Level 1 DBR 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.