How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore
Dr. Allan Schore discusses how early child-parent interactions shape right-brain circuitry, influencing attachment styles, emotional regulation, and adult relationships. He emphasizes the importance of listening to emotional tone and accessing the unconscious mind for better connections and self-understanding.
Deep Dive Analysis
20 Topic Outline
Conscious vs. Unconscious Mind & Right Brain Dominance
Early Brain Development and Right Hemisphere Specialization
Attachment Styles, Emotion Regulation, and Physiology
Psychobiological Attunement, Repair, and Attachment Types
Regulation Theory: Self-Development and Psychopathology
Therapy as Right Brain-to-Right Brain Interactive Regulation
The Role of Synchrony and Empathy in Therapeutic Change
Mother vs. Father Roles in Child Development & Single Caretakers
In Utero Development and the Impact of Maternal Stress
Integrating Positive and Negative Emotions for Secure Attachment
Splitting and Borderline Personality Disorder
Fostering Right Brain Health Through Vulnerability and Repair
Right Brain vs. Left Brain Attention and Interpersonal Neurobiology
Right Brain Synchronization, Eye Contact, and Empathy in Relationships
Music, Pets, and Other Avenues for Affect Regulation
Impact of Digital Communication on Right Brain Dynamics
Activities to Access and Foster Right Brain Circuitry
Defenses, Blind Spots, and the Adaptive Value of Emotions
Creativity, Insight, and Personal Learning Techniques
Parental Leave Policies and Childhood Well-being
7 Key Concepts
Right Brain Dominance (Early Life)
During the human brain growth spurt, from the last trimester of pregnancy through the second to third year of life, the right hemisphere is dominant. This period is critical for shaping attachment patterns and emotional regulation strategies, as the mother (or primary caretaker) interacts with and regulates the baby's developing right brain.
Psychobiological Attunement
This refers to the mother's (or primary caretaker's) ability to track and resonate with a baby's moment-to-moment arousal and emotional levels, regulating both psychological and physiological states. It involves reading nonverbal cues like face, voice prosody, and gesture, and then synchronizing with and regulating those states.
Interactive Regulation
This is the process where two individuals, typically a mother and infant or therapist and patient, mutually regulate each other's emotional and physiological states through implicit, nonverbal communication. It is central to attachment and therapeutic change, allowing for co-creation of regulated states.
Auto-regulation
This is the capacity to self-regulate one's own emotional states and arousal levels independently, without the direct involvement of another person. A secure attachment fosters the ability to both auto-regulate and engage in interactive regulation, allowing an individual to manage stress and emotions effectively whether alone or with others.
Surrender (Therapy)
In therapy, 'surrender' describes the therapist's ability to shift from left-brain, conscious, analytical listening to a right-brain, intuitive, wide-ranging attention. This involves letting go of conscious effort to understand and instead allowing the patient's emotional atmosphere and unconscious communications to be felt and understood implicitly.
Wide-Ranging Attention
A right-brain function, this form of attention is broad and inclusive, taking in not only external stimuli but also internal physiological changes and the overall context or emotional atmosphere. It contrasts with the left brain's 'narrow attention,' which is focused on specific details and linear processing.
Splitting
This is a defense mechanism, often seen in borderline personality disorder, where an individual cannot integrate positive and negative aspects of themselves or others. They perceive people or situations as either 'all good' or 'all bad,' leading to abrupt shifts in perception and relationships, and an inability to hold complex, nuanced views.
10 Questions Answered
Dr. Schore suggests that 90-95% of our basic motivations are unconscious, driven by the right brain's continuous processing of emotional information beneath conscious awareness, especially during emotional interactions.
The right hemisphere is dominant during the human brain growth spurt, which spans from the last trimester of pregnancy through the second to third year of life, with evidence of right lateralization even in utero.
Early child-parent interactions, particularly in the first two years of life, establish right brain-to-right brain attachment patterns that determine strategies for affect regulation. These patterns are retained as autobiographical memories and guide how individuals form relationships and cope with stress throughout their lives.
Attachment is primarily about the communication and regulation of emotions, specifically the regulation of emotional arousal and the autonomic nervous system. A securely attached caretaker helps the infant regulate both negative and positive emotional states.
Auto-regulation is the ability to manage one's own emotional states independently, while interactive regulation involves seeking or engaging with others to co-regulate emotions. Secure attachment fosters both capacities, allowing individuals to navigate stress and joy effectively, whether alone or with others.
Psychotherapy works through right brain-to-right brain interactive regulation, where the therapist synchronizes with the patient's emotional and physiological states. This therapeutic relationship, built on safety and trust, allows for the repair of early attachment dynamics and the development of new, more regulated emotional patterns.
While mothers (or primary caretakers) often provide the initial right brain regulation in the first year, fathers typically come online in the second year, often engaging in more arousing, 'rough and tumble' play. Fathers tend to foster autonomy and independence, potentially shaping the child's left brain development later on.
Fostering right brain health involves engaging in interactive regulation by forming close, open, and vulnerable relationships where one can share shortcomings. Other activities include seeking new experiences, traveling, being in nature, feeding curiosity, engaging in exercise, and ensuring restorative sleep.
Digital communication, particularly text messaging, is largely devoid of the nonverbal cues (face, voice, gesture) essential for right brain-to-right brain communication and emotional synchrony. This can hinder the development and reinforcement of interpersonal dynamics, potentially leading to a greater dominance of the left hemisphere in communication.
A study by the London School of Economics found that the best predictor of adult life satisfaction is emotional regulation, followed by a child's conduct, and lastly, the child's IQ. This suggests that emotional development and social-emotional skills are more critical than cognitive abilities for long-term well-being.
39 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Emotional Empathy
Prioritize emotional empathy, which involves feeling what another person feels without conscious thought, over cognitive empathy (intellectual understanding) to foster deeper connection and facilitate real change.
2. Heal Through Vulnerable Relationships
To heal and change right-brain circuitry, seek out close, open, and vulnerable relationships where you can share your shortcomings and engage in reciprocal right-brain to right-brain communication.
3. Integrate All Emotions
Strive to integrate both positive and negative emotions rather than splitting them, as this capacity is central to secure attachment, emotional well-being, and a holistic view of self and others.
4. Allow Emotions to Flow
When strong emotions, such as disappointment, arise, allow them to come and be felt with full intensity rather than suppressing them, trusting that they will eventually transform into another shape or form.
5. Embrace Adaptive Value of Emotions
Recognize that all emotions, positive and negative, have adaptive value; embrace and become familiar with the full spectrum of your emotions rather than labeling some as inherently ‘bad’.
6. Practice Wide-Ranging Attention
Cultivate ‘wide-ranging attention’ or ’evenly suspended attention’ (a right-brain function) by broadening your focus beyond specific words to include internal sensations and the broader emotional context of an interaction.
7. Engage in Spontaneous Behaviors
Foster trust and synchrony in interactions by engaging in spontaneous, un-thought-out behaviors, allowing for genuine emotional exchange without a mind attempting to present anything.
8. Practice Smooth Turn-Taking
Engage in smooth turn-taking behaviors during conversations, allowing for reciprocal communication, which is a hallmark of good relationships and fosters connection.
9. Cultivate Curiosity & New Experiences
Actively cultivate a curious and open mind by seeking new experiences, challenges, and novel information, as this stimulates right-brain processing and personal growth.
10. Engage in Creative Activities
Regularly engage in creative activities like drawing, painting, or playing music to ‘grease the gears’ of your right brain, fostering surrender from left-brain dominance and enhancing creativity.
11. Prioritize Understanding Over Memorization
Prioritize understanding information deeply rather than rote memorization, as this leads to more profound and lasting absorption, especially for right-brain processing.
12. Engage in Physical/Sensory Learning
Foster deeper understanding by engaging in activities that involve physical or sensory learning, such as playing an instrument, which bypasses purely logical, left-brain processing.
13. Practice Visualization
Enhance understanding and engage right-brain functions by practicing visualization, such as mentally picturing complex processes or cellular movements.
14. Read Physical Copies for Learning
For deeper absorption and study, read and learn from physical copies of materials (e.g., printed papers) rather than solely from a computer screen.
15. Exercise for Healing
Incorporate regular exercise as a fundamental practice for both physical and mental healing, supporting overall well-being.
16. Prioritize Restorative Sleep
Prioritize obtaining restorative sleep as a crucial component of overall physical and mental well-being and the healing process.
17. Practice Self-Reflection
Engage in self-reflection and introspection to gain a deeper understanding of yourself, including acknowledging and seeing aspects you might prefer not to.
18. Increase Awareness of Defenses
Become more aware of your personal psychological defenses (e.g., repression) to understand how they might be adaptively or maladaptively impacting your emotional processing.
19. Take in Negative Feedback
Cultivate sufficient trust in relationships to be able to receive and integrate negative feedback from others, which is essential for addressing personal blind spots and growth.
20. Avoid Arguing Over Text
Avoid arguing over text messages, as this medium lacks the emotional depth, nonverbal cues, and synchronous communication necessary for genuine connection and conflict resolution.
21. Nourish Right Brain with Nature & Travel
Nourish and stimulate right-brain activity by engaging in activities like traveling, spending time in nature, and sharing these experiences with others.
22. Parents: Recognize & Regulate Baby’s Emotions
As a primary caretaker, continuously track a baby’s moment-to-moment arousal levels and emotions, then recognize, synchronize with, and regulate them to foster secure attachment.
23. Parents: Rely on Intuition in Caregiving
When regulating a baby’s emotions, rely on intuition (a right-brain function) rather than explicit, left-brain reasoning, as this implicit approach is key to effective attachment.
24. Parents: Up- & Down-Regulate Baby’s States
Use your tone of voice to up-regulate a baby into an excited state or your facial expression and voice tone to down-regulate a baby experiencing hyperarousal.
25. Parents: Actively Repair Misattunements
When misattunement occurs with a child, actively return, resynchronize, and reconnect to repair the interaction, as this repair process is crucial for secure attachment.
26. Parents/Educators: Prioritize Emotion & Conduct
Prioritize a child’s emotional well-being and conduct over their IQ, especially in early development, as these are stronger predictors of adult life satisfaction.
27. Therapists/Listeners: Practice ‘Surrender’ Listening
To understand attachment dynamics and emotional states, therapists (and listeners in general) should ‘surrender’ by switching from left-brain analytical listening to right-brain, intuitive listening, letting go of conscious, purposeful thought.
28. Therapists/Empathic Listeners: Synchronize Physiology
To achieve deep understanding, therapists (and empathic listeners) should synchronize their physiology with another person’s, allowing them to feel their emotional and arousal states interoceptively.
29. Therapists/Interpersonal Regulators: Use Nonverbal Regulation
Once synchronized with another person’s emotional state, implicitly adjust your voice tone and facial expressions to interactively regulate their arousal, either slowing it down or up-regulating it as needed.
30. Therapists/Communicators: Somatically Demonstrate Regulation
Use your face, voice, and gestures to somatically demonstrate auto-regulation or coordinated regulation to another person, conveying emotional states nonverbally.
31. Therapists: Prioritize Therapeutic Alliance
In the first therapy session, prioritize synchronizing with the patient and forming a strong therapeutic alliance, as this foundational connection is more critical than immediate diagnosis.
32. Therapists/Helpers: Focus on ‘Being With’ Dysregulated
When helping a dysregulated person, focus on how to be with them rather than what to say or do to them, as this implicit presence is key to facilitating right-brain changes.
33. Therapists/Listeners: Lean Back for Empathy
To enhance empathic connection and pick up subtle communications, lean back and allow the emotional atmosphere to ‘come over you,’ rather than leaning forward in an overly engaged or impending manner.
34. Advocate for Extended Parental Leave
Advocate for and support policies that provide extended parental leave (e.g., 3 months for paternal, 6+ months for maternal) to allow primary caretakers sufficient time during the critical early years of a child’s right-brain development.
35. Use High-Quality Protein Snacks
Incorporate high-quality protein sources like protein bars when in a rush, away from home, or for a quick snack to easily meet daily protein goals without excess calories.
36. Bridge Meals with Protein Snacks
Consume a high-protein snack in the early or mid-afternoon to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, helping to manage hunger and maintain protein intake.
37. Control Sleep Temperature
Optimize sleep quality by controlling your sleeping environment’s temperature, aiming to drop body temperature by 1-3 degrees to fall and stay asleep, and increase it by 1-3 degrees to wake up refreshed.
38. Program Mattress Temperature
Program your mattress temperature to be cool at the beginning of the night, colder in the middle, and warm as you wake up to enhance slow-wave and REM sleep.
39. Use Snoring Detection
Utilize smart mattress covers with snoring detection that automatically adjust your head position by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop snoring.
8 Key Quotes
I'm suggesting that the right brain is the unconscious mind.
Dr. Allan Schore
95 to 90 percent of that is unconscious.
Dr. Allan Schore
Attachment is essentially affect regulation, affect communication and affect regulation.
Dr. Allan Schore
The key to a secure attachment is not only psychobiological attunement, but it's 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 real key to changing a right brain is finding people you can be close with, finding people you can be open with, finding people you can be vulnerable with.
Dr. Allan Schore
The highest levels of human nature are in the right brain.
Dr. Allan Schore
The left hemisphere essentially is a surface hemisphere, the right hemisphere is the one of depth.
Dr. Allan Schore