What is the Orpheus Decoupling Process?
The Orpheus Decoupling Process is the system and toolkit behind the Orpheus app: a rapid audio intervention that decouples automatic unwanted emotional responses from the thoughts, memories or beliefs that trigger them. Like the rest of the app, it works at the subconscious level, where most of these automatic reactions happen.
While holding a negative thought, feeling, or memory in mind, you’re guided through a pattern of hand-tapping in response to audio cues, alongside a calm, self-affirming narrative. Most people notice the emotional charge attached to that thought start to fade within a single listen, typically around 10 to 15 minutes, even though the memory itself doesn’t disappear. The effect is cumulative: the more it’s used, the stronger the overall effect tends to be.
Critically, the process is content-free. You never have to describe, explain, or relive the details of what’s troubling you out loud. Many people use a private label or metaphor for the issue they’re working on instead, one reason practitioners have found it useful for sensitive or traumatic material.
In the app, this takes the form of the Negative Emotion Destroyer tracks for unwanted emotions, and the Creator and Eraser tracks for unhelpful beliefs such as “I’m not good enough.” Both are taught in full, alongside the underlying process, through the Orpheus Academy.
The neuroscience behind it
Two people in the same situation can experience it very differently. That’s because the brain views the world through a lens shaped by a lifetime of experience, and some lenses make things look darker than they are, leading to stress, anxiety or guilt. Orpheus draws on several well-established areas of brain science to help change that lens at the subconscious level:
Recalled memories briefly become flexible before being stored away again, a window some researchers believe offers a genuine opportunity to change how emotionally charged a memory feels.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s lifelong ability to form new neural connections and adjust existing ones in response to experience. It’s what makes it possible for the Decoupling Process to change deeply wired automatic emotional reactions and beliefs, rather than only managing them in the moment.
Because the process is short, structured and content-free, it can be repeated as often as needed. Effects tend to build the more it’s used, which is why we describe the impact as cumulative rather than a single fix.
Orpheus weaves these and several other well-studied psychological mechanisms together in a unique way, leading to an intervention that rapidly reduces the emotional load attached to intrusive thoughts or memories.
The evidence so far
We’ve worked with universities, hospitals and independent researchers to start building a real evidence base:
- ✓A university wellbeing service pilot at Edge Hill University, published in a peer-reviewed journal, found statistically significant reductions in anxiety and depression scores among students who used Orpheus.
- ✓A published pilot study at Mexico’s National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery found significant improvements in PTSD symptom severity a week after a single session.
- ✓A randomised controlled trial compared Orpheus to a standard relaxation technique for people with traumatic memories.
- ✓A university dissertation analysed over 22,000 rows of real-world in-app usage data from nearly 1,000 users.
Research in progress
We’re continuing to invest in independent academic research so that the evidence keeps pace with how people are using Orpheus in the real world.
Get involved
We collaborate with academic, research and clinical teams around the world.
The Orpheus Academy teaches the Orpheus Decoupling Process to therapists and coaches.
Orpheus is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact your GP, a mental health professional, or emergency services.