Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a therapeutic approach that focuses on helping individuals access and release deeply stored trauma, emotional blockages, or subconscious patterns that influence their behaviors, emotions, and physical well-being. It's a somatic-based modality that works with the brain's natural ability to reorganize itself, bringing attention to how the brain processes and reacts to past experiences. DBR is potentially unique in that it helps target and release pre-affective shock held in the brainstem, which can help to reduce the emotional flooding that can occur in trauma processing. Additionally, other trauma modalities tend to work “further up” in the brain than the brainstem region, making it harder to clear the pre-affective shock still held from traumatic experiences. Additionally, by targeting the brainstem region, DBR starts the processing below the default mode network in the brain, working through the initial shock and affect as well as clearing preverbal trauma, which then leads to changes/shifts in the brain that matriculate upward into the default mode network. This allows clients to start to feel different, relate differently, and for some with mentalization struggles, it can help them develop that capacity for the first time.

In a DBR session, clients typically experience a mix of physical sensations, emotional awareness, and cognitive shifts. The goal of DBR is to help "reorient" or recalibrate how the brain responds to distressing memories, emotional patterns, or trauma, so that the individual feels more integrated, grounded, and in control. It is particularly well suited to clients with low body awareness and clients that are highly dissociative. David is currently working towards certification in DBR.