EDINA, Minn. — For 17-year-old Taara Verma, of Edina, attending therapy is a critical part of her life.
The senior at The Blake School says it helped her prioritize her own emotions at a time when she felt like she was striving to be a rock for all of her friends. Through therapy, she developed helpful tools to cope with depression and anxiety. In particular, one tool stood out.
"What was presented to me was an emotions wheel on paper with the six categories in the middle, or maybe five... and then with more specific emotions, kind of on the outer rings, once you looked at which emotion you're feeling," Verma said. "I really felt like understanding where you're at emotionally, was really the first step to improving your mental health."
With the emotions wheel in mind, in December 2021, Verma started brainstorming what that concept could look like, in app form. She started putting her thoughts onto paper. In early 2022, she reached out to one of her best friends from Edina, Siena Pradhan, who's a senior at a boarding school in Massachusetts.
"So [Taara] came to me with like this proposal nicely written out," Pradhan said. "And I was like, great, this seems like a really cool idea. And so we continued developing the idea, trying to get a better idea of like, what exactly it should be, what should the app include, what type of features it had."
Pradhan and Verma did thorough research on what else was already out there.
"We tried a bunch of these apps one week, I just had like 18 different wellness apps on my phone, just trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work," Pradhan said.
The teens' biggest takeaway? They wanted something sustainable.
"We thought it's better to have something simple that people will, you know, do consistently and sustainably, than for people to sporadically do a deep dive," Verma said.
After taking their detailed proposal to a Nepal-based web developer who put the concept into a technical reality, Feel Now was born. Just like the emotion wheel Verma had experienced in therapy, users are prompted to pick from one of six emotions -- happy, sad, angry, peaceful, disgusted or scared. Then, they narrow down their emotions to a "sub-emotion." Once their emotion is logged, users can see their mood trends via a calendar view.
"Then hopefully, it can allow you--in both the positive and negative way--to either continue doing the things that make you feel good and maybe look and see how can I change the things I'm doing when I happen to feel not so good," Verma said.
To boost engagement among friend groups, the girls conceptualized a feature that allows people to add friends. The "streak" feature is familiar to users of Snapchat and Duolingo, and the randomly-timed, daily push notification prompting users to log their emotions is reminiscent of the popular BeReal app.
"So those types of apps and kind of keep the social pressure but in a healthy way. So keeping the social media pressure that there is but I'm using that actually to help yourself," Pradhan said.
Already, Pradhan says the app has more than 6,000 downloads. The early success was a bit unexpected.
"So right now for the app, we are actually just trying to make sure that it can reach the capacity and to keep everyone's data safe," Pradhan said.
During our interview, when demonstrating the app, Verma chose her emotion: happy. It's a feeling she certainly gets knowing she is able to help people better connect with what they're feeling inside.
"Therapy is a privilege so many people don't have access, whether it be for financial reasons for stigma," she said. "I wanted to be able to do something to help others who didn't get the opportunity have professional mental health support."
WATCH MORE ON KARE 11+
Download the free KARE 11+ app for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and other smart TV platforms to watch more from KARE 11 anytime! The KARE 11+ app includes live streams of all of KARE 11's newscasts. You'll also find on-demand replays of newscasts; the latest from KARE 11 Investigates, Breaking the News and the Land of 10,000 Stories; exclusive programs like Verify and HeartThreads; and Minnesota sports talk from our partners at Locked On Minnesota.
- Add KARE 11+ on Roku here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Roku Channel Store.
- Add KARE 11+ on Fire TV here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Amazon App Store.
- Learn more about the KARE 11+ app for Apple TV in the Apple App Store.
- Learn more about KARE 11+ here.
Watch more local news:
Watch the latest local news from the Twin Cities and across Minnesota in our YouTube playlist: