Understanding Trauma, the Brain, and the Path to Healing

There are names in neuroscience that feel like a lifeline once you’ve stumbled across them, Dr. Allan N. Schore is one of those names.

For many of us who survived incest and chronic childhood trauma, understanding why we feel so “different” or “broken” can be maddening. Why do we panic when someone raises their voice, freeze during conflict, or shut down when love feels too close?

Dr. Schore’s decades of research offer answers, not from a place of judgment, but from science that finally makes sense of our suffering.

His work bridges neuroscience, attachment theory, and psychoanalysis, helping us see how early relational trauma literally wires the brain for survival, and how, through safe connection, it can rewire for healing.

Who Is Dr. Allan Schore?

Dr. Allan Schore is a clinical faculty member at UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. He’s often referred to as “the American Bowlby,” a nod to John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory.

But Schore took Bowlby’s insights even further, deep into the world of brain development, neurobiology, and affect regulation. His pioneering Regulation Theory explores how our earliest emotional experiences, especially with caregivers, shape our ability to manage stress, connect with others, and develop a sense of self.

In plain terms:

The way we were loved (or not loved) in the beginning shaped the way our brains handle love, fear, and connection now.

For survivors of incest, this is powerful to understand. Because it means what’s “wrong” with us isn’t weakness or defect, it’s adaptation. Our brains did exactly what they needed to do to survive impossible conditions.

The Early Wiring of the Right Brain

Dr. Schore’s research focuses on the right hemisphere of the brain, the part responsible for emotional processing, bodily awareness, and our sense of self in relation to others.

The right brain develops rapidly in the first two years of life, long before words or logic. It’s where emotional learning happens. When a baby’s caregiver consistently soothes, mirrors, and nurtures them, the baby’s right brain learns to regulate stress and trust safety.

But when a caregiver is frightening, neglectful, or abusive, especially when the abuse comes from someone the child depends on, the right brain wires around terror instead of trust.

Schore explains:

“The right hemisphere is dominant for the human stress response system and is centrally involved in processing trauma.”

For incest survivors, this means the abuse didn’t just “hurt our feelings.” It shaped the architecture of our nervous system. The fear, shame, and confusion we felt as children became encoded in our bodies, in our implicit, unconscious memory.

This is why, decades later, something as small as a tone of voice or a familiar smell can send us into panic or dissociation. It’s not “overreacting.” It’s the body remembering.

Neglect, Abuse, and the Biology of Survival

One of Schore’s most important findings is that neglect can be as damaging as overt abuse, especially during those early critical years of brain development.

When a baby cries and no one comes, their nervous system floods with stress hormones like cortisol. Without soothing, that system stays on high alert. Over time, the brain’s wiring becomes optimized for survival, not safety.

Schore notes that this chronic stress “alters the trajectory of right brain development,” leading to lifelong difficulties with emotional regulation.

In survivors of incest, this wiring can show up as:

• Hypervigilance (always waiting for danger)
• Emotional numbing or dissociation
• Difficulty trusting others
• Shame-based identity
• Explosive or withdrawn emotional responses

The body learned early on that safety was conditional, inconsistent, or nonexistent. So it built protective mechanisms to survive.

But those same mechanisms, the freezing, people-pleasing, dissociation, and self-blame, become barriers to intimacy and self-trust later in life.

The Regulation Theory: How We Learn (and Unlearn) Safety

Dr. Schore’s Regulation Theory explains that emotional well-being depends on our ability to self-regulate, to calm our bodies and manage our emotions without becoming overwhelmed.

Children don’t learn this alone. They learn it through co-regulation, the rhythmic, right-brain-to-right-brain dance between caregiver and child.

When a caregiver consistently responds with attunement, matching the child’s emotions with empathy and calm, the child’s nervous system learns that distress can be managed and that connection is safe.

But when the caregiver is the source of fear, as in incestuous abuse, that natural learning is shattered. Instead of co-regulation, the child experiences terror, confusion, and shame. The developing brain learns that closeness equals danger, love equals pain, and vulnerability equals annihilation.

As adults, survivors may unconsciously recreate these dynamics in relationships, not because we want to, but because the nervous system is trying to complete an unfinished survival pattern.

Schore writes,

“Early relational trauma leads to deficits in affect regulation and creates vulnerabilities to later psychopathology.”

But he also gives us hope:

The same neuroplasticity that allowed the brain to adapt to trauma also allows it to heal.

Through safe, consistent, and emotionally attuned relationships, whether with therapists, partners, or trusted friends, we can begin to rewire those pathways toward regulation, connection, and peace.

Healing Through Right-Brain Communication

One of the most profound aspects of Schore’s work is his emphasis on right-brain communication in psychotherapy.

Traditional talk therapy focuses on the left brain, logic, language, and reasoning. But trauma, especially relational trauma like incest, lives in the right brain, in the body, in sensations, in unspoken emotional memory.

That’s why survivors often say,

“I can talk about what happened, but I still feel broken.”

Words alone can’t reach the part of the brain where the pain lives.

Schore explains,

“Change occurs not through insight alone, but through emotionally meaningful interactions within the therapeutic relationship.”

This means the healing happens between two nervous systems, not just two minds. When a therapist can stay calm, attuned, and present while the survivor revisits unbearable emotions, the survivor’s body begins to learn:

This time, it’s different. This time, I’m safe.

For survivors, this right-brain-to-right-brain attunement can feel like the first time someone truly sees us, without judgment, without fear, without turning away.

Interactive Repair: Learning Safety Through Relationship

Dr. Schore often speaks about the concept of interactive repair, the process by which relational ruptures are acknowledged and repaired through empathy and attunement.

For those of us raised in families where violations were denied, minimized, or silenced, this idea can be revolutionary.

In healthy attachment, when a caregiver misattunes (which all caregivers do sometimes), they notice and repair the rupture:

“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to yell. You’re safe now.”

That repair teaches the child two critical truths:

Relationships can survive mistakes.

I am worth coming back for.

Incest survivors often grew up without those repairs. When abuse was denied or hidden, the rupture remained open, festering into shame, mistrust, and emotional chaos.

In healing, we begin to experience corrective attachment, relationships where ruptures are repaired instead of ignored. Each time someone shows up for us, listens without gaslighting, or honors our boundaries, the nervous system starts to believe safety is possible again.

As Schore puts it,

“Repair of misattunement is the most powerful mechanism for growth.”

When Silence Was Our Survival

Another of Schore’s teachings that resonates deeply with trauma survivors is his emphasis on “shared solitude,” moments of quiet connection where words aren’t necessary.

For many incest survivors, silence was once dangerous. Silence meant secrets, suppression, or complicity. But in healing, silence becomes sacred again.

It’s the space where the body can breathe. Where the nervous system can rest. Where connection doesn’t require performance or words.

Dr. Schore notes that in the deepest therapeutic work, transformation often happens in the nonverbal realm, the subtle synchrony of breath, gaze, and energy between two people.

For survivors learning to trust again, these moments of shared safety, even without words, are monumental. They are the nervous system’s way of saying:

I’m finally home.

The Long Shadow of Early Trauma

One of Schore’s most sobering findings is that early attachment trauma can influence stress regulation for the entire lifespan.

When the right brain’s early trajectory is disrupted, it affects everything: mood regulation, immune function, cardiovascular health, and even gene expression.

In other words, incest trauma doesn’t just affect your mind; it shapes your body’s entire stress response.

This explains why so many survivors develop chronic health issues like fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorders, gastrointestinal problems, or chronic fatigue. These are not “all in your head.” They are the physiological echoes of a nervous system that learned to survive danger by never resting.

But again, understanding this isn’t hopeless, it’s liberating. Because once we know the body keeps score (as Bessel van der Kolk says), we can begin to heal on the level where the damage occurred: the body, the brain, and the relationship.

Integrating the Science and the Soul

Dr. Schore’s genius lies in the way he bridges biology and psychology, science and soul.

He doesn’t see the brain as just a machine but as a living system shaped by love, fear, and connection. His work gives survivors a map, a compassionate, evidence-based framework that says:

You’re not crazy.

You’re not defective.

Your brain adapted to survive.

And because the brain is plastic, capable of change throughout life, recovery is not only possible, it’s biological.

Through safe, attuned relationships (with therapists, partners, friends, or even within ourselves), new neural pathways can form. The right brain can learn safety the same way it learned fear, through repeated experience.

The Therapeutic Alliance: A New Model for Healing

Schore’s emphasis on the therapeutic alliance, the emotional bond between therapist and client, has transformed modern psychotherapy.

In the old model, therapy was about logic, analysis, and insight. In Schore’s model, therapy is about attunement, emotion, and connection.

Healing comes from a therapist’s ability to regulate with the client, to hold emotional intensity without becoming overwhelmed or distant. This right-brain-to-right-brain connection allows the survivor’s nervous system to internalize new patterns of safety and trust.

In his words,

“The regulation of emotion is the most important task of the human brain.”

And therapy, when done right, becomes the re-parenting of the nervous system, the slow, sacred rebuilding of what was once destroyed.

Why Schore’s Work Matters So Deeply for Incest Survivors

Because his science tells the truth our families never could: it wasn’t our fault.

• We didn’t overreact.
• We didn’t imagine it.
• We didn’t “fail to move on.”

Our developing brains were hijacked by betrayal, and our bodies have been trying to protect us ever since.

Dr. Schore gives language to what survivors feel but often can’t articulate, the confusion of loving the person who hurt you, the shame that feels cellular, the exhaustion of living in constant alert.

And most importantly, he gives us hope grounded in neuroscience: the brain can change.

Through attunement, empathy, and repair, the same ingredients that once should have built our safety, healing can happen.

A Legacy of Compassionate Science

Dr. Schore’s work has earned him Lifetime Achievement Awards from institutions like Sapienza University of Rome and the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center, as well as induction into Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society.

But beyond the awards, his legacy is personal. It’s in every survivor who finally understands why they feel the way they do. It’s in every therapist who learns to meet trauma not with analysis, but with attunement.

He didn’t just redefine attachment theory, he gave us a bridge between the science of the brain and the art of healing.

As he once said,

“Human beings are not self-contained. We are not isolated systems. We are open to and dependent upon the regulatory influences of other minds.”

For incest survivors, this is both a truth and a balm:

We were wounded in relationship, but we will also heal in relationship.

Final Reflection: From Survival to Regulation

Dr. Allan Schore’s research illuminates what many of us have lived without understanding, that trauma is not just psychological, it’s biological.

It changes how we breathe, sleep, love, and relate. But it also means that healing is biological too.

Every moment of calm presence, every repaired rupture, every act of self-compassion begins to rewire the nervous system toward safety.

So, to every survivor reading this:

You are not beyond repair.

Your brain, your body, your spirit, they’ve been waiting for safety long enough.

And through this sacred, slow, and often invisible work, you are giving your nervous system the gift it never got, the chance to finally rest.

References:

Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self. W. W. Norton.

Schore, A. N. (2012). The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. W. W. Norton.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.