How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Allan Schore, Ph.D., a faculty member in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, a longtime clinical psychotherapist, and a multi-book author. We discuss how early child-parent interactions shape brain circuitry, impacting our ability to form attachments, manage emotions, and navigate conflict and stress. We cover how the development of right-brain circuitry related to emotional processing and the unconscious mind regulates physiological responses, influencing adult friendships and romantic relationships. We also explore how improving your ability to listen to the emotional tone—rather than just the meaning—of words is a vital skill for fostering better relationships with yourself and others, and how it plays a role in reshaping brain circuitry. Additionally, we explain how circuits in the right brain hemisphere drive creativity and intuition and discuss activities to access the unconscious mind. This episode delves into how the unconscious mind regulates emotions—both your own and others’—and shapes our sense of self. By the end, you’ll have new knowledge and tools to build more secure, meaningful, and impactful connections of all kinds: professional, romantic, familial, friendships, and beyond. Access the full show notes for this episode, including referenced articles, resources, and people mentioned: https://go.hubermanlab.com/SbUJyLX Use Ask Huberman Lab, our chat-based tool, for summaries, clips, and insights from this episode: https://go.hubermanlab.com/pnoUTEI *Thank you to our sponsors* AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David Protein: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman *Dr. Allan Schore* Website: https://www.allanschore.com Books: https://amzn.to/3AyS8Rw Publications: https://www.allanschore.com/curriculum-vitae/publications Right Brain Psychotherapy Institute: https://rightbrainpsychotherapy.com Master Class: https://rightbrainpsychotherapy.com/master-class Modern attachment theory (video): https://youtu.be/c0sKY86Qmzo?si=3rGee4fAxj1HOjtk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rightbrainpsych Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rightbrainpsych X: https://x.com/rightbrainpsych LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/right-brain-psychotherapy-institute *Timestamps* 00:00:00 Dr. Allan Schore 00:02:37 Sponsors: David & Eight Sleep 00:05:49 Thoughts & Unconscious Mind 00:07:36 Right vs Left Brain, Child Development, Attachment 00:13:19 Attachment Styles & Development, Emotions & Physiology 00:18:12 Intuition, Arousal, Emotional Regulation & Attachment 00:23:13 Psychobiological Attunement, Repair; Insecure & Anxious Attachment 00:28:33 Attachment Styles, Regulation Theory; Therapy 00:34:20 Sponsor: AG1 00:35:51 “Surrender,” Therapy, Patient Synchronization 00:39:46 Synchrony, Empathy, Therapy & Developing Autoregulation 00:45:07 Mother vs Father, Child Development; Single Caretakers 00:50:51 MDMA, Right Brain; Fetal Development 00:55:58 Sponsor: Function 00:57:46 Integrating Positive & Negative Emotions, Quiet vs Excited Love 01:03:33 Splitting, Borderline; Therapy & Emotions 01:09:24 Tool: Right Brain, Vulnerability & Repair 01:15:32 Right vs. Left Brain, Attention 01:19:26 Right Brain Synchronization, Eye Connection, Empathy 01:25:39 Music & Dogs, Resonance 01:30:58 Right Brain & Body; Empathic Connection, Body Language 01:36:47 Tool: Text Message, Communication, Relationships 01:42:18 Right Brain Dominance & Activities; Tool: Fostering the Right Brain 01:50:10 Defenses, Blind Spots 01:53:14 Creativity, Accessing the Right Brain, Insight 01:59:31 Paternal Leave, Parent-Child Relationships, Attachment 02:05:16 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter #HubermanLab #Science #Relationships #Brain Disclaimer: https://www.hubermanlab.com/disclaimer

Andrew HubermanhostDr. Allan Schoreguest

Nov 10, 20242h 7mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

How Early Relationships Wire Your Right Brain And Shape Life

Andrew Huberman and psychoanalyst-neuroscientist Dr. Allan Schore explain how the first 24 months of life, dominated by right-hemisphere brain development, establish our core attachment patterns and lifelong strategies for emotional regulation.
Schore argues that the right brain is essentially the unconscious mind, constantly reading and regulating emotional communications beneath awareness, especially in early caregiver–infant interactions.
Secure or insecure attachment styles emerge from how well caregivers attune to, misattune, and then repair the infant’s physiological and emotional arousal states through face, voice, gesture, and touch.
These early right-brain circuits later govern adult romantic relationships, friendships, stress responses, personality disorders, and even how psychotherapy heals through right-brain-to-right-brain synchrony between therapist and patient.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

The first two years are a right-brain critical period that wires lifelong emotional regulation.

From the last trimester of pregnancy through roughly age two to three, the right hemisphere is in a unique growth spurt and dominates brain function. During this window, the infant’s right brain — including amygdala, insula, cingulate, and autonomic circuits — is sculpted by the caregiver’s moment-to-moment regulation of arousal (up- and down-shifting between excitement and calm). These early patterns become the foundational templates for how we handle stress, novelty, and relationships throughout life.

Attachment is fundamentally psychobiological affect regulation, not just a psychological style.

Schore reframes attachment as the caregiver’s ongoing regulation of the infant’s emotional and bodily states via face, voice prosody, gesture, and touch. Secure attachment requires two elements: (1) psychobiological attunement (reading and matching the infant’s arousal and emotion) and (2) repair after inevitable misattunements. The infant internalizes these right-brain-to-right-brain regulatory exchanges, leading to robust strategies for both self-soothing (auto-regulation) and seeking co-regulation (interactive regulation).

Classic adult attachment styles reflect specific imbalances in auto- vs. interactive regulation.

In secure attachment, individuals can both self-regulate and seek others under stress or to share joy. Avoidant (dismissive) attachment leans almost entirely on auto-regulation and deactivates the attachment system — such people are uncomfortable with closeness and downplay emotional needs. Anxious attachment over-activates the attachment system and relies heavily on others to regulate, with poor self-soothing. Disorganized attachment involves failure of both systems; under stress, people may shut down the attachment system entirely through dissociation.

The right brain is the seat of the relational unconscious and drives most of our behavior.

Schore estimates that 90–95% of the motivations underlying our behavior are unconscious and right-lateralized. The right hemisphere continuously processes emotional signals, safety cues, and stress at levels beneath awareness. It dominates the stress response, sympathetic and parasympathetic control, empathy, intuition, imagery, creativity, morality, spirituality, humor, music, and love. Our conscious, verbal left brain often rationalizes decisions already made by these right-brain processes.

Effective psychotherapy works by right-brain-to-right-brain synchrony, not just insight or technique.

Across modalities, what predicts change is not cognitive interpretation alone but the quality of the therapeutic relationship and the therapist’s capacity for emotional attunement. In-session, the therapist must ‘surrender’ out of narrow, left-brain listening into wide, right-brain attention — tracking the patient’s voice tone, face, gestures, and their own bodily sensations. Hyper-scanning studies show synchronization of right temporal–parietal regions between therapist and patient during emotionally charged moments; these brief, shared ‘heightened affective moments’ drive durable neural change in right-brain regulatory circuits.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

When it comes to the basic motivations of why we do what we do, 90 to 95 percent of that is unconscious.

— Dr. Allan Schore

Attachment is essentially affect regulation — affect communication and affect regulation — right brain to right brain in the first two years of life.

— Dr. Allan Schore

The key to a secure attachment is not only psychobiological attunement, but also the repair of the misattunement.

— Dr. Allan Schore

The key to making changes in the patient is not what you say to the patient or what you do to the patient. It’s how to be with the patient.

— Dr. Allan Schore

The highest levels of human nature are in the right brain — intuition, imagery, creativity, morality, compassion, spirituality, and love.

— Dr. Allan Schore

Right vs. left brain development and lateralization across the lifespanAttachment theory as affect (emotion) regulation, not just behaviorSecure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized attachment stylesRight brain as unconscious mind and its role in stress and relationshipsPsychotherapy as right-brain-to-right-brain regulation and synchronyImpact of in utero and early life stress on brain and personalityModern communication, technology, and the erosion of right-brain functions

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