Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a newer trauma therapy, and its name tells you very little about what it involves. Redefine Wellness & Treatment includes it among its clinical therapies. Because DBR is so new, two things are easy to blur: what its developer proposes about how trauma works, and what research has actually tested. This article keeps them apart, so you can judge DBR on what is known as well as on what is proposed.
Where DBR came from
DBR was developed by Frank Corrigan, who first set it out with Jessica Christie-Sands in a hypothesis paper in Medical Hypotheses. The researchers who later tested DBR set it against a known gap: citing earlier studies, their 2023 paper notes that established PTSD treatments lose about one person in five to dropout, and that up to half of people do not respond to them.
Corrigan's proposal was to start earlier in the chain. If the body's first, split-second reaction to threat is still running, then work on the memory and its meaning happens downstream of it. DBR is built to slow that first reaction down and let it finish.
The sequence DBR is built around
The model describes three steps inside a threatening moment, in the same order each time. First comes orienting tension: before you know what has happened, the muscles around the eyes, forehead and neck tense to turn toward it. Second comes shock, a jolt of alarm. Only then does emotion arrive, whether fear, rage, grief or shame. On this account the feeling people remember is the third thing that happened, not the first.
That is why DBR pays attention to the eyes, forehead, face and neck. In the model, what is left of the first orienting movement is still held there, and it becomes the material the therapy works with. In practice that means slow attention to small tensions, which is the core of what happens in a DBR session.
A proposed model, not a proven one
The structures in the model are real, and their general jobs in orienting, arousal and defense are well studied. The claim built on them is different. That a specific trauma sequence is held in the brainstem, and can be reached by attending to tension in the face and neck, is a theory. The trial team that tested DBR calls the link between these structures and PTSD symptoms “currently speculative.”
That trial tested whether people improved, not why. One randomized trial has published results, as an interim analysis of a study still running, and its authors state that the analysis “cannot confirm involvement of subcortical neural mechanisms.” Beyond that trial, the published DBR work is mostly theory, a few case reports, including one of two clients with dissociative identity disorder, and small studies of therapists using DBR on their own reactions to clinical work. What the trial found for PTSD is the subject of DBR's trial results and safety record.
Redefine describes DBR the way its developer does: as working from the bottom up, through body-based responses, with a physiological sequence the model places in the brainstem. Three registered studies are now testing the therapy further.
Is DBR a somatic therapy?
Broadly, yes. Its researchers describe it as a nonverbal, somatic method, and it works with physical sensation rather than with a retold account of events, which puts it in the same family as other somatic therapy approaches.
What sets it apart within that family is how narrow its target is. DBR is not about body awareness in general. It follows one reaction, the orienting response, and the shock and emotion the model says come after it.
Why DBR is not brain stimulation
The words “deep brain” suggest surgery, and DBR involves none. Deep brain stimulation is surgery: the National Institute of Mental Health describes it as a procedure that implants electrodes in the brain and uses electricity to stimulate it. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is noninvasive but still uses an electromagnet to act on the brain.
DBR is neither. It is a psychotherapy: a person sits with a therapist and pays attention to sensation, with little talking. Nothing is placed on or in the head.
Where DBR fits among trauma therapies
Redefine offers DBR at the front of its trauma work, alongside EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems. It is not a version of any of them. The clearest contrast is with EMDR, which pairs a memory with eye movements or another back-and-forth stimulus, and the full picture of how DBR compares with EMDR includes how unequal their research is.
In Redefine's description, DBR is used with PTSD and complex trauma, especially where early attachment disruption has led to dissociative symptoms, and it focuses less on a diagnosis than on finding the root traumatic experience. That matters because complex PTSD and PTSD are not the same diagnosis, and the trial enrolled people with PTSD, so complex trauma was only partly represented in it.
Whether DBR fits a particular person is decided at assessment.
“Deep brain” refers to the midbrain and brainstem structures the model centers on, which sit below the parts of the brain involved in conscious thought. “Reorienting” refers to the orienting response, the reflex that turns you toward something unexpected. The name describes the theory behind the therapy, not anything done to the brain.
Very. Corrigan and Christie-Sands first described it in a paper published online in late 2019 and in print in 2020. The first randomized trial reported interim results in 2023, and two more studies were registered in 2026: one enrolling by invitation, one recruiting military members and veterans.
Not currently. Neither the 2023 VA and Department of Defense guideline nor the American Psychological Association's 2025 guideline mentions DBR. With one randomized trial and interim results, it has far less research behind it than the therapies those panels recommend, which says how much has been studied, not that DBR does not work.
It describes the direction of the work. A top-down approach starts with thoughts, beliefs and the meaning of what happened. A bottom-up approach starts with the body's reactions and lets meaning follow. DBR is described as bottom-up because it begins with physical tension.
No. The 2023 trial planned brain scans before and after treatment, but COVID-19 restrictions and a scanner outage left too little imaging data to analyze, so the published results are symptom scores only. The authors say future imaging analyses will look at whether the changes they saw match differences in the brain.
