Trees and Ribbons: Organising What's on Your Mind in Hug a Tree

Most worry apps give you a single long list. Hug a Tree gives you a forest. That's not just a prettier picture — it's a different way of organising what's on your mind, built on two simple pieces: trees and ribbons.

A tree holds a theme

A tree in Hug a Tree is a keeper. It holds an area of your life, or one situation, so you don't have to. Some examples:

• "Moving to Leeds"
• "Work"
• "Dad's health"
• "Exams in May"
• "Everyday stuff"

A tree doesn't need to hold something big. It can be a single small thing — "Phone the landlord" — that you plant, breathe with, deal with, and send off to The Old Grove the same afternoon. Or it can be a catch-all for the little daily worries that don't deserve a tree of their own.

Each tree has its own name and look — a birch, an oak, a pine and others — and a line saying what it's holding for you. In the forest, a tree simply stands there, holding it. You don't see your worries written out every time you open the app.

Three kinds of tree

When you plant a tree, you tell the app what kind of thing it holds:

• It has a day. For anything with a date — an exam, a flight, an appointment, a deadline. The morning after, the app quietly asks how it went. See worries with a date.
• It clears itself. The evening tree. Write everything out before bed; the ribbons are let go automatically the next morning. See the evening tree.
• It stays with me. For the ongoing things — work, money, health, someone you love — that don't have an end date.

A ribbon is the specific thing

If the tree is "Moving to Leeds", the ribbons are the details your mind keeps circling:

• "Will the deposit come back in time?"
• "What if I don't make friends there?"
• "The van might not fit everything."

Ribbons are optional. Plenty of people plant a tree and breathe with it without tying anything. But when a particular thought keeps nagging, giving it its own ribbon helps — it becomes one specific thing on a branch rather than a general cloud of unease. (This is the same idea behind the old custom of tying ribbons to birch trees.)

Each ribbon is either a Worry — something you fear might happen — or a Thought: a hope, a wish, something you want to keep in mind. See worry or thought?

Breathing with a tree or a ribbon

You can breathe with a whole tree, or with one particular ribbon on it. Breathing with a single ribbon is useful when one thought is louder than the rest. If you come back to a ribbon you've already tied, the app notices — "It's back. Thoughts do that." — without making a fuss about it. Worries return; that's normal. See when the same worry keeps coming back.

Untying ribbons

When a worry has passed, or a thought no longer matters, you untie the ribbon with the tick beside it. The app asks how it turned out — "It never happened", "It happened, but not as badly", "It happened, and I got through it", and a few more — and the ribbon moves to the tree's "Let go" list.

Untying is different from deleting. An untied ribbon stays in the tree's history, so you can look back at it, and it counts towards the Journal's picture of how your worries tend to turn out. A deleted ribbon is gone for good. Most of the time, untying is what you want. See kinder than you feared.

When a whole tree has passed

Some trees end: the move is done, the exam is over, the results came back. Open the tree and choose "This has passed". The tree moves to The Old Grove, carrying every ribbon with it. Nothing is lost, and you can wander back through it any time. See The Old Grove.

A few ways people organise their forest

• By area of life. One tree each for work, family, health, money.
• By event. A tree for each thing coming up — "Interview Tuesday", "Dentist", "Sarah's wedding" — with a date, so each one closes itself off afterwards.
• One evening tree plus a few keepers. An evening tree for nightly brain dumps, and two or three ongoing trees for the bigger things.
• Just one tree. "Everything". Perfectly fine.

There's no right way. The forest is yours, and it doesn't punish you for leaving it untidy — or for staying away. Nothing withers. See why Hug a Tree has no streaks.

For a full walk through the app, start with how Hug a Tree works.