focusing on the unifying factor connecting us all — being human.

I recently discovered Helponymous, which, just by a peek at its name, can be understood as a space for helping anonymously. By signing up on the free app, you are pledging to share your most sacred thoughts and feelings with the rest of the world, and the world synchronously shares its own with you.

The Power of Anonymity

There is an appeal to being able to express yourself fully without needing to label yourself with your name. Perhaps it’s the comfort of knowing people will focus on the statement being released, and not on the person who is releasing it.

A touch of anonymity indicates that you are facing a stream of thoughts that do not belong to anyone in particular, so you are left wanting to examine them as if they were coming from your own self. When joining the app, you will be given a list of doodled avatars to choose from, ranging from Moki and Jinto to Yarri. All users use the same set of characters, so every post seems to be coming from one of these limited figures.

Helping Yourself by Helping Others

Since using the app, I have not come close to seeing a platform filled with people sharing such brutally open and vulnerable feelings with each other. It is essentially an uncensored, deeply empathetic version of Twitter.

Every person writes a short post about their thoughts that could relate to topics including but not limited to, Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, and Heartbreak. But you don’t have to stick to any of these topics — just post a message about how you feel, and the sky is the limit.

Knowing I am able to help so many people at the tip of my fingers just by sharing my advice, and even talking about my own experience, — and all of this without having to reveal any of my information, is truly a gift.

A Space for Empathy

In a world that encourages therapy for people suffering a number of mental health conditions, the option to gain closure or heal from interactions with people who may be in the same position may be rewarding beyond any remedy prescribed by

Joining the platform has helped me see that I am not alone in feeling however I may be feeling, and that we live in a world of people who are more alike than different. It opens your eyes to the fact that so many people live while secretly hoping they had someone to trust sharing their deepest concerns with.

Several people do not have the privilege to have a person to confide in, at least not completely. When you immerse yourself in a community of people who only want to help one another feel a little better than they felt a second earlier, you begin to notice the power in your hands to heal and in turn be healed. Spaces like this, to me, have indicated a new step in abandoning any barriers to expressing yourself as real and comfortable as you can be.

Angelina Der Arakelian