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 at hubermanlab.com. Use Ask Huberman Lab, our chat-based tool, for summaries, clips, and insights from this episode. 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 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 Disclaimer & Disclosures
Full Episode
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Alan Shore.
Dr. Alan Shore is a clinician psychoanalyst, and he is the world expert in how childhood attachment patterns impact our adult relationships, including romantic relationships, friendships, and professional relationships, as well as our relationship to ourselves.
Dr. Schor is on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is also the author of several important books, including Right Brain Psychotherapy and Development of the Unconscious Mind.
Today's discussion with Dr. Schor is an extremely important one for everyone to hear, to understand themselves and to understand the people in their lives. Why? We all go through the first 24 months of age. You wouldn't be listening to this if you hadn't.
And during that first 24 months of age, your brain develops in a particular way depending on how you interacted with your primary caretaker, namely your mother, but also your father or other primary caretakers. In that first 24 months, your right brain and your left brain mediate very specific but different processes. For instance, today you'll learn from Dr. Shore that your right brain circuitry
That is, specific circuitries on the right-hand side of your brain are involved in developing a very specific type of resonance with your primary caretaker that transitions from states of calm and quiescence that you both share simultaneously to states that are considered up states of excitement, of enthusiasm, of being wide-eyed.
And the transitioning back and forth between those states, as Dr. Shor explains, is critical to our emotional development and how we form attachments later.
So if you've heard, for instance, of avoidant attachment or anxious attachment or secure attachment, today you'll understand why those particular attachment styles develop, how they translate from early life to your adolescence, teen years, and adulthood, and in fact, how those childhood attachment patterns, which of course we can't control for ourselves, but we can control for our children,
how we can modify them through very specific protocols in order to achieve better relations with both others and with ourselves. It's indeed a very special conversation. And to my knowledge, unlike any other discussions about relationships, neuroscience, or psychology that certainly I have heard before, and I fully expect that for you, it will be as well.
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