DBR Training Overview
DBR training is for mental health professionals working with trauma. Therapists who will find DBR most useful are those who use body-based or “bottom-up” transformational trauma therapy approaches. The training is online and can be accommodated in different time zones. All the trainings combine underlying theory, demonstrations and practicums, with plenty of opportunities for feedback and questions.
Three progressive two-day DBR trainings are offered; Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3. Level 1 DBR training will give you the tools to start practising DBR with your clients or patients, and you can complete the different levels of DBR training at a pace that suits you. The training is led by Master Clinician Dr Frank Corrigan with support from Dr Jessica Christie-Sands and international colleagues.
For support and further practice, you can join a DBR consultation group, have individual DBR consultations or join a DBR peer practice group. Please email consultation@deepbrainreorienting.com if you are interested in individual or group consultation.
DBR Training
Two-Day Online Training: An introduction to Deep Brain Reorienting
This two-day training offers participants an opportunity to understand the key role of midbrain systems in traumatic experiences which have clinical consequences. There is an emphasis on attachment shock, which may be historic or recent, and on early life adversity. A distinction between brain circuits for shock and circuits for affective and defensive responding underlies the clinical approach of Deep Brain Reorienting.
DBR is a trauma memory processing modality that has developed from an understanding of stimulus-response sequences in the upper brainstem and uses these in a way that diminishes the risk of overwhelm or dissociation. Tracking the sequences, informed by the knowledge of how they occur physiologically, activates a healing process which, optimally, promotes a complete resolution of the clinical consequences of the traumatic experiences.
DBR can also be useful when attachment urges are conflicted because of adverse experiences. For example, when the capacity to orient toward connection simultaneously triggers the impulse to move away, often with negative affects emerging, the urge to connect with significant others is conflicted at a level not readily accessible in talk therapy.
Key learning outcomes
• To develop an understanding of the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of threat and adversity response systems in the midbrain, the upper part of the brainstem
• To be able to track deep sequences that have occurred so quickly that only their late effects have been recognized – and to wait with these sequences until full processing of them has occurred
• To identify and differentiate the main components of physiological sequences underpinning conflicted orienting patterns in relational connections.
Who should attend?
This training is for mental health professionals: psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, and other health practitioners who have experience of working with early adversity and trauma.
Two-Day Online Training: DBR for Attachment Shock and Wounding
This two-day training forms the second part of DBR training and offers participants a more comprehensive understanding of the role of midbrain-based systems in attachment pain and attachment shock – and their healing. We further explore brainstem responses to the relational or interactional stimuli which underpin attachment patterns and consider how these can activate basic affective and defensive responses and, ultimately, modify the seeking of connection.
Early life adversity and trauma compromise the functional integrity and fluency of these brainstem-based networks, thereby setting a developmental trajectory that shapes attachment capabilities throughout life. This is reflected in the relational disturbances routinely encountered in therapeutic work with traumatised clients. Such relational disturbances are often embedded in conflicted orienting and response patterns linked to the seeking of attachment. There can then emerge relational conflicts and affective responses that have their explanation more in past events than in present circumstances.
Working with conflicted relational orienting patterns derived from prior experience of attachment pain and attachment shock offers access to the associated physiological residues using the O-T-A-S sequences mapped out in Deep Brain Reorienting. This promotes a liberation of the brain’s healing mechanism so that blocked processing can be released and, optimally, allow resolution of the past attachment adversity.
Key learning outcomes
• To deepen understanding of the neurobiology underpinning attachment and human connection
• To understand the key role a triad of midbrain neural circuits play in shaping conflicted orienting patterns potentially throughout life
• To refine our thinking on the dual implications of attachment pain and attachment shock on the innate connection system and the innate alarm system
• To identify and differentiate the O-T-A-S sequences that underpin attachment pain and attachment shock.
Who should attend?
This training is for mental health professionals who have completed Level 1 DBR Introduction training; psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, and other health practitioners who have experience of working with early adversity and trauma.
Two-Day Online Training: DBR for Dissociative and other Complex Trauma Disorders
This two-day training forms the third part of DBR training and offers participants an opportunity to understand more about how the deeper layers of the self can be affected by trauma. In DBR the focus is not on the upper-level parts of the self, such as self-states, ego-states or alters – but on the underlying emotional pain and the rage, fear, grief, and shame that deep wounding generates.
Most therapists working with complex trauma disorders will have experience of working with trauma memory processing techniques and of attending to parts of the self that have become detached, to a greater or lesser extent, from everyday awareness.
As separated parts of the self probably involve circuitry through surface level loops – that can become detached from their traumatic origins in the brainstem affective and defensive loops – the focus in DBR is to work from the putative midbrain level. This means starting always from the Where Self when processing any of the traumatic experiences or working with young parts of self. This goes beyond basic grounding as it brings in a different perspective from the deeper level towards what is held in the surface-level circuitry.
Another difference with DBR is the focus on core attachment shock and pain and their associated affects. The hypothesis is that the clearing of the distress at its origin withdraws all distressing activation from episodic memories and stops them from having power to intrude through re-experiencing. DBR often starts with present-day activations as the aim is to provide treatment that is immediately relevant to the person’s quality of life.
Some therapy approaches work primarily with traumatised parts of the self, getting to know them and increasing their communication and co-operation, as well as orienting them to the present. These methods are effective but don’t always get to the underlying pain of aloneness and abandonment. In DBR the focus is, instead, not on the upper-level parts of the self – but on the underlying emotional pain and the rage, fear, grief, and shame that this deep wounding generates.
Working at this lower level of the brain is difficult because the brain has found it necessary in the past to turn away from the pain. However, the person is now in a different situation, at a different age, and may have the capacity to confront that pain in a way which allows healing at the core of the trauma and abuse history. The brain has gone on developing around that core pain in such a way that it might now be helpful to approach it from a different angle.
There are no clinical studies of DBR for core aloneness pain in complex trauma and dissociative disorders – and none that compare it with approaches that focus on the parts of the self that have become compartmentalised. Sometimes people move between the approaches – working with the parts when necessary, working with the pain when possible. This training is, however, focused on the core emotional pain and its associated affective and defensive responses rather than the separated parts of the self.
Key Learning Outcomes
After the training participants will be able to:
• Understand the role of core aloneness pain in the long-term effects of early-life trauma.
• Know how to elicit the sequences from shock and pain to affects and defences – even when these lead into dissociated parts of self.
• Understand the use of the Protoself access in preparation for deep-level processing.
• Know how to get beneath the overt symptoms in other disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorders, to process the underlying conflicts.
• Understand the role of the Orienting Tension as an opener of a specific file into an unconscious conflict.
What those attending will learn that will improve their DBR practice or clinical outcomes.
• How to apply DBR in complex trauma disorders in which processing of trauma memories is difficult because of emotional dysregulation and/or dissociation.
• How to differentiate different dissociative responses according to their putative pathophysiological or neuroscientific mechanisms.
• How to use the Where Self / Protoself approaches to access unconscious conflicts.
• How to assist the endogenous healing process when there is core aloneness pain from very early in life.
Who should attend?
This training is for mental health professionals who have completed DBR Level 1 and Level 2.
Additional Advanced Training
A Developmentally Focused Mini-Practicum Series
This new DBR skills series focuses on building ‘deep brain’ knowledge and clinical skills. The developmental focus of this 10-month mini-practicum series gives the opportunity to explore and deepen into working with early life shock and pre-attachment wounding in our own practicum work and in case consultations.
The sequence of each mini practicum may vary depending on the needs of the group. To enhance the experience of deepening into DBR and give space for working with early life shock and pre-attachment wounding our group will remain small, between 8 and 10 participants.
The practicum work will be led by Dr Jessica Christie-Sands, Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist, Chartered Scientist (CSci) and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPs), with the assistance of Linda Beton, Consultant Psychotherapist and Advanced Trauma Specialist and supervisor.
Each mini practicum session will be structured around:
1. Sharing knowledge and skills – understanding the Neurosequential organisation of deep-brain multisensory and affective systems and how this relates to shock-induced vigilance states and pre-attachment wounding, with particular attention to prenatal and early postnatal experience.
2. Case consultations – thinking through the neurodevelopmental lens of DBR.
3. Two-way practicums – working with three planes of orientation to re-establish gravity, rhythmicity, and self-location.
4. DBR demonstrations – working with the primordial layers of the Protoself and Where-Self.
Who should attend?
The Mini-Practicum Series is for experienced trauma therapists who are trained in DBR.
Workshops
Working with dynamic orienting tension in Deep Brain Reorienting using insights from the Alexander Technique
The static orienting tension at the beginning of a DBR session functions as an anchor and as a marker for the information file that is opened for processing. Sometimes there is a dynamic quality to the orienting tension and there are slow movements of the head during the processing of body memories. On other occasions, the dynamic orienting movement associated with the selected traumatic memory has a momentary rigidity which appears to represent a block to full orienting, perhaps a bracing against that reality. Attending to the position of that momentary increase in tension can release the obstruction, and the associated affects, and allows full orienting.
In this workshop, Frank Corrigan and Martin Warner will demonstrate how to identify the markers of bracing against awareness, especially during shock, and they will explore how movements can release blocks and promote new awareness. The movements are derived from Martin’s extensive experience in the application of the Alexander Technique and his unique abilities to identify subtle changes in muscle tension.
Martin will teach skills for direct observation and for putting into language what is being seen. He will also demonstrate how to give simple verbal requests that facilitate processing in a way that is respectful of people’s thoughts and their internal thinking processes.
Aims
8. To avoid the formulaic application of movements learned through this workshop.
Who should attend?
This workshop is for therapists trained in DBR.
Upcoming Training Schedule
Book your DBR training by completing a brief registration form
What a profoundly energizing experience we had these past two days! There was much mind-blowing information and we thoroughly appreciated how you made every attempt to back your theories with the prevailing neurology research; combining neurology and psychology is such a beautiful dance and so reassuring. Thank you!
What a profoundly energizing experience we had these past two days! There was much mind-blowing information and we thoroughly appreciated how you made every attempt to back your theories with the prevailing neurology research; combining neurology and psychology is such a beautiful dance and so reassuring. Thank you!
What a profoundly energizing experience we had these past two days! There was much mind-blowing information and we thoroughly appreciated how you made every attempt to back your theories with the prevailing neurology research; combining neurology and psychology is such a beautiful dance and so reassuring. Thank you!