Frequently asked questions

Yes — sessions place their sounds around you with spatial audio, which needs headphones to work. Any stereo headphones or earbuds are fine; no special hardware is required. Why the protocol depends on it: do you need headphones for ATT?

Heed is free to download and comes with sessions included. A premium subscription — or a one-time lifetime purchase — unlocks the full scene library.

Heed runs on iPhone and on Android phones — download it from the App Store or from Google Play.

Yes. All sounds ship inside the app and sessions are generated on your device, so you can practice without a connection.

No. The practice is done with your eyes open and your gaze resting on any fixed point — a spot on the wall works. The voice tells you everything you need to hear, so there is nothing you need to watch.

That has a page of its own: see what happens in an ATT session.

Heed ships with a catalog of around a hundred sounds. A session either draws a fresh Sound Mix from that catalog, or plays one of the hand-crafted scenes — soundscapes like a campfire at night or a busy kitchen — with each sound placed at its own point in space.

No. Heed is a self-practice tool inspired by ATT research — not therapy, and not a medical device. If you are dealing with a health concern, please talk to a qualified professional.

No. Heed is an independent app by SK95 Engineering, built around the published attention-training paradigm of Wells (1990). It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Adrian Wells, the MCT Institute, or any clinical organization. The site cites scientific claims and documents where the app differs from the manual.

ATT has been studied as a treatment technique, but it is not an established standalone treatment for anxiety. Heed is not therapy and makes no treatment claim. What the technique targets is a pattern Wells calls the cognitive attentional syndrome — worry and rumination on a loop, scanning for threat, attention locked inward^[1]; practice is repetition in the opposite motion. The full answer, including what the lab evidence does and doesn’t show, is on attention training and anxiety. If anxiety is something you’re managing, please talk to a qualified professional.

No — worth saying plainly, since it’s a common assumption. Wells built ATT as scheduled practice done when you’re calm, not as an in-the-moment coping tool^[1], and reaching for it to escape a spiral is named in the manual as a way people undo the exercise^[1]. If you’re in real distress right now, this isn’t the right tool for this moment — talk to a qualified professional, or contact your local emergency or crisis services. See are you doing ATT right? for the other misreadings.

ATT doesn’t switch off rumination, and isn’t built to — it trains where attention goes rather than engaging with what you’re thinking^[1]. Two pages take this properly: attention training and rumination and attention training and overthinking.

Probably not as an in-the-moment fix, and no controlled study has isolated ATT and shown that it improves sleep; one insomnia study included ATT among several metacognitive elements^[2], so this site won’t claim it helps you fall asleep. Wells’ guidance is to practice when you’re not in a state of anxiety or acute worry^[1] — which is usually what a racing mind at bedtime is. See racing thoughts at night.

This is the use case ATT fits most directly — it’s attention training first, what Wells calls “mental fitness training”^[1]: hold focus on one sound, switch rapidly between several, then widen to take in all of them, over about twelve minutes built to stay demanding rather than get easier^[1]. Start with ATT for beginners, or read what the attention-task evidence shows on attention training for focus.

No. Wells frames ATT as general attention training, not a treatment tied to any diagnosis — explicitly not a form of avoidance or symptom management^[1]. Heed markets it the same way: Heed is a self-practice tool inspired by ATT research — not therapy, and not a medical device. It’s open to anyone who wants to practice attentional control, whether or not anxiety is part of the picture.