How Maybe works.

Maybe is a practice for thoughts that keep coming back, and for the loop they pull you into: googling, asking, replaying, confessing, asking again. It helps you stay with the doubt instead of settling it, one step at a time, so the loop takes less of your day and you get that time back.

Why the loop holds.

Every time the thought spikes, there are two lines out. Get the answer and the feeling drops fast, but your brain learns the question was dangerous and brings it back louder. Stay with it and it peaks, holds, then falls on its own, and it comes back quieter next time.

Practising the second line has a clinical name: exposure and response prevention, or ERP. It’s the first-line approach in published clinical guidance for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and everything in Maybe is built around it.

Alongside it sits a stance from acceptance and commitment therapy: letting the uncertainty stand and getting on with your day while it does. The fight with the thought is the exhausting part, and you can put it down.

Check, and it drops faster now but returns higherDon’t, and it peaks once, then fades

Check

Where you start.

The free check asks how the loop shows up for you: what you do, how long the relief lasts, what you have already tried. You get your answers back in plain words. Nothing is scored or diagnosed, and you are never asked to call yourself anything.

When you start, a few questions about the shape of it let the coach meet you where you are rather than from a script. You also set your limits before the first conversation, while you are calm, because the version of you at 2am is sometimes the loop asking for more.

Learn

Learn the ropes.

Five short lessons, in order: why thoughts stick, watching rather than wrestling, riding out the urge, putting a compulsion off, and facing things on purpose. A few minutes each, in plain words, and every clinical claim carries its source in the sentence that makes it. Each one opens once the one before it is covered, so the ground is there before anything is built on it.

Every lesson ends with a short check and a practice chat with one objective, so you use it before it fades. Once the course is done, two extra modules open, on the fear underneath and on looking after your body, and a closing lesson maps where the work lives from then on.

Practise

What the practice is made of.

The conversation is one part of it. The rest is a ladder of steps you set yourself, exposures written for the rung you are on, a way through the urge that turns up uninvited, and a plan for when it comes back. The chat is how you reach all of it at 3am, when the alternative is googling the same question again.

The coach, in two modes

Ride It Out is for the middle of a spike: short replies, no picking the thought apart, staying with you while the wave passes at whatever hour it arrives. Learn & Practice is for the calmer hours, where the lessons and the ladder are worked through.

Either way it holds the same line. It will not settle the question however it is worded, because an answer quiets it for a few minutes and the next spike lands higher. A voice note stays on your phone, and only the words are sent.

You say the thing
However bad it sounds. Type it, or hold the mic and say it. It isn't shocked, it doesn't judge, and nobody can read it, including us.
It helps you stay with it
It names what's happening and asks how loud the feeling is right now. It won't settle the question, because settling it is what feeds the loop.
You wait it out together
Minutes, usually. The feeling falls on its own, and you've just taught your brain something it will remember.
It asks before it remembers
When something worth keeping comes up, a card shows the line it would keep and you decide. Kept lines are sealed like everything else, and you can edit or forget them in Settings.

Maybe3:12am

You: I’ve asked before, I know. I just need to be sure.
Maybe: I won’t answer it. Answering is the hook, and it never holds.
You: It’s every night now. I get into bed and it starts.
Maybe: Then bed is the practice. Lie down with it tonight and let it be loud.

Worth keeping in mind?

It starts at bedtime, most nights.

Remember itNot now

An example, not a transcript. Nothing is kept unless you say so, and real conversations are encrypted before they leave your device, so there is no transcript we could show.

Your ladder

Small steps towards the things the loop has been shrinking, easiest first. The coach drafts it from what you have told it, and every change it suggests arrives as a card you accept or decline, so difficulty stays yours to set. One ladder at a time, so there is only ever one next rung.

The rung you are on is the one in focus. Do it, or take it into the chat first, then say how it went: easier than expected, about as expected, or harder. That answer is what the next rung is built from. There is no score and no streak, because a streak is one more thing to check.

Exposures, written for you and read to you

Some rungs cannot be done in the world: the feared outcome itself, an image that turns up uninvited. Ask the coach and it writes a short script for the rung you are on, in the words you have used for it, and reads it aloud. You pick whose voice reads it, and whether it reads to you or speaks the way thoughts do, in your head, with the words following along.

It stays level rather than talking the feeling down, because a voice that soothes you through a spike teaches you that you needed rescuing, which is a safety behaviour. The voice is made on our own servers, never by a speech company, and it comes back sealed so only you can open it.

The pull

Not doing the compulsion is the other half of the practice, and it happens in a hallway, halfway through a message, on the day it comes back. One tap when the urge to check, ask or search turns up: name it, let it be, and later say whether you gave in.

There is no timer and no score out of ten, and nothing counts how long it took to pass, because watching for that is checking too.

If you want the whole thing as something you could run yourself, on paper, with no app at all, the guide to practising ERP on your own walks each part in order.

Keep going

Keep going.

One thing to do today

The lessons end. The practice does not. Open the app and it shows where you got to and the one next thing, and a conversation starts from the rung you are on and how the last one went rather than from nothing.

A plan for when it comes back

Written while things are steady: your early signs, what helped, what to steer clear of, and the first thing you will do. It comes back for everyone, and having decided in advance beats deciding on the day.

A nudge you set yourself

Weekly or fortnightly, on a day you pick, and off until you turn it on. The email says it is the nudge you asked for and nothing about what you have done, because a reminder that reports on you is one more thing to check.

The basics, looked after

Mark that you moved, wound down or ate regular meals, a tap each. Sleep, movement and food make the hard days easier to meet. There is no run to break, a missed day is an empty circle, and it is off until you turn it on.

Take it with you.

A card for the person you keep asking, in your own words. It gives them something to say rather than something to withhold, and it never asks them to be cold to you.

A summary for a first appointment, so you do not start from scratch: what you said at the start, your ladders, the urges you logged and your plan. It says on its own front page that it is not a clinical record and that nothing in it has been scored. Both are made on your device and go straight to your share sheet, so no version of either reaches us.

It helps you use it less.

You set how many conversations a day and a week, how long one runs, how many messages it holds, and the gap before the next. They count from midnight where you are, and the server holds them, not the app on your phone.

Giving yourself more room asks you once whether you are sure, because the version of you that wants more of this is sometimes the loop asking. In a crisis you can pause every limit for a day. Every conversation winds down on one small commitment, because the goal is fewer sessions, not more.

Built so we can’t read it.

Everything you write is encrypted on your device before it is sent, and we don’t hold the key. You can say the worst of it because nobody is reading.

Exactly what we can and can’t see How the vault works, in full

What it isn’t.

None of this is therapy, a diagnosis, or a crisis service. It is structured practice based on published clinical guidance, built for the hours when nothing else is open. If you are in immediate danger, the safety page lists real humans who can help, and that link is always one tap away inside the app.

The way we write about this follows Mindframe, the Australian national guidelines for safe communication about suicide and mental ill-health.

Your time back

Get your time back from OCD.

The hours checking used to take go back to the people, plans and things you want to do again.

Try it for 7 days

Seven days free, then $15 a month. Card up front, first charge on day seven, cancel any time before then, and 30 days to change your mind after that.