A Body-Based Approach to Trauma Therapy
Trauma can affect us in ways that exist beneath conscious thought. We may understand our experiences, recognize our patterns, and know that we are safe in the present, yet still notice our brain and body responding automatically to certain situations, relationships, emotions, or sensations.
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR®) is a trauma psychotherapy developed by psychiatrist Dr. Frank Corrigan. DBR works with responses generated within deeper areas of the brain involved in orienting to threat and attachment disruption. Rather than focusing primarily on our thoughts about an experience or on explicit memory, DBR attends to the underlying sequence of physiological responses that can occur when the brain
detects something significant, threatening, or connected to relational disconnection. This offers a different way of understanding and working with the impact of trauma.
Working With What Happens Beneath the Surface
Our brains are designed to orient quickly to what is happening around us. When something is experienced as threatening, overwhelming, or relationally significant, responses can begin before we consciously understand what is happening. Some of these patterns may also have their origins very early in life, including periods before we had language or the ability to form the kind of explicit memories we can later describe.
This can help explain something I hear from clients often: “I understand where this comes from. Why am I still reacting this way?” Insight is important, but sometimes the response we are experiencing begins at a level deeper than conscious understanding. DBR gives us a way to work with these underlying trauma responses by paying attention to what is happening within the brain and body rather than relying solely on what we consciously know or remember.
Because DBR does not depend upon having a clear narrative or explicit memory of an experience, it may also be particularly relevant when working with early developmental and attachment experiences.
Experiences of safety, threat, connection, and disconnection can shape us long before we have the language to explain what is happening.
A Different Way of Approaching Trauma
DBR is an experiential, body-based therapy. One of the things I value about this approach is its attention to what happens before the emotional and defensive responses we typically recognize as a trauma response. Rather than beginning with the most intense emotion or requiring extensive storytelling, DBR carefully attends to subtle responses connected with the brain’s underlying trauma sequence.
The work is intentionally careful and paced. The goal is not to force an experience, create an emotional response, or push through overwhelm. Instead, we pay close attention to what the brain and body are already communicating while remaining aware of present-moment capacity.
DBR may be appropriate for people experiencing PTSD, Complex PTSD, developmental or childhood trauma, attachment and relational trauma, sexual or medical trauma, traumatic grief and loss, persistent trauma triggers, emotional reactivity, freeze or shutdown responses, dissociation, or patterns that continue despite significant insight or previous therapeutic work. It may also be helpful when relationships or present-day situations activate responses that feel much larger than what is happening in the current moment.
My Approach to DBR
I approach trauma therapy from a holistic, attachment-based, relational, and mind-body perspective. There is no single trauma therapy that is right for every person, and the approach we use should reflect your individual history, needs, goals, and current capacity.
DBR may be used on its own within a session or thoughtfully integrated with other approaches.
Together, we consider your history, your current nervous-system capacity, your goals, and what feels most supportive at this point in your healing. The therapeutic relationship remains central throughout the process.
Is DBR Right for Me?
DBR may be worth exploring if you have significant insight into your experiences but continue to have automatic reactions; if your body seems to respond before your thinking brain has time to catch up; if early experiences continue to affect how you feel, relate, or respond today; or if you have already done meaningful therapeutic work and sense there may be another layer that needs attention.
You do not need to determine which trauma therapy is right for you before reaching out. Part of my role is helping us understand together what you are experiencing and whether DBR may be an appropriate approach for you.
Healing Beyond Conscious Understanding
Not everything that shaped us happened at a time when we could understand it, explain it, or put it into words. Our earliest experiences of safety, threat, connection, and disconnection can influence the ways our brain and body respond long afterward.
Healing can include understanding our story, and it can also include working compassionately with experiences and responses that developed before there was a story to tell. DBR offers another way of attending to those deeper responses and creating space for the brain and body to experience something different in the present.
Interested in learning whether DBR may be appropriate for you? Schedule a Consultation.