For Therapists: About DBR
I've added Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) to my somatic palette, and I'm really excited about it for the efficacy and healing power it offers. I'm actually really amazed!
DBR, developed by psychiatrist Frank Corrigan, is a neuroscience-based somatic approach that works with the brainstem's orienting response and the split-second "shock" the body registers before emotion.
- Because it works below narrative and affect, clients don't have to retell what happened.
- And because many different experiences often run on the same underlying shock sequence, working that one sequence through can settle a whole set of them at once, rather than going memory by memory.
- Over a series of sessions, hypervigilance and reactivity ease and old material becomes possible to be near—which is also why it pairs so well with ongoing therapy.
- In a 2023 RCT (Kearney et al., European Journal of Psychotraumatology), 48% of participants no longer met PTSD criteria after eight sessions, rising to 52% at three-month follow-up, with a very low dropout rate.
If you work somatically yourself, DBR will feel familiar but distinct. Orienting is the very first thing any of us does—before thought, before emotion—and when what we orient to is shocking, that shock lodges deep and stays there until it's cleared at that level, below the reach of talk and deeper than most body-based work goes. DBR uses the orienting response not to resource the system, as you might in Sensorimotor or SE, but as the anchor that lets you get down to that shock and clear it directly.
It's especially suited to trauma that talk can't easily reach—attachment wounds, preverbal and birth trauma, and acute shock—across the whole range, from the earliest pre-language injuries to first responders carrying single-incident shock. Even early on, I've had clients notice things easing that we never worked on directly—an old phobia loosening, or the old freeze-and-withdraw in relationships giving way—which is just what you'd expect as a shared underlying shock clears
More on my approach with DBR: https://kathleendunbar.net/dbr
The DBR website: https://deepbrainreorienting.com/hypothetical-basis/
- I'm take new clients for somatic trauma treatment that includes it.
- I'm available to see your clients for DBR adjunctively, alongside their ongoing work with you rather than in place of it.
I'd love to talk it through if someone comes to mind—always happy to share more.