Freya’s story

You never think it will happen to you. The reality is, most of us will experience at least one traumatic event in our lifetime.

It was a perfectly ordinary evening. I was out for dinner with friends on the edge of Borough Market when, on 3 June 2017, I was caught up in the chaos of the terror attack at London Bridge and Borough Market. Even now, years on, I remember it like it was yesterday. In the days, weeks and months that followed, there wasn’t a corner of my life that wasn’t touched by it.

I was constantly on edge. Severe flashbacks and panic attacks could be triggered by anything – a crowd on the tube, a siren, a car backfiring, fireworks I couldn’t see, the fire alarm at work, someone shouting in the street. Routine tasks felt like herculean challenges. There was little respite. Sleep brought nightmares, and soon the thought of going to sleep became terrifying too. The world no longer felt safe. It seemed certain that something bad would happen, again. Every day felt like a battle to get through.

It didn’t just change how I saw the world – it changed how I related to the people around me. I found it nearly impossible to talk about what I was going through. I felt guilty: how could I be struggling, when others had it worse? I wasn’t physically injured. I hadn’t lost anyone. I’d been lucky – right? My family and friends wanted to help, but didn’t always know how or what to say – and I didn’t have the words to tell them what I was going through or what I needed. It often felt like nobody understood.

I didn’t even recognise myself. Guilt, frustration, anger, grief, loss, confusion – I was going through a whole rollercoaster of emotions. And underneath it all, I felt completely lost and isolated.

It was difficult to know where to turn for help. Professional support was limited, hard to identify, and nearly impossible to access in any timely way. My GP had no idea what to do with me except offer medication. I was fortunate to access private therapy, and five months in, by complete chance on a Facebook comment thread, I found the Tim Parry Jonathan Ball Peace Foundation (now the Peace Collective) who support people affected by terrorism. Through all of that – alongside therapy and the charity support – I was looking for something else.

Something to help me through each day. At 2am when I woke up from another nightmare. On the tube when I felt a panic attack coming. Before my next appointment when everything felt too big. When I couldn’t call anyone. When I just needed to get through the next few moments. I searched and searched. There are thousands of mental health apps out there. I tried lots of different ones, but no one app met my needs. And trying to juggle multiple apps to do the one role of helping me through each day didn’t work.

I didn’t want a meditation app, clearing my mind was impossible – more memories flooded in. I didn’t want mood tracking, on its own that wasn’t very helpful. I didn’t want toxic positivity in a nice font, telling me that everything happens for a reason. And I didn’t want a chatbot trying to be my friend when I already felt so alone. I needed something built specifically for trauma. Something to reach for in the moments when it felt like it was happening all over again. Something that would actually help. It didn’t exist.

Even with the therapy, and charity support, it took over two and a half years of trial and error, self-help and perseverance to learn how to manage my mental wellbeing and start to feel like I was living again, rather than just surviving. Along the way, I learnt how many people are affected by trauma and PTSD – there are over 3 million of us in the UK. And it made me think. What if you don’t have access to support? How do you learn the tools that you need to cope?

The reality is, most people don’t get any professional help. Only 1 in 4 do. Waiting lists are long, private fees are high, stigma prevents people from reaching out, they are told their needs are too complex, just given medication or don’t know where else to look. I figured there had to be another way.

So at the end of 2019, I left my role in the city to combine my personal experience with my career in technology and build something to help the many people like me – people struggling with trauma, who simply can’t access help or need more. remind isn’t built based on my experience alone. My experience is only one of millions. So I asked what people needed. And hundreds of people with lived experience of trauma told us – what worked, what didn’t, what they wished existed. PTSD UK’s community have been a huge part of that. The app has been built and tested with their input from the beginning, and we’re still continuously listening to what users need to improve it. Everything in the app has been shaped by what real users tell us. Alongside that, we worked with clinical experts and built in real-world data, so what’s in the app is grounded in evidence as well as experience.

What we kept hearing – time and time again – is that when people get triggered, they don’t have a way to bring themselves back down. The research shows that when you experience trauma, your sense of safety is shattered. And the first step of trauma recovery is re-establishing that safety in both body and mind. Flashbacks don’t schedule appointments. Panic attacks don’t care that your therapist’s office is closed. Hypervigilance doesn’t take the weekend off.

remind is built for those moments. Grounding tools to reach for when you’re triggered out of the blue. A way to track symptoms, feelings and triggers so you can keep a note of what’s going on. Personalised insights so you can start to understand what’s happening – what affects you, what helps. Reliable resources for when you want to learn more, because learning about trauma can help you make sense of your own experiences and communicate them to others. It’s not a replacement for therapy. It’s designed to be the thing that helps alongside therapy, before therapy, after therapy, or when therapy isn’t the right fit or accessible for you.

That’s why it mattered so much to me to build something different. Specifically for trauma. Based on what actually works. In our real-world study, 79% of users saw their mental health scores either improve or stay stable. The grounding tools help people 9 times out of 10. Those aren’t just good marketing numbers. They’re the result of building what people really need.

If you’re navigating trauma or PTSD and you’ve been searching for support – the way I was, finding nothing that met my needs – remind was built for you. It won’t fix everything. It will give you evidence-based tools that you can reach for in the moments you need them most, insights into your own patterns, and reliable resources so you can make more sense of what’s happening. That’s what I and thousands of others needed. That’s what we built. There’s a 7-day free trial if you’d like to give it a try – and I’d love to hear how you find it.

7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month or £79.99/year. Cancel anytime.

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