"Dr. Orloff grew up in Beverly Hills, where both her Philadelphia-reared parents were physicians." She comes from a lineage of 25 physicians in her family. Orloff received her MD from the University of Southern California in 1979, completed a medical internship at Wadsworth Veteran's Hospital in Los Angeles in 1980 and a psychiatric residency-training program at UCLA in 1983. After completing her medical and psychiatric training she held staff positions at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, St Johns Medical Center, Brotman Medical Center and the Daniel Freeman Hospital all in the Los Angeles, CA area. "Currently she has a private practice, is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and an international workshop leader on the interrelationship of medicine, intuition, and spirituality."

As of 2009, Orloff became a regular contributor to the website InfiniteQuest.com

"Orloff coined the term “Energy Psychiatry” to describe a new form of psychotherapy she is pioneering. It addresses the subtle energetic underpinnings of health and behavior and is a combination of conventional medicine, intuition, spirituality and energy. It is a subset of energy medicine, which views our bodies and spirits as manifestations of subtle energies. This is what many indigenous healing traditions revere as a life force and is conspicuous by its absence from Western health care."