Image: Salaamedia
Local – When worries peak at 2 am, no one is often there to turn to. Friends are asleep, and professional help is rarely available at that hour. The Confidence Coach, a new mobile app, aims to fill that gap by offering coaching and emotional support at any hour, day or night.
Denesh Maripan, Founder of The Confidence Coach, said the app grew out of his work as a life coach. He said many clients first had to overcome the guilt of spending money on themselves, then confide in a stranger about things they wouldn’t even discuss with family. He wanted to build something people could carry in their pocket, use at their own pace and afford.
“I found myself at a crossroads because I wish I could help everyone and I wish I could do it for free,” Maripan said.
How The App Works
The Confidence Coach launched in October and is available 24 hours a day. When users open it, they are asked how they are feeling and can choose from emotion tiles, a scale or an option for when they are unsure. They can also journal and schedule check-ins at times that suit their day, which Maripan said mirror the way a coach checks in on a client.
He said all entries stay on the user’s phone, with no cloud sync or backup. The app draws on cognitive behavioural therapy and neuro-linguistic programming, and prompts users to recognise what they have achieved rather than dwell on what went wrong. Maripan said it was designed to work alongside professional help, not replace it.
“So if I can frame it this way, clinical help. There’s no substitute for it. That’s your body. All right? That’s every muscle in your body. The Confidence Coach app is a supplement to that,” he said.
Price and Availability
The app is free to download with one check-in a day, while a subscription of about R28 a month unlocks unlimited coaching. Maripan said keeping the price low was important so support didn’t feel reserved for a certain class of people.
Maripan said the most important message for anyone struggling was that they were not alone. He said many people grew up in communities where mental health was never discussed, so even when they sensed something was wrong, they pushed the feeling away instead of acknowledging it.
“In your mind it shouldn’t exist… It does exist. There is support,” he said.
