Deep Brain Reorienting Online Therapy
Virtual therapy in California, New York, and Connecticut
“Deep Brain Reorienting works at the layer where shock first enters the system, before it becomes story or symptom. That is the layer many of us have longed for therapy to reach, and so often, it hasn’t.”
– Anna Huff, PhD.
WHAT IS DBR?
DBR is a therapy informed by neuroscience and was developed by psychiatrist Frank Corrigan, MD, FRC Psych based on his clinical theory.
The approach is based on the following sequence:
Orienting. When something unexpected happens, the brain quickly orients us to where we are and then orients us to the unexpected stimuli. The midbrain then registers a particular orienting tension.
Shock. If what we orient to is too much, too fast, or unexpected, the midbrain registers a moment of shock before any emotion or thought forms. Typically, we do not consciously register this level of shock.
Affect. Only after we register shock do feelings like fear, rage, and grief arise. They're organized largely by the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a midbrain hub for defensive and attachment-related responses.
Story. Last of all, the cortex builds the narrative and meaning we tell about what happened.
Why this matters clinically: Most therapies enter the process at step 3 or 4. DBR goes back to steps 1 and 2. The client brings a moment of distress to mind while staying steadily oriented in the present. The therapist then helps them track the orienting tension first, then the shock beneath it, and only then the feeling. Taken slowly and in order, the shock can process without the system flooding while also allowing for deeper recognitions or insights to be experienced. That's part of why DBR can feel gentler than some other approaches, even with severe trauma.
Why is it important to address shock? Before your pain became a story, it was a shock captured by your brain stem. Something happened that was too much, too fast, and part of you braced and never quite let go. Those shocks add up over time. They become the reason we think the way we think and feel the way we feel, and the reason we stumble around in the same old patterns. They're also why we want to change so badly and still find ourselves stuck. Over time, the work builds on itself. People often find that life starts to be experienced more easily. They feel clearer and steadier, and decisions get simpler. The old reactions lose their grip, relationships feel lighter, and stress doesn't knock them over the way it used to. Life still happens, but it feels more manageable.
What falls away are the layers that were never you to begin with. What comes through are parts of you that you may never have had the chance to know.
WHO THIS IS FOR
DBR isn't designed for one condition. It works with something many conditions have in common. Anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, relationship struggles, or an emotional reaction can all look very different on the surface. Underneath, many of them share the same root: repeated shocks held in the brainstem that gradually affect our experience of ourselves, others, and the world around us. Because DBR works at that root, it can help with a wide range of what brings clients to therapy.
DBR works with the big things, like early trauma, attachment wounds, and what happened before words (pre- and per-natal trauma and experiences). It also works with the everyday things: a flare of anger with a partner, an unsettled feeling at work, or the longing you can't quite name.
Pain is usually what brings someone to therapy. And pain, when it finally moves, often reveals what it was covering: a self that was there the whole time, waiting for the space to live. For some, easing the pain is enough. For many, meeting that self becomes the deeper reason to stay.
If you have a meditation or contemplative practice, DBR can support a deepening into and an expansion of this process.
WHAT TO EXPECT
In our first session, we talk through what has brought you here and work together to set a path forward. From there, we move into DBR.
The first few DBR sessions are often focused on reducing the shock that has been held in your system. The initial sessions can seem unassuming. We are also not directly talking through what is distressing you, which may feel odd at first. And yet, after a few sessions, the change often begins. It is usually small at first, and then it gradually and noticeably builds.
DBR works over a series of sessions. In each one, we pick a moment of distress together. We start by getting settled in the present. Then we gently go back to that moment and let the shock and the related layers arise. We stay present for those layers to allow them to shift. As the work unfolds, people notice different things. Often we are not aware of the deeper layers we developed as defenses, the ones that keep us from being ourselves in the world. In DBR, the self beneath those layers begins to be known, felt, and experienced. A person gradually settles more and more into their own way of being and feels less and less governed by their defenses and by distracting or unsettling distress.