Deep Brain Reorienting
Deep Brain Reorienting Therapy (DBR) is an innovative, new trauma therapy emerging from Glasgow, Scotland. Created by Psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Corrigan.
Our brains are prediction machines and can experience “shock,” and subsequently adrenaline spikes at unexpected outcomes. Someone says or does something rejecting, or perhaps there’s an unexpected disturbing event, trauma, danger, or even an interaction that “came out of nowhere.” We experience the unexpected, and it blindsides us.
These moments of “shock” can then accumulate, stay “locked in,” and create a myriad of symptoms, sensitivities, and distress in our day-to-day lives. Our brains will continue to fire up the distress as if the past is still happening, even if we aren’t conscious of it.
Even those who have done extensive trauma work can still experience unhealed residual distress that “just won’t budge.” There can still be a deep sense of aloneness and emotional pain, that is experienced as hard to heal and still impacts one’s day-to-day life.
With Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) our focus is on healing the unhealed shock that can “stack up” and is believed to contribute to a myriad of symptoms such as pain, distress, hypervigilance, nightmares, anxiety, and fear. Trauma processing via DBR aims to be more “gentle” and less overwhelming. We access and heal an accumulation of moments when we first “clued in that something is wrong,” “off,” and that “oh no” experience of shock even before our emotions and defenses kick in. We can then become more present, less driven by the past, having processed the shock that served to drive and magnify the subsequent emotions and pain underneath.
In addition to office-based DBR, I premiered Equine-Assisted DBR™ which supports a deepening of the experience when partnering with horses in DBR therapy.
