Seven days that took chronic anxiety down by two thirds.
Meta Spirituality · Trial 1
Six hundred and seventy-six women living with chronic anxiety were randomly assigned either to a seven-day online intervention or to a control group. Anxiety fell by 67% in the intervention group and kept falling after the program had ended, while the control group barely moved. This trial was conducted as part of the founder’s doctoral dissertation.
Doctoral dissertation · preprint link to follow
Headline results
What changed across seven days
−67%
Anxiety (BAI)
23.4 → 7.6, from moderate to minimal
−70% at one-month follow-up
−61%
Generalised anxiety (GAD-7)
12.5 → 4.9, and lower again a month later
Below the clinical threshold
−38%
Experiential avoidance (AAQ-II)
the struggle to keep feelings out
The mechanism the trial was built to test
Full results
Every outcome, every timepoint
Group means at each measurement. EG is the intervention group and CG the control group. The final column reports the between-group rank-biserial correlation at the post-intervention measurement, which is the effect size used throughout because the analysis is nonparametric.
Outcome | Description | Group | Before | After | 1 month | Between-group r | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anxiety (BAI) | somatic and cognitive anxiety | EG | 23.4 | 7.6 | 7.0 | .60 | p < .001 |
CG | 21.7 | 18.2 | — | ||||
Generalised anxiety (GAD-7) | worry that will not switch off | EG | 12.5 | 4.9 | 4.4 | .67 | p < .001 |
CG | — | — | — | ||||
State anxiety (STAI-S) | anxiety in this moment | EG | 57.1 | 36.8 | — | .73 | p < .001 |
CG | 54.7 | 54.7 | — | ||||
Trait anxiety (STAI-T) | anxiety as a standing disposition | EG | 58.3 | 40.8 | 39.9 | .68 | p < .001 |
CG | 57.7 | 56.6 | — | ||||
Experiential avoidance (AAQ-II) | the effort of not feeling | EG | 32.9 | 20.3 | — | .58 | p < .001 |
CG | — | — | — | ||||
Frustration tolerance | capacity to stay with difficulty | EG | 58.6 | 73.3 | — | .54 | p < .001 |
CG | — | — | — |
Trait anxiety moved.
Traits are not supposed to.
How to read this
The finding that matters most is the one nobody expects
State anxiety is meant to move, because it describes how a person feels today. Trait anxiety describes how a person generally is, and it is treated in the literature as close to a fixed disposition. It fell by 30% in seven days and was lower again a month later. The dissertation argues that this is evidence that a trait measure tracks the position a person is identified with rather than a fixed feature of their temperament, which is precisely what the paradigm predicts. The intervention isolates Self-as-Context, the process in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that corresponds to the identity shift Meta Spirituality describes.
−30%
STAI Trait Anxiety
Anxiety as a stable personality trait
MOST CLINICALLY RARE
PRE
MEASURED SCORE
MAXIMUM · 80
58.3
POST
40.8
+30D
39.9
Trait measures are designed to be stable. Moving trait anxiety 30% in seven days is rare enough in clinical research that it became the central finding of the dissertation.
Method note.
Participants were randomly assigned to the seven-day online intervention or to a control group, with assessment before, immediately after, and at one-month follow-up, where 325 participants were reassessed. The analysis is nonparametric throughout, using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests within groups and Mann-Whitney U tests between groups, with rank-biserial correlation as the effect size. Every within-group change in the intervention group and every between-group comparison after the intervention reached p < .001. Individual results vary, and a group result is never a promise of an individual outcome. This intervention is educational and is not medical care or psychotherapy. The dissertation manuscript will be deposited publicly and the link will be published here.
Source.
Verkoeyen 2026, Meta Spirituality Trial 1, N = 676, randomized controlled trial conducted as doctoral research.