Berlin Startup Attuned Offers Human Connection to Manage Stress and Overwhelm

Across Europe, accessing professional mental health support can be a lengthy and costly process. However, there is a gap between needing clinical treatment and feeling fine. People experience stress, overwhelm, sleeplessness, or anxiety before a social situation or meeting, or moments when their usual ways of calming themselves just aren't working.

An expanding wellness industry has moved into this space, offering various tools and technologies. However, one Berlin startup is taking a different approach, focusing on human connection rather than technology.

Attuned combines smartphone-based haptics and guided audio with access to another human being who is simply there to help users become grounded. The platform offers two main functions: self-regulation and co-regulation.

## From Insurtech to Human Connection

Julian Teicke, co-founder and Chairperson of Attuned, has a background in insurtech and has founded several successful startups. He is also a leader of Bad1, a community-led initiative that aims to make Berlin the most builder-friendly tech city in Europe.

Teicke founded Attuned alongside Rebecca Godfrey, a product leader who spent more than a decade as a touring electronic music artist and was diagnosed autistic as an adult; and Thomas Hübl, teacher and author of *Healing Collective Trauma*.

## How Attuned Works

Attunement combines two functions into a single interface that are designed to manage dysregulation and improve wellbeing. For self-regulation, it offers short haptic sessions that translate designed frequency patterns into vibration through the phone, plus guided audio sessions created by Hübl.

For co-regulation, users can connect with a vetted Anchor, a person trained in Attuned’s peer-presence protocol. In quiet sessions, the Anchor is simply present, with no conversation required; in open sessions, the user can talk if they choose.

## The Science Behind Co-Regulation

The co-regulation feature draws on research showing that human nervous systems regulate one another through social interaction. In a well-known 2006 fMRI experiment, neuroscientist James Coan and colleagues studied 16 married women who were told they might receive a mild electric shock while lying in a brain scanner.

Researchers compared their responses when they were alone, holding the hand of an anonymous experimenter, or holding their husband’s hand. Holding another person’s hand reduced activity in brain regions associated with threat.

Social baseline theory, built on this work, holds that proximity to others is the brain’s default strategy for managing stress, and developmental research shows that infants first learn self-regulation through co-regulation with caregivers.

When supportive others are present (or even anticipated), stress responses, self-regulation demands, and associated neural activity are reduced. This is the principle Attuned is attempting to bring into its Anchor sessions.

## Does Co-Regulation Work Over Video?

However, whether comparable effects can be achieved through video interaction remains a question Attuned has yet to establish scientifically. Teicke says the company intends to validate this through research.

| Feature | Self-Regulation | Co-Regulation | | --- | --- | --- |

| Function | Short haptic sessions, guided audio sessions | Quiet sessions, open sessions with a vetted Anchor | | Technology | Smartphone-based haptics, guided audio | Video interaction with a vetted Anchor | | Purpose | Manage dysregulation and improve wellbeing | Regulate the nervous system through social interaction |

Attuned's approach builds on Hübl's coaching work, which involves simply giving each other presence, sitting silently for a minute or two and looking into each other’s eyes. Teicke admits that initially he found this “super uncomfortable”, partly because it was something he simply didn't do in his everyday life.

However, he believes that this practice, combined with a long period of inner work, also changed how he showed up in his relationships and work. “It also allowed me to show up more authentically in life and more vulnerably - more like me and how I am. And it gave me a tool to cope with overwhelm and operate from a more grounded place.”

As a leader, it helps him make better decisions. That experience also changed how Teicke thought about technology. Despite years working with and investing in AI, he concluded that this was one problem he didn’t want to solve with an AI companion.

“The only thing that is going to support the regulation of dysregulated nervous systems is another human, another system.” That realisation ultimately shaped what he calls “the most important project of my life”: building “an infrastructure that allows human-to-human connection at scale.”