For most of my life, one question has guided my work: how do we get back to who we are?
From the very beginning, the world teaches us how to be. It happens in so many small ways. A look of approval when we're quiet. A flash of tension when we're too loud, too sad, too much. The roles we take on in our families. The rules of school, of friendship, of belonging. Little by little, we learn which parts of ourselves are welcome and which are safer to put away.
Sometimes what we're taught fits who we are, and we grow into ourselves fairly naturally. Sometimes it doesn't. We learn to be agreeable when we're actually fierce, capable when we're actually overwhelmed, steady when something inside us is crying out. The adaptation works. It keeps us connected and safe. But over time, it can become hard to tell where the adaptation ends and we begin.
For many of us, there comes a time, in adolescence or somewhere in adulthood, when the old shape no longer fits. A restlessness. A quiet ache. A sense that the life we're living was built around someone we were supposed to be, rather than who we are. And so begins a period of discovery, each of us trying, in our own way, to find our way back home to ourselves.
I once believed psychology could answer that question: how do we get back to who we are, and I was disappointed. Much of the field helps people understand themselves, manage symptoms, and cope. Those things matter. But understanding yourself is not the same as becoming yourself.
That journey is what I've devoted my work to.
What EMDR Does Well
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, and it is one of the most researched trauma therapies we have. It is recommended in major treatment guidelines for PTSD and for good reason.
In EMDR, you bring a difficult memory to mind while following bilateral stimulation: eye movements, tapping, hand buzzers, or alternating tones. The emotional intensity being held around that memory gets to move through. Over time, the memory loses its charge. It's still there, but it no longer grips you in the same way. Often, present-day triggers connected to that memory soften too.
I practiced EMDR for years, including attachment-focused EMDR, and I saw it help people. It helped with specific memories, with relationships, and with reactions that had been running their lives.
Where EMDR Fell Short
EMDR didn't work consistently. And even when it did, it only went so far.
Most of us weren't shaped by one memory. We were shaped by many experiences, layered on top of one another over years, the way every childhood is. If your inner world was built around staying safe and adapting to the people around you, as it is for so many of us, that structure doesn't live in one memory. It lives in all of them together.
EMDR could reduce the impact of particular memories. What it couldn't do was dissolve the whole structure those memories built. It helped up to a point, and then that was it. People felt better, but they didn't become themselves.
There was also an added piece about EMDR’s periodic intensity. EMDR asks you to go into the heart of the distress in order to reduce it. For many clients, that was exhausting, and sometimes the exhaustion lasted well beyond the session.
How DBR Is Different
Deep Brain Reorienting, developed by psychiatrist Frank Corrigan, works at a different level.
Every overwhelming experience moves through the same sequence in the brain. First, the body orients toward what is happening. Then it goes into shock. Then emotion comes, and finally thought. This sequence begins in the brainstem, faster than we can think. When the shock isn't resolved, it holds everything above it in place: the emotions that keep returning, the thoughts that keep looping, the patterns we can't seem to change.
In DBR, your awareness is positioned at the level of the brainstem by using a simple orienting technique. Your attention is then guided to identify an orienting tension and the shock beneath it, rather than moving into the full intensity of the emotion or the story. When the shock is met at this level, it releases, and what it was holding in place begins to let go.
What Clients Tell Me
When people who have done EMDR come to DBR, I’ve heard from clients it's as though their patterns are dissolving on their own. They don't understand how it works. Often it doesn't feel like they're doing anything at all. And yet, week to week, they see improvement they hadn't seen with other approaches.
They describe feeling more like themselves. Discovering parts of themselves they didn't know were there, which helps them feel as though life has more fullness and vibrancy. They describe feeling more grounded and centered and that they’re able to be themselves with confidence in situations that used to undo them. Less triggered, less reactive, less stressed.
This is what I had been looking for all those years. Not only relief, but becoming.
Why DBR Is Now My Primary Method
I no longer offer EMDR. Clinically, I recommend DBR over EMDR for four main reasons. The first three: in my experience, it's more effective, it's far gentler on the system, and it tends to work more quickly.
But the fourth reason, the deepest reason is the one that started all of this. DBR doesn't just reduce symptoms. It helps people become themselves, naturally and almost without effort. The technique itself seems to make room for who someone actually is to come forward.
It still amazes me that something like this is possible.
If you've done EMDR or other trauma work and felt it only took you so far, you can read more about how I practice DBR, or reach out for a free consultation.
Click here to learn more about DBR.