Deep Brain Reorienting

Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a trauma-processing therapy developed by Dr. Frank Corrigan, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist in Scotland. He and his team have spent decades dedicated to healing trauma survivors from the horrors of their experiences.

DBR targets the initial, milliseconds-long shock response that occurs in the brainstem long before thoughts or emotions reach conscious awareness. Because DBR does not rely on narrative memory, it is an effective treatment for even those early life experiences that are not accessible to present-day consciousness.

We now know that traumatic experiences are often unremembered or difficult to put into words. In fact, because trauma is such a powerful threat, the parts of the brain that remember cannot function during a traumatic event, regardless of the person's age or verbal abilities. The brain is busy focusing on survival.

Without narrative memory (the memory that is accessible to the prefrontal cortex), the traumatized person can never know all the details of what happened to them. They live their lives in disbelief and confusion, with anxiety, symptoms and fears that they cannot understand.

Many trauma therapies ask you to recall and narrate your experiences in detail. DBR works differently. The trauma — which is almost always encoded as brainstem-level shock — is processed using careful attention to the body's responses. Not only is this type of processing remarkably effective, it is non-threatening.

Because DBR works at the level of the brainstem, it is singularly effective with unremembered trauma experiences and attachment wounds that cannot be put into words, including those that occurred before speech is acquired.

Most traumas are difficult if not overwhelming to talk about. DBR does not require that and is especially valuable when talk therapy alone hasn't been able to fully resolve the person's symptoms.