DEEP BRAIN REORIENTING (DBR) THERAPY
The kind of inner work that changes lives.
I am Anna Huff, PhD, a licensed clinical depth-oriented psychologist in California, New York, and Connecticut. The pages here will give you a sense of who I am and what I offer. The work I offer is direct, integrative, and oriented toward change.
WELCOME
Many of the people who find me are working with anxiety, depression, trauma, attachment wounds, or recurring difficulty in relationships. Underneath those experiences, there is almost always a deeper layer: patterns of being and relating that took shape long ago, often in response to things that happened before there was language to make sense of them. Over time these patterns can feel indistinguishable from who you are. The relationship dynamic that keeps repeating, even with different people. The familiar ache that returns no matter how much understanding you have gained about it. The sense of being stuck in a place you have already mapped from every angle. These patterns are intricate and intelligent. They are real, they are doing something, and they are not the truth of who you are.
WHAT THIS WORK LOOKS LIKE
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR):
DBR is a therapy approach informed by neuroscience, and it starts simply. Long before your pain became a story, it was a shock captured by your brain stem. Those shocks, over time, accumulate and become the basis for why we think the way we think and feel the way we feel, and why we stumble around in the same old patterns. Those shocks are also the reason we struggle, at times, to change despite our willingness and our wanting to do so.
DBR unfolds over multiple sessions. It can ease symptoms, and it can help you expand into and experience who you truly are. In a session, we choose a moment of distress together. We ground in present awareness, return to the chosen moment, and then slowly allow the shock and related material to surface. Over time, the work builds on itself. Clients often describe the ease with which life changes are occurring (greater certainty, decision making capacity, clarity, and grounding and decreased symptoms, relationship distress, and impact from stressors). Difficult life events feel more manageable, and clients often feel more anchored within themselves and connected to the world around them. Overall, the work helps the layers release that were never you to begin with and helps parts of you to emerge that you may have never had the opportunity to know.
WHO THIS WORK IS FOR
Clients usually come to this work in one of two ways:
Setting down what has been carried. Something happened, once or many times, and it has stayed. It may show up as anxiety, depression, numbness, or reactions that feel bigger than the moment. Often, people have tried to move past it, and it hasn't moved.
Stepping into who one is becoming. Sometimes nothing is wrong, exactly. A person may understand their patterns well, yet understanding hasn't changed them. Or there is simply a sense of more to live than what is being lived.
Some people come for the first and find that is all they need. Others find that as the weight lifts, a longing for the possibilities of the second emerge.
Some people are new to therapy. Others have done years of inner work. Some think in psychological terms, some in spiritual terms, some in neither. What they share is a readiness to work beneath the story, where change actually happens.
MEET THE CLINICIAN
Hi, I’m Anna Huff, PhD.
I am a depth-oriented clinical psychologist, and I have spent most of my life inside the questions that bring people to this work. I started meditating in early childhood, before anyone taught me how, and that quiet attention to inner life has stayed with me ever since. My path into psychology came from wanting to understand the deeper layers of being human, what happens beneath the patterns we get caught in, and what becomes possible when those patterns finally release.
My strength as a clinician is navigation. I identify the structure of what someone is carrying, and I help map it, trace it back to where it formed, and unwind it at the level it is actually held.
This practice is LGBTQ+ affirming. All identities, orientations, and relationship structures are welcome here.
CREDENTIALS AND CERTIFICATIONS
PhD Clinical Forensic Psychology with a Concentration in Victimology
MA Organizational Behavior
DBR Deep Brain Reorienting, Level 2
EMDR Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
NA Touch NeuroAffective Touch®
TFT Thought Field Therapy
EFT Emotional Freedom Technique
TRET Trauma Resolution Energy Therapy