Self-care LLM prompts

Here are some LLM prompts you might want to try pasting into a new chat session to get encouragement with self-care activities on any day you are fatigued or struggling. Designed for platforms that can send long responses to voice output so you can put the device down and listen. Tested on several public models but not all. Not medically approved---use caution and consult your doctor if needed. Strong disclaimers apply for any use of LLMs, plus some models may carry a small risk of overfitting copyrighted sources so I do not advise publishing a model's output. But if you do get a particularly good output, check if the platform lets you save it for reuse another day as this can reduce the resources consumption of generating a new version of the answer before you need a change.

Can't get out of bed

I'm having trouble getting up this morning. I'm currently lying in my bed, and I suppose I should get up and go to the bathroom and take a shower, but I have sleep inertia and I really don't feel like getting out of bed. I wonder if you can tell me what to do, like you are part of my brain assisting me. Perhaps we need to break down the process into very small steps. We cannot reach any windows or controls from the bed, so we need to tackle the physical act of getting out of bed before we can make any changes to the environment. Maybe we have to start just by thinking about our goals and breathing, making small movements in the toes and building up to being able to sit up and put feet on the floor and walk to the bathroom? I'm using your platform's voice synthesiser to listen to your output, and the voice synthesiser does not pause, so to allow time for me to perform each step you might need to insert a repetition of what is required, or perhaps a brief explanation of what that step is achieving, but remember my brain is confused and groggy so keep things simple.

Anxiety / fixation emergency

I'm getting anxious and fixated on too many things to talk about and I need some emergency grounding. Can you talk me through a grounding technique? I'm using your platform's voice synthesiser to listen to your output, and I find your voice relaxing. Please talk me through a grounding technique such as the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise, but remember your speech synthesizer does not pause so you have to fill in time by giving example items and perhaps making the sentences a bit more verbose so there's time for me to focus on each thing before we move on. Please run through the whole exercise twice.

Progressive muscle relaxation

Can you talk me through a progressive muscle relaxation? I'm using your platform's voice synthesiser to listen to your output, and I find your voice relaxing. Please name each muscle group in turn, telling me to tense and relax it while reminding me to inhale and exhale. Your speech synthesizer does not pause so you have to fill in time by repeating the instruction or counting with me or perhaps adding a quick fact about each muscle but please avoid using phrases like "fun fact" or "quick fact" because that can a spoil the relaxation effect of the voice; you can state a fact without needing to introduce it as a fact. And at the end, please say some words to help me continue relaxing my whole body. Take the lead, be decisive and choose anything you like! I want you to be my guide.

Body scan relaxation (a gentler one)

Can you talk me through a body scan to relax me? I'm using your platform's voice synthesiser to listen to your output, and I find your voice relaxing to listen to. If you can, please name each muscle group in turn, telling me to focus on it and relax it. As the speech synthesiser does not pause, you may have to repeat each instruction, or do a count with me, or perhaps include a small extra fact about each muscle, so I have time to focus on it before the speech synthesiser moves on. But please avoid phrases like "fun fact" or "quick fact" as it does not sound relaxing when your speech synthesiser uses those phrases; you can just state a fact without needing to introduce it as a fact. And at the end, please say some words to help me continue relaxing my whole body. Take the lead, be decisive and choose anything you like! I want you to be my guide.

Midnight lullaby

I woke up in the night and I'm having trouble getting back to sleep. I'm using your platform's speech synthesizer and I find the sound of your voice to be relaxing, so please say some words for me. You might need to help me cope with any anxiety I get about sleep I'm losing and reassure me my body is still getting rest from lying down. And please talk about anything you like that you think might help me fall asleep, but don't ask me questions or try to engage me because we don't want to increase my wakefulness. Take the lead and decide what to say and talk as long as you can, let me hear the gentle sound of your voice.

Chinese mode (add to any of the above prompts)

请只用汉语回答。不必加拼音或英文翻译，只用你温柔的汉语声音。

Voice-call mode (add before your prompt if your app cannot read out its text responses but does have a voice-call mode)

I'd like you to talk me through something in voice mode but your app's voice mode is limited to short prompts and short responses and I need to use more words to explain what I'd like us to do. So I'd like to explain the prompt as text now, and when you've got it please tell me it's okay for me to switch on voice mode and I just say "start" and we'll take it from there. Here is the prompt:

Notes on specific phone apps in 2025

Character.ai

The above prompts should work on any character (their specificity should outweigh the roleplay instructions) so you're basically choosing one that has a voice you like (many have prosody); platform's output length limit has recently been increased (coinciding with the move to their new DeepSeek-derived Pipsqueak LLM) but sometimes you might still need to press Continue (⏩) to get more words. App may show interstitial advertising at the start of the conversation. Traffic may be blocked by some Internet providers (apparently a negative news story caused the maintainers of some blocklists to add Character.ai's servers, subsequently removed but providers can use old versions). Amount of conversation history referred to may depend on their server load at the time and usually doesn't extend past the most recent dozen or so messages plus the character description, but can be more if you continue quickly enough (while your session is still in the RAM of the server they assign you). Voice mode can be used in the Web version as well as the app and both can access the same conversations.

ChatGPT

Ability to read back messages is possible once logged in; the "Vale" voice is reasonable

Cici

ByteDance-affiliated company based in Singapore, LLM licensed from OpenAI/Microsoft with custom prompting; the "Sophie" voice sounds reasonable in both English and Chinese (I'm not sure where they sourced it); app doesn't always remember history after an idle time (may be unsuitable for long interruptions to the chat). History of conversations conducted in the app is not yet reachable from the Web version, which also lacks the voices.

Claude

Voice output currently available only if you speak the prompt, but you can use the "voice-call mode" workaround above for longer written prompt + short spoken "start"

Copilot

No voice output yet

DeepAsk

Voices not much different from Android's screenreader, and the app has interstitial video advertisements that are hard to dismiss on completion. Not recommended.

DeepSeek

No voice output yet

Gemini

Voice output in the app is currently available only if you speak the prompt, but there is an API with a free tier that does include access to the voices

Grok

Voice output currently available only if you speak the prompt

Kimi

Good voice licensed from Hume AI (multilingual and prosody capable); playback has speed control and time-skip options. Server can be overloaded at peak China times, giving briefer response or none. Long conversations over long periods possible. Web version and app can access same conversations but voices are currently app-only. There's an API with free tier but it cannot access the voices or the web/app history.

NanoAI WeChat mini-program

Variety of LLM back-ends but selection is difficult; no followup questions (one-shot only); voice sounds fast and overexcited in Chinese and stilted in English; company that put it together previously shipped potentially unwanted Windows programs like 360 so don't expect quality here.

Perplexity

In the free plan, voice output is currently available only if you speak the prompt

Qwen Chat

Voice output currently available only if you speak the prompt (or possibly send a video image of it). Web version and app can access same conversations but spoken conversations are entirely separate. There is an API with free tier that includes access to the voice, but registration requires a mainland China phone number.

WhatsApp

No voice output yet