DBR Therapy
What Is Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR)?
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When we experience trauma, our brainstem—the most primitive part of our nervous system—activates survival responses designed to protect us from harm. Ideally, once the danger passes, these responses complete and our system returns to baseline. However, when a threat is perceived as inescapable, the protective response can become frozen in our neurobiology.
Each survival response—fight, flight, freeze, or collapse—serves an important purpose in keeping us alive. However, when these responses remain incomplete due to overwhelming trauma, they can persist long after we're safe, showing up as hypervigilance, dissociation, flashbacks, or chronic physical tension.
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Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a body-based therapeutic approach designed to help us complete these stuck survival responses at their neurological source. In DBR therapy, we work directly with the brainstem's orienting response—the split-second moment when your nervous system first detected danger. By identifying and gently completing the protective movement that couldn't happen during the traumatic event, we help your nervous system recognize that the threat has passed and update its threat assessment accordingly.
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Developed by Dr. Frank Corrigan, DBR draws on neuroscience research about how the brainstem processes threat and safety. Corrigan observed that trauma lives not just in our thoughts and emotions, but in the incomplete defensive responses stored in our midbrain. Through careful attention to subtle body sensations and movements, we can help these ancient survival structures release what they've been holding and find their way back to safety.
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While DBR is a relatively new approach, there is a growing body of clinical evidence supporting its effectiveness, particularly for complex PTSD, dissociation, and trauma that hasn't responded to traditional talk therapy. DBR integrates beautifully with Internal Family Systems and other trauma-informed modalities, offering a powerful tool for healing trauma at its deepest roots.
How DBR Therapy Facilitates Nervous System Healing And Safety
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The principles of Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) are grounded in polyvagal theory and neuroscience, which emphasize how our nervous system processes threat and safety. This framework suggests that the survival responses encoded in our brainstem during traumatic moments continue to shape how we perceive and respond to the world around us.
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Building on this understanding, DBR posits that trauma isn't just a psychological wound but a physiological one stored in our most primitive brain structures. By working directly with the brainstem's orienting response, DBR therapy helps clients access their nervous system's innate capacity to complete protective movements that were interrupted during trauma. This process allows stuck survival responses to finally resolve, restoring the body's natural ability to return to safety and regulation.
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The nervous system recalibration that begins during sessions will eventually expand beyond therapy, helping you navigate triggering situations with greater ease and resilience. With a more regulated nervous system, you can experience relationships, daily stressors, and your own emotions without constantly being pulled into fight, flight, freeze, or collapse.
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Throughout DBR therapy, each survival response is met with respect. Taking a non-pathologizing approach, we honor the body's natural ability to be able to heal. Additionally, DBR integrates beautifully with Internal Family Systems, art therapy, or Hakomi body-centered practices to create a comprehensive healing experience that addresses both parts work and brainstem-level trauma resolution.
Who Can Benefit From Deep Brain Reorienting?
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DBR therapy can help anyone with a history of shock trauma—particularly those who experience ongoing nervous system dysregulation such as hypervigilance, dissociation, chronic pain, panic attacks, or emotional numbing. Additionally, DBR can be especially effective for neurodivergent individuals whose sensory sensitivities make traditional exposure-based trauma therapies overwhelming, and high-functioning, high-achieving adults who appear successful on the outside but struggle with burnout, perfectionism, and difficulty accessing their stress.
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Oftentimes, clients who find DBR helpful have previously tried talk therapy or other trauma modalities that haven't fully resolved their symptoms. They seek a body-based approach that works where trauma is actually stored neurologically. Realizing that healing doesn't require detailed storytelling or cognitive processing gives them hope.
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When you connect with a therapist who understands how trauma lives in the body, DBR can be transformative. By working directly with your nervous system's survival responses, DBR helps release stuck patterns without adding layers of shame or pathology.
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What To Expect In Sessions
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Good therapy is relational at its core. From our first session onward, I aim to establish safety and understand your hopes for healing.
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DBR is shock trauma therapy that works at the brainstem level, before emotion and before narrative. Sessions follow a specific neurophysiological arc: Orienting → Shock → Affect → Adaptive completion. We track what occurred in your body at the micro-sequence level during moments of shock, slowing down to notice subtle orienting responses like eye tension, neck tightening, or micro-freeze.
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Under this orienting tension often lies shock—dizziness, blankness, or dissociation. We stabilize your nervous system to metabolize these shock waves as they discharge. Only after shock clears does emotion naturally emerge, feeling cleaner and less defended. Completion arrives as spontaneous exhale, warmth, or quiet—not because the story changed, but because the shock imprint shifted.
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DBR emphasizes micro-resolution over dramatic breakthroughs. When appropriate, we integrate DBR with Internal Family Systems or Hakomi practices for comprehensive healing.
Have a Question or Would Like to Schedule an Appointment? Reach Out Today!
Deep Brain Reorienting Works With The Neuroscience Of Shock Trauma
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When something overwhelming happens, your brain responds in milliseconds—much faster than thoughts or emotions can form. DBR is shock trauma therapy that works with specific midbrain structures that activate in those first critical moments.
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Your Midbrain Registers Threat Before You Feel It
Your nervous system moves through a specific neurological sequence that begins in the superior colliculus and periaqueductal gray (PAG)—midbrain structures responsible for orienting to threats and generating survival responses.
Orienting Tension comes first—subtle tension in your forehead, around your eyes, or at the base of your skull. This happens when your superior colliculus detects something threatening, controlling eye movements and head turning reflexes within milliseconds.
Shock follows immediately—chills, electric sensations, pressure behind the eyes, waves of heat, or dizziness. This is generated by the periaqueductal gray (PAG) in your brainstem and often blocks emotion from emerging cleanly.
Affect (emotion) comes last—fear, rage, grief, or shame from your limbic system. Most therapies start here, but DBR starts two steps earlier.
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Why Unresolved Shock Keeps You Stuck
Research shows that when a threat feels imminent, brain activity shifts from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—which performs rational assessments—to the PAG, which takes over when danger feels close. When shock remains unprocessed at the PAG level, your superior colliculus continues signaling danger, driving chronic hypervigilance, freeze, or feeling unsafe even when you rationally know you're not in danger.
DBR uses ultra-slow awareness to make this stuck response sequence neurologically plastic and open to change. By identifying the orienting tension before the shock, we create an anchor against overwhelm, allowing shock to dissipate before emotion emerges. When these midbrain structures complete their interrupted survival sequence, your nervous system can finally update its threat assessment and recognize you're safe.
But Maybe You’re Not Sure If DBR Therapy Is Right For You…
What kind of patterns does DBR help resolve??
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Deep Brain Reorienting is especially helpful for patterns that feel automatic and hard to interrupt—attachment trauma, developmental trauma, chronic anxiety, emotional reactivity, freeze or shutdown states, and relational triggers that seem to come out of nowhere. Many people who benefit from DBR already understand their history and have insight into why they react the way they do, but their nervous system still activates before they can think. DBR works at that earlier layer, the place where the body first braced. It is particularly helpful when something feels stuck beneath your awareness, even after years of therapy or personal growth.
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Is DBR Intense or Overwhelming?
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DBR is designed to reduce overwhelm, not increase it. Rather than diving into trauma memories quickly, we move slowly and work with the body's natural pacing. Much of the work happens in subtle physical sensations—small shifts in tension, orientation, or energy. We track carefully and stay within your nervous system's capacity, pausing to re-stabilize if the system begins to feel flooded or dissociated. Clients are often surprised that such subtle work can produce deep shifts without reliving events in an intense way.
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Can DBR be combined with IFS or other somatic approaches?
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Yes. DBR integrates beautifully with Internal Family Systems (IFS), Hakomi, and other body-based approaches. Sometimes we are working with parts, sometimes tracking relational patterns, and sometimes the nervous system needs to process shock at a deeper, earlier layer. Rather than applying one method rigidly, I tailor the approach to what your system needs in that moment. DBR is one powerful tool within a broader relational and somatic framework.
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How long does DBR take?
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There isn't a fixed timeline. Some clients notice meaningful shifts within a few sessions, especially around a specific relational memory or trigger. Developmental or attachment trauma, which unfolds across many early experiences, tends to resolve more gradually over time. DBR is not about quick symptom suppression—it's about helping the nervous system metabolize responses that were interrupted in the past. The pace is steady, respectful, and guided by your system.
Release Stuck Survival Responses And Return To A Life That Feels Safe, Present, And Fully Yours
Your inner exploration could help you find more external happiness and satisfaction. To schedule a free 15-minute consultation to find out more about in-person or online depression therapy with me, please call (614) 285-5013 or visit my contact page.
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[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37581275/ The RCT published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology — this is your strongest citation, directly supporting DBR's effectiveness for PTSD with large effect sizes.
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10431732/ The same RCT on PubMed Central (free full text) — good to link for readers who want to read the full study.
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/healing-from-trauma/202508/targeting-traumatic-shock-with-deep-brain-reorienting-dbr A Psychology Today article by the researchers themselves — very accessible for a general audience and credible enough for a therapy website.
[4] https://deepbrainreorienting.com/ Dr. Frank Corrigan's official DBR site — good for legitimacy and directing people to the source.
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