Sources and method

The Open Sky Method is a free, spoken self-help course that changes how you respond to worry and rumination. This page lists the published research it draws on, how we write and check every lesson, and what the evidence does and doesn't show.

Updated October 15, 2026

What the evidence shows

• Metacognitive therapy, delivered by trained therapists, has shown large improvements in anxiety and depression across trials and a meta-analysis, including head-to-head trials against cognitive behavioural therapy.
• Several of the course's techniques have been studied on their own: worry postponement, detached mindfulness and attention training, including a short self-guided version of attention training.

What it doesn't show

• No trial has tested this exact course. It's a self-guided adaptation, and self-help usually helps less than therapist-led treatment for people with severe problems.
• Many of the therapist-led trials are small, and several were run by the therapy's developers.
• We measure how the course is used with daily counts that carry no identifiers, optional feedback, and Google Analytics outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland (see privacy), and we'll say plainly what we learn.

Editorial and review policy

This is how the lessons, the guides under /learn and the pages under /for are written and checked.

1. Plan. Lessons follow the order of a published treatment manual and session-by-session protocol, adapted into eight self-guided lessons.
2. Write. Each lesson and guide is written in the course's plain, spoken voice. Lessons ask questions you can answer by tapping.
3. Evidence check. Every technique and factual claim is mapped to a source. A second, independent check confirms that each source exists, that the details (authors, journal, DOI) are right, and that it actually supports the claim. Claims a source doesn't support are cut or softened.
4. Book check. Each lesson is checked against the published treatment manual the course draws on, with page references, for faithfulness to the method and for anything it says not to do, such as arguing with what a worry says.
5. Adversarial safety review. A separate review reads each draft looking for ways it could mislead or harm someone: overclaiming, advice that could delay proper care, anything that might make things worse for someone with OCD, trauma, severe depression or thoughts of suicide. Lessons that touch painful memories or shame point to professional help, and nothing asks you to describe or relive painful details.
6. Corrections. When a reader or reviewer finds a mistake, we fix the lesson or page and update its date.

How we use AI

We use AI tools to help draft lessons and guides, and to run the reviews above as independent second readers. Nothing is published on the AI's word alone: every claim has to pass the evidence check against a real source, and the method has to pass the book check. The guide you talk to in the lessons is also an AI, with the limits set out below.

Clinical review

These pages haven’t yet been reviewed by a licensed clinician. We’re looking for one to review them. If you're a licensed clinician and would like to review the course, please email practice@openskymethod.com.

How the AI guide is limited

• It works on how you respond to thoughts, never on analysing the content of a worry or memory.
• It doesn't diagnose, name conditions, give medical advice or promise outcomes.
• If an answer mentions suicide or self-harm, a word check catches most of them before any AI sees them, and you get a fixed reply with helplines instead. If one gets past the check, the guide is told to stop and give the same helplines. Either way, that answer isn't sent to an AI again.
• Your answers, with up to four of your earlier answers in the lesson, are sent through OpenRouter to AI companies that don't keep them or train on them, and we don't store them. The privacy page names every company. If you sign in and turn on the short summary, the guide keeps a few sentences about how you tend to overthink, never your own words, and turning it off deletes it.

Credit and independence

The course draws on published research, including Professor Adrian Wells' work on metacognitive therapy (see the references below). Our wording, sounds and course design are our own, and the attention training uses our own script and sounds. The Open Sky Method isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Adrian Wells, the MCT Institute or Guilford Press.

Corrections

If you think something here is wrong or out of date, email practice@openskymethod.com. We check every report and update this page and the lessons when we get something wrong.

References

What the course draws on

1. Wells, A. (2009). Metacognitive Therapy for Anxiety and Depression. Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/books/Metacognitive-Therapy-for-Anxiety-and-Depression/Adrian-Wells/9781609184964The treatment manual the course draws on, describing the model and the techniques.
2. Generic 8-session metacognitive therapy treatment protocol (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06866639, revised 2024). https://cdn.clinicaltrials.gov/large-docs/39/NCT06866639/Prot_000.pdfA published session-by-session protocol we used to order the lessons.
3. Wells, A. (1990). Panic disorder in association with relaxation induced anxiety: an attentional training approach to treatment. Behavior Therapy, 21(3), 273–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(05)80330-2The first description of the attention training technique.
4. Wells, A. (2005). Detached mindfulness in cognitive therapy: a metacognitive analysis and ten techniques. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 23, 337–355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-005-0018-6Detached mindfulness: noticing a thought without engaging with it or pushing it away.

Trials and reviews

1. Normann, N. & Morina, N. (2018). The efficacy of metacognitive therapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2211. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02211/fullTherapist-delivered treatment showed large improvements across trials; many trials were small and several came from the developer's group.
2. Callesen, P., Reeves, D., Heal, C. & Wells, A. (2020). Metacognitive therapy versus cognitive behaviour therapy in adults with major depression: a parallel single-blind randomised trial. Scientific Reports, 10, 7878. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7217821/A randomised trial against CBT, for depression.
3. Nordahl, H. M., Borkovec, T. D., Hagen, R., Kennair, L. E. O. et al. (2018). Metacognitive therapy versus cognitive–behavioural therapy in adults with generalised anxiety disorder. BJPsych Open, 4(5), 393–400. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2018.54A randomised trial against CBT, for generalised anxiety.
4. Hagen, R., Hjemdal, O., Solem, S. et al. (2017). Metacognitive therapy for depression in adults: a waiting list randomized controlled trial with six months follow-up. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 31. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5258745/Compared with a waiting list, for depression.

Individual techniques

1. Krzikalla, C., Buhlmann, U., Schug, J., Kopei, I., Gerlach, A. L., Doebler, P., Morina, N. & Andor, T. (2024). Worry postponement from the metacognitive perspective: a randomized waitlist-controlled trial. Clinical Psychology in Europe, 6(2), e12741. https://doi.org/10.32872/cpe.12741Worry postponement taught as a test of the belief that worry is uncontrollable. Worry fell significantly for adults with generalised anxiety disorder, not for the smaller hypochondriasis group.
2. Myers, S. G. & Solem, S. (2026). Detached mindfulness as a stand-alone intervention: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13125881/Evidence on detached mindfulness used on its own.
3. Knowles, M. M., Foden, P., El-Deredy, W. & Wells, A. (2016). A systematic review of efficacy of the attention training technique in clinical and nonclinical samples. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 72(10), 999–1025. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22312A review of attention training studies.
4. Davison, C., Capobianco, L., Carter, K. et al. (2026). Cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the attention training technique: a systematic review and evidence synthesis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13288206/How attention training is delivered and what it changes.
5. Baumeister et al. (2024). Effectiveness of an abbreviated version of the automated attention training technique (ATT) for stress reduction. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 32, 100772. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2024.100772A 5-minute version of attention training, tested in a non-clinical sample; the basis for our short round.
6. Haukaas, R. B., Gjerde, I. B., Varting, G. et al. (2018). A randomized controlled trial comparing the attention training technique and mindful self-compassion for students with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 827. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5982936/Attention training compared with mindful self-compassion in students.
7. Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R. & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5The “white bear” studies on trying not to think of something.