A psychologist’s reflection on the next evolution in trauma therapy
For years, I felt deeply aligned with Polyvagal Theory.
Stephen Porges’ work gave language to something many of us intuitively sensed in our clients: that trauma lives in the body. It offered a compassionate, neurobiological framework for understanding collapse, freeze, and our innate drive for safety. As a psychologist and trauma therapist, I found it invaluable.
But over time, something didn’t quite sit right.
Despite the framework and all the beautiful somatic tools, some clients weren’t shifting. They could explain their nervous system states, name when they were in dorsal vagal shutdown or sympathetic activation, and yet the core trauma imprint remained untouched.
They were working hard. I was working hard. But something was missing.
That’s when I discovered Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR).
✨ What DBR Showed Me That Polyvagal Theory Didn’t
DBR, developed by Scottish psychiatrist Dr Frank Corrigan (2017), is a neurophysiological trauma therapy that focuses on the moment of orienting that split-second reflex in the brainstem when the body turns its attention to something new, often unexpected.
In trauma, this orienting response is interrupted. The body tenses. The system prepares. Then something happens neglect, betrayal, pain, and the natural sequence is never completed. The emotion arrives before the body is ready.
The result is a neurological imprint: stuck, unfinished, and often beneath conscious awareness.
Corrigan’s model reframes fragmentation as an adaptive survival strategy rather than pathology. “Parts” develop to protect against overwhelming threat and attachment trauma. Through a neurobiological lens, he shows how subcortical orienting and defence systems including the brainstem, periaqueductal grey, and amygdala, drive dissociative phenomena, and how high-arousal procedural memory underpins many trauma symptoms. This understanding shifts the focus from story to sequence.
From a treatment perspective, Corrigan advocates prioritising safety, titration, and bottom-up processing. Rather than pushing clients into narrative exposure, the work involves tracking orienting reflexes and micro-movements until the nervous system can complete what it could not finish at the time of trauma. This approach aligns perfectly with DBR and explains why it reaches places other methods cannot.
Polyvagal Theory tells us: “We must help the body feel safe to regulate.”
DBR shows us: “We must help the body complete the sequence to heal.”
This isn’t just a theoretical difference.
Working with DBR, I began to understand that what’s often labelled as dysregulation or shutdown isn’t only about vagal tone. It’s an incomplete processing loop in the subcortical regions of the brain. It is pre-emotional, pre-narrative, and pre-interpretive.
And in session, when clients stay present with the orienting tension often felt in the forehead, eyes, jaw, neck or spine, we can gently help the system finish what it started. When that happens, the emotional charge dissolves. The trauma unwinds and processes naturally with the deep brain’s wisdom. There’s nothing to reframe, because there’s nothing left to process. Refreshingl,y clients often end the session with a new perspective on themselves aligning well with the work of Bruce Ecker (2012) on memory reconsolidation.
🧩 Why I No Longer Lead With Polyvagal Theory
I still value Polyvagal Theory. It opened the door to body-based work for many therapists and brought needed attention to the role of the autonomic nervous system in trauma.
But DBR has taken me, and my clients, deeper.
Here’s why I now lead with DBR:
- It targets the origin of the trauma sequence, not just the symptoms
- It bypasses narrative, allowing direct access to the body’s healing intelligence
- It works at the subcortical level, before survival responses
- The results are profound. Clients often say, “I didn’t know that was still in me, but now it’s gone”
As Corrigan, Fisher, and Nutt (2021) describe, trauma resolution isn’t about accessing memory content. It’s about restoring the sequence: orienting → affect → resolution. When that sequence is interrupted, no amount of insight or reprocessing will touch the core.
🧭 From Maps to Territory
Polyvagal Theory gave us a valuable map of the nervous system.
But DBR feels like the territory.
As a trauma psychologist, I care deeply about ethical, effective, and embodied healing.
I believe our work must remain curious, evidence-informed, and responsive to what the body needs — not just what our models tell us to look for.
DBR has shifted my clinical compass. It has helped me work more precisely with complex trauma, dissociation, and preverbal imprints.
I’ve never seen anything else reach so far beneath the surface with such gentle precision and long-term results.
📚 References
Corrigan, F. (2017). Personality fragmentation and complex trauma: A new perspective. London: Karnac Books.
Reframes fragmentation as adaptive, explains subcortical mechanisms such as the brainstem, periaqueductal grey, and amygdala, and advocates for safety, titration, and bottom-up processing in complex trauma work.
Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2021). Neurobiology and treatment of traumatic dissociation: Toward an embodied self. Cham: Springer.
Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation. New York: Routledge.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. New York: W. W. Norton.
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