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Dr. Anna Machin

lines on the record: 189
first: 2025-07-03
most recent: 2025-07-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Possible reason why dad, they don't think dad is appropriate, whatever it might be. It might be that dad's living too far away or dad's job doesn't allow for it. They will not stick to the presumption of 50-50 custody and they will swing it all over in terms in favour of mum, for example. And that is because they do not fundamentally understand how important that father is to that child. And that's because they've not kept up. They're literally operating on very outmoded, completely culturally based, not evidence-based at all assumptions about who a father is. So he's right. He's absolutely right. And there are many men who are in that position. I get emailed all the time from men doing and all the time from people saying, you know, will you come and be my expert witness, etc. And I can't do it. I don't have time to do it. But yeah, there's a fundamental misunderstanding. But that's just reflecting a wider cultural problem.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is, and we've spent a long time, and I'm still not there yet, wanting to go into the family courts in Britain and inform them about this. Because at the moment they're operating on outmoded understandings that the primary person a child needs is their mum. And therefore, if there's any...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be I'm made to feel unimportant. I am made to feel like a secondary parent, like a bad carrier or the person who makes the tea. That's particularly in relation to like birth and antinatal stuff. So it's all about them not feeling like they are important or that they're needed. And they are so wrong.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think It's partly to do with the spreading of education. I think if my next book Reaches a lot of people and reaches enough people, I will think I've made it and Done my mission to share what we know about dads because there's so much written and it stays in fusty old journals and nobody reads it. And I want to share that because it fundamentally changes who dads think they are and how they do it. I get so many emails from people saying, you know, wow, I've read your book and it legitimizes so much for me. It makes me understand what I'm going through or it makes me realize that I am needed. And I think if I can get a book that has a really diverse readership, then that will be the moment where I think, yes, I've done what I want to do.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suppose one of the times I thought I probably had made it was when I started at the University of Oxford and I was working with Robin Dumbar. And then I thought, from an academic point of view, this is like the pinnacle of where you can work with a team of people who are at the forefront of what they're doing. So I think that was probably a moment, but I'm really good in retrospect at kind of rewriting that and going, yeah, but that wasn't good enough. So let's go and do the next thing.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I'm not good at doing that. Actually, I said to my husband the other day, I'm not good at celebrating when I do something. So I tend to go, what's next?”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, you can't get bio behavioural synchrony unless you have a wet system. Robots so far don't have wet systems. So that's what worries me. But it's going to come and we have to have that conversation”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's a much less emotional thing. It's different. And we only really see patterns like this if you're interacting with another sentient being. And this is what kind of worries me about AI. Because if you did this with AI, you would probably get something like this. If you really loved your AI robot at the moment or your chatbot, you would get this. But I would be very surprised if you got anything in the limbic area and the study so far show that we don't because you don't develop that loving relationship and you certainly don't get anything in the prefrontal cortex. And that's the problem. Now, AI might go on in leaps and bounds, but at the moment, when they talk about programming empathy, empathy is so complicated. And particularly the empathy we have, we have cognitive empathy. Most animals have emotional empathy. So cognitive empathy is much more complex. It's very hard to do”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, okay. That's interesting. I mean, with science, you sometimes get different answers because you've done different methodology or you've got different populations. We tend to like to see things replicated for them to be confirmed. So I'm a bit surprised by this. Also in my book, I talk about some really good studies that have been done looking at dog human love. So I'm surprised by that. I'm not surprised that it's got quite a bit of cortical action. I'm really surprised it has nothing in the limbic area because that's where attachment is. And love for nature. Again, this is really interesting because again, this is the striatum and the amygdala and this is where human love, like to another sentient being would be. And again, we've got nothing. So love for nature is a much more, it's not a conscious thing.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I don't know which study this is, and I don't know what they looked at or how many people they looked at. So that's interesting. But what I would expect to see more actually here in the nurturing area, because we do know that you can build an attachment relationship with a pet. So it's very surprising that there's nothing there.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're not getting any unconscious nurturing attachment behaviors, which you wouldn't expect to get with a stranger. With a pet, I'm surprised to look at this and I don't know where this came from because other studies have shown that pet love is very like parental love.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So friendship love is just less intense It's a love but it's not as intense. I wouldn't describe this as love for a stranger What you can see the reason why I say that is can you see how little unconscious activation there is this is the limbic area”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so what's happening here? So we've got the different sorts of love. So we've got romantic love and parental love. Now these two arguably are the most intense forms of love. That's why you see such amazingly complex areas of the brain lighting up. You've got a lot happening in the core of the brain here. This is the limbic system. And you've got happening neocortically as well in relation to areas related to social behavior, but also things like empathizing and maintenance and trust and all those sorts of things. Love for a friend is from a neuroscientific point of view nearly as complicated as romantic love but what it doesn't actually have which is really interesting is in romantic love the difference is we actually get some activations which mirror the activations you get if you're on an opiate that sort of addictive euphoric sensation you get that you get that pattern in romantic love you don't get it in friendship love you also don't generally get biobavavoral synchrony in friendship unless it's a really close friend”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are literally operating as one being. And we think that in a way is the absolute fundamental basis of human close love. And it's the fundamental. And you don't get that at the moment with an AI robot. And I can't imagine it being easy because you need a wet brain and you need a circulatory system.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As your blood pressure, your heart rate, your body temperature. Okay, if you sat together and had a chat for five minutes, those would all come into synchrony. So your heart rates would synchronize, your body temperature and your blood pressure. And then if we were to look into your brain, two things would have happened. First of all, having come into the room again with different activation patterns in your brain, we would look in your brain and your activation patterns would be the same. So you would be perceiving the world in the same way. And finally, if we looked at your neurochemical levels, so we generally look at oxytocin because it's easiest to access. Again, we all have baseline levels of oxytocin. They're different from each other. You would have walked in with different levels after five minutes, they would have synchronized. They would be the same. So what actually happens when you're with someone you're close to develop that bond is you become one organism.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do not replace humans with them or even dogs with them. Care robots scare me because again, it's about replacing humans in a context which is very, very complicated from a neuroscientific point of view. Care requires empathy. It requires a thing which occurs in very close human relationships, again, underpins our immune system and our health, known as biobehavioral synchrony. So biobavaval synchrony, we won't have it now. I'm really sorry, we're not close enough, but you will have it with your partner. So when you're with your partner, if I were to observe you, your body language and maybe the gestures you use and your vocal tone and maybe the language you use would start kind of matching each other. We all know this from management training. You match people to make them feel closer to you. Fine, that's what humans do. It makes us feel closer to each other. But if we were to look into your body, you and your partner would have entered that room at different baseline levels of physiological measures.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is. But what scares me about it is that person talking to you there, your brain at the moment, because we haven't advanced enough in AI, and maybe we will, knows that's not human. And because it knows it's not human, it's not releasing any of the positive chemicals that come with social interaction in your brain. And it's those chemicals that underpin your health, your mental health and your physical health beta and dolphin underpins your immune system. So that's the problem. Your prefrontal cortex at the moment is not recognizing that as human. So it's not going to kick off anything. And that is the problem. Now maybe a robotic, you know, an AI guy would say to me, oh, we'll get there. Okay. If you can get there, great. But at the moment, we're not. And we have people who are starting to build really strong attachments to these things. You can build an attachment to a chatbot. It's a parasocial relationship. Same as building a relationship to a celebrity you've never met. But you're not getting any of the positive benefits. So have them in their life, have them part of your social network if you want to. Spend time.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Having AI caretakers, for example, people who care for people, or robots who care for people, or even, you know, you could even possibly have a relationship. I'm not talking about sex sports, but I'm talking about a full relationship with a robot. Again, all of these things, we need to understand the implications and we need to have a conversation now. Because when you unleash these things, if you haven't had that conversation, it's very hard to put them back in the box. And we know already things like chatbots are out there. I'm not the sort to say something is entirely negative. So chatbots have their place. They've been shown to be really, really good, particularly with people who have social anxiety or people who are, for example, autistic and want to practice being social. It's when you replace real human contact”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're still missing that point. And we're still trying to do our relationships efficiently in this busy, busy world. And I understand why. And the tools we've been given to do it are attractive. You know, they're attractive. We love a new shiny thing, humans, and they're great. But what's happened is we've forgotten who we are and how we need to do it. And our brains did not evolve with the shiny screen. Our brains evolved in a world where we all lived very, very close together. And we need to kind of in a way go back to that if you want to have that fulfilling life. So I think that's my first point. I think the second one is the role for AI. And you've probably talked about AI in so many different contexts, but AI in our intimate relationships, and I don't mean just sexually intimate, I mean emotionally intimate, so any relationship you have based on love is something we need to talk about because there is work towards, for example, we know about AI chatbots already, and we know that there's going to be a work towards how...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's been even more impressive since then that your relationships are the biggest factor in your health well-being and longevity. Above all else, from don't smoke, make change a good weight, do your exercise, eat your vegetables, all those sorts of things. Above all of that, sit your relationships. So when we in this very health conscious world where we have lots of health influences and all that kind of thing”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really, really want to emphasise the body of work which says that your relationships are the biggest factor in your health, your longevity and your well-being. And the reason why I want to emphasize that is because in a world of digital communication, we have become much less good at nurturing our relationships, much less good at impact inputting into our relationships, maintaining our relationships in the way they should be maintained, which is in person. And that has consequences for our health. You know, a wonderful study, the first study of its kind in 2010, there have been many by Julie Holt Lunsted. She did a massive meta-analysis, which is lots and lots of studies coming together, looking at the impact of your social network, your relationships, all those sorts of things on outcomes, health outcomes, things like the likelihood that you would have poor mental health, the likelihood that you would suffer from certain chronic diseases, the likelihood that you would recover from certain illnesses, or how long it would take you to come back round after having it in operation in terms of getting better.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Possibly, yeah. I mean, it's not an area I study particularly, but I think, yes, you probably do. And we know that humans, some humans are genetically neurodivergent or not. Some humans are genetically predisposed to like novelty more than others. It's part of the one of the dopamine genes. And so some people, yes, they are more likely to seek out novelty and want, for example, yes, a very varied sex life. But, you know, that's something you can have with one individual. You don't necessarily have to go out and, you know, if that individual is willing to go down that route with you, it's not something you necessarily have to seek elsewhere.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making it clear that that's important to you and that your partner has an understanding and you're explaining your behavior. And I think that's important.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't like pushing drugs on anybody. And I think whether you take medication for ADHD is a very personal decision. But I think if the mantra I have is if your ADHD is fundamentally Upsetting your life, and you feel that, then it's something you maybe need to consider. It's very difficult to do just off your own back. It's not a therapy issue. It's not an attachment issue. It's very likely to be a neurochemical issue. And that's the different thing. I would also say it's also about the people who you go out with. I've spoken to lots of couples which are mixed in terms of neurodiversity and neurotypical. And it's about the person who's neurotypical, really educating themselves about how the neurodiverse brain works. So they have an understanding also about why is that person reacting like that? Why are they doing that? And that's also really, really important. I don't think we want to put the burden always on neurodiverse people to change because I don't think that's really an acceptable thing to ask them to do. I don't think it's really any different from any relationship. The best relationships are ones where we take the time to really understand who our partner is. That's the way it works best. So you saying you and your partner talk about your attachment styles. That's really important. You're fundamentally...”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we know that. We know that. I recently did a conference which was on women in ADHD and we had a workshop and most of the women in that room said, I either don't have relationships or I struggle or I'm in a long-term relationship, but it is a daily struggle to maintain it because it's so hard to keep your attention on that relationship, to not look for the novelty elsewhere, and also for the other person, particularly if they're neurotypical, to deal with. I mean, one woman said to me, I'm always told I'm too much. I'm too much to go out with because of the impulsivity and the rushing around and the lack of attention and the lack of calmness.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Essentially. That's what he's doing because the early stages, you know, when you get further into a relationship, dopamine takes more of a back seat and B-Randorphin comes in. So B-Rendorfin is the chemical of long-term love. Dopamine is much more in the background at that point. So we get the major part of our dopamine hits in relationships at the start. And that's probably why he gets to a point where the dopamine starts tailing off, the oxytocin starts to tail off, and beta endorphin starts coherent. And it becomes less exciting. That's when we move from passionate love to companionate love. And it's just not as exhilarating maybe.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I'm always wary of studies like that because, first of all, if the effect size is not overwhelming, I think we have to be very careful of labeling neurodiverse people as the problem in a relationship. And I'm very aware of that. I do a lot of training on this, particularly for therapists. And I think we need to be aware that all relationships are a interaction between two people. And they will each bring their issues. And I think the labeling of people with neurodiversity as the problem is not on. We all, whether we're neurodiverse or not, have to learn to adapt to the other person and we have to educate ourselves about how their brain works, attachment, whatever it might be. And therefore, I think we need to be careful. I think with ADHD, what we do know is people with ADHD are more likely to have many more short-term relationships because they get bored quite easily. They are also much more likely to undertake risky sexual behavior.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Petunia are typical people together. There are some brilliant. Asking neurodiverse person a neurotypical person to empathize, it's hard because the brain operates in a different way. So, empathy is the basis of relationships. So, if you are in a mixed relationship, neurotypical and neurodiverse, that can be tricky because it can be very hard to empathize with the other person and know what their emotional needs are.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is really incredibly tricky, I think. And, you know, we also have issues with empathy, for example. There's a myth, particularly autistic people don't empathize. That's not true. It's unfortunately studying the diagnostic criteria and it shouldn't be. The issue is that they empathize in a different way. And so either they are actually hyper-empaths, which means that they feel the other person's emotions so strongly that they shut down. And so they don't actually respond to the person because they can't cope with the extreme emotional overload they've had. Or the other reason is they do empathize, but they empathize with the neurodiverse brain. There's been a recent study looking at this and saying, actually, if you put two new neurodiverse people together and ask them to empathize with each other, they're brilliant.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asking is knowing the rules of the neurotypical world. So, for example, autistic girls, the reason why autistic girls tend to be diagnosed later is they become very good at learning the social rules. So all those things that they would naturally want to do in a social situation, you know, be mute or not reciprocate properly or not say the right thing, they learn what the rules are. It's why they burn out generally is because they've spent the whole childhood studying it and going, okay, so in that circumstance, I do this. And in that circumstance, I do this. And they hide the autism. Now, so not only is that incredibly stressful, but if you've got used to in life denying who you are, if you go into a relationship with someone, particularly if they're particularly dominant or they're abusive, you carry on denying who you are, denying that you have a right, for example, to be with someone who's kind of deny the fact that you have needs. And so we know that people who mask find it much, much harder to express what they want in a relationship.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dopamine seeks by shopping because she got lovely dopamine hip when you do it. But unfortunately, the start of relationships is a dopamine C. You get lots of lovely dopamine in a start of relationships. So what you'll tend to find with HC people is they will go into relationships really quickly without really considering, is this person right for me? So there's that impulsivity that comes with ADHD as well, because they're getting that hit of dopamine at the start. We also know that, for example, if you are neurodiverse, you tend to mask a lot. You've got used to in life masking to fit in with the neurotypical world.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deal with. We also know unfortunately the people who are neurodiverse are more likely to be in abusive relationships. And there are reasons for that. If we look at ADHD, ADHD is a dysfunction of the dopamine system in the brain. So what happens is you release dopamine, but it's taken back up into the brain before it has enough of an effect. So what people with ADHD tend to do is they dopamine seek. They do activities which give them a hit of dopamine. So, you know, I have my daughter, I hope usually doesn't mind my daughter's ADHD autistic. Her dopamine seeking is shopping”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slower, but they also tend to be either hypersensory, which means they feel all the senses very intensely, or they tend to have different experiences of senses, or they tend to have very low sensory experience. And all of that will impact, first of all, how the algorithm operates in your brain. It will also impact just simply things like the environment in which you might go on a date. So maybe you want to go on a date to a restaurant or a pub or a comedy club or wherever for autistic people. That's really hard.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's impacted in ADHD and in autism. The processing speeds and also the way that you process those particular three elements is different. For example, people with ADHD, their working memory generally isn't great. They find it difficult to recall things or hold on to things. Emotional regulation is difficult. So, for example, people with ADHD might build anger quicker than people who don't have it, people with autism tend to have quite extreme extremes of emotional experience, for example. And all of that is very difficult in a relationship. Because if you live with someone who has extreme emotional reactions or gets very angry in conflicts very quickly, that's tricky to deal with. We also know things like sensory processing, particularly in autism is affected. So that has two implications. First of all, when we're using all that sensory information in the attraction stage, so all that sensory information that's going into your limbic area, the sensory processing speeds in people with autism tend to be”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People with neurodiverse brains. What does that mean? Executive function is things like attention, emotional inhibition and working memory. It's kind of the set of skills that allow you to operate within the world.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Firstly, because the big Some of the areas of the brain which are activated in love are also involved in neurodiversity. And that is why, particularly with autism, but also with ADHD, the issues that people who are autistic or ADHD have express themselves a lot in the social sphere because it's the same neurochemistry and genetics, essentially. So, for example, the oxytocin receptor gene, which has 26-point mutations on it which impact your social behavior and individual differences in social behavior, a lot of those are implicated also in autism. Dopamine is implicated obviously in ADHD. Serotonin is implicated in ADHD. Those are both chemicals which are involved in love, one of the neurochemicals of love. So there is some major crossovers between the two. There are several reasons why neurodiversity is difficult. For example, the way the neurodiverse brain works, things like executive function is different.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Time. So there are partnerships that work better. And I do agree with you. I think it's good to be aware of what each within a partnership is, because then you can understand some of the quirks in behavior, you can understand some of your reactions to that behavior”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we know particularly a dismissing avoidant person with a preoccupied person. That's really tricky to keep going. That is. That is a long term relationship, which is if it can carry on, is going to be very hard work and probably quite roller coastery, I would say. Whereas, you know, if any of the insecure, so I'm doing this because it's a grid, any of the insecure attachment styles, if you can find yourself somewhere secure, brilliant secure people are amazing because they will absorb all that stuff because they're so secure in themselves, whether you're clingy, whether you're pushing them away, they absorb it and they're good at it. Preoccupied and fearful avoidance. That works quite well in one sense because the preoccupied person wants to stick with the fearful avoidant person. And the thing that's really, really troubling the fearful avoidant person is you're going to leave. So if you literally sit on top of them, which is what you're doing if you're preoccupied, then that's great in one sense because they will think, oh, okay, they're literally not going anywhere because they're there.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's really triggered, and that's what we know. We know there are certain attachment styles that work better together than others”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's really important. It's really important to do that because we all attach in different ways. And by understanding that. Helps you, as you say, if someone's really clingy, it can feel quite claustrophobic, but if you understand actually that claustrophobia, especially”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or you can ask your friends to help you. Okay, if you see me do this, you need to flag it. You need to tell me you're doing it again. You need to step beyond that. And it will need support. You'll need emotional support, either just from friends and family, or you might need professional help. There are attachment counsellors who will help you understand where your attachment style came from, and they will help you do the work. Shift. So you can do it that way. And then obviously at the very extreme end, there's attachment disorders, and they always need input from a professional.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's quite an important thing to realize. If you see yourself, for example, repeating the same things over and over again in relationships. So it gets to a certain point and you leg it. For example, it's all getting a bit intense. I'm now going to run away or you always end up pushing people away, for example, maybe because you're too preoccupied or whatever. And it's good if you see that pattern, if you are conscious enough to recognize that pattern, then you can do work on yourself.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, in a way, I didn't know it was happening. This happened long before I studied attachment stars. I think I was still chasing monkeys at this point So that's the easiest way literally you end up with someone who's secure and over time they just get into your brain and they show you you are wrong. Other ways are being conscious about what your attachment style is and being conscious about how it doesn't work for you. There is no wrong attachment style. That's what I want to say if you feel comfortable in your attachment style, brilliant. That's great. It's when it doesn't work for you that there's a problem. And so there I always think everyone should kind of keep an eye on what their attachment style is.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the entire reason. There are other reasons why people behave the way they do and might not want relationships. There are genetic reasons, so there are lots of reasons why.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where all your social cognition is. And it's going to have less gray and white matter in that area. It's going to have less density of neurons and less of a high level of neurochemistry which underpins social behavior. And because of that, when you're an adult, you're just not as equipped to be good at relationships because you don't actually have the brain architecture to underpin it. So that's one of the reasons why we see people who grow up in that environment being more insecure because they don't have the brain architecture or indeed the neurochemical, the baseline neurochemical levels circulating in their body, which is going to motivate and reward them for starting relationships. So they just don't have the equipment that people who maybe grew up in a secure environment do. So that's one of the problems. And so when people say daddy issues, partly what they're talking about is attachment style. It's the fact that I have this attachment style and I've identified I have this attachment style because my father left whenever I was, however old.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They certainly have a higher probability of having an insecure attachment style. Because, as I mentioned, in the first two years of life, when your brain is growing, the environment in which you're being cared for is going to shape that brain, particularly if, for example, a parent leaves during that time or even later on when it's still quite a sensitive brain, that's going to impact how your brain grows, particularly in that prefrontal cortex, so the bit right at the front here.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those people are avoidance. So they're either dismissing avoidant, which means they don't have any of the anxiety associated with relationships, or they're fearful avoidance. So they avoid them because they're scared of being hurt.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that is playing a role because we get that hit on dopamine is nice. It gives you a reward. The problem it has is on its own. It has no bearing on social relationships or social behavior. You need to have the full cocktail. So that's what I say to people about social media when they say, you know, but I'm getting a dopamine here. It's like, yeah, you are. And that's great. But dopamine is very short-lasting. On its own, it doesn't underpin your immune system or your health in any way. You need the full lot. You need the full four social chemicals to get any advantage out of it. So that is the problem. And I think people, because we've heard a lot about dopamine, think that dopamine alone is going to make you happy and it's not.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have that draw to go and see people anymore from a biological point of view. And from a psychological point of view, it becomes a little bit scary. So you just... Avoidant behaviors in people than we used to.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do. I think. We are getting less comfortable with intimacy. And I think that's partly because we are not as practiced at it as we used to be, because we are not forced to be in close contact with a lot of people as much as we used to be. You can pretty much do everything from your sofa. You can work from your sofa. You can order food from your sofa. You can try and maintain your relationships with your friends from your sofa. You don't actually have to be in a room with anyone. After COVID, there's a lot of data showing that people found it, people are much less interested now in meeting up. They kind of got used to being in that little bubble. And even though they had the yearning of, I don't have anyone with me, they became much more anxious about going out and actually seeing anybody. And it wasn't just because they were worried about COVID. We got out of the habit. And if you get out of the habit, you don't get any of the chemicals which encourage you to go out. You certainly don't get any of the addictive chemicals like beta and dolphin. So you kind of go a bit cold turkey slowly. And you just don't.”
2025-07-03 · The Diary of a CEO · World Expert on Fatherhood & Love: The Truth About Monogamy, Breakups & The Science of Love! Dr. Anna Machin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT