Emotional numbness does not always look like a crisis. For many men, it is quieter, a steady flatness, a sense of static that will not lift no matter how much they push.
In this solo episode of the Men’s Therapy Online Podcast, Marc Azoulay, therapist, coach, and founder of Men’s Therapy Online, is breaking down one of the most common yet least understood struggles facing modern men: the feeling of being emotionally switched off.
Marc argues that what most men are experiencing is not a mindset problem, not laziness, and not something that will pass if they keep grinding harder. It’s a neurological issue rooted in a depleted opioid system, the part of the brain responsible for deep satisfaction, contentment, and enoughness. When that system goes quiet, a man stops feeling alive.
He covers anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure), and alexithymia symptoms (difficulty identifying and naming emotions), that quietly accumulate when a man is always seeking but never arriving. He also walks through the mental fog causes that keep men stuck, chronic overstimulation, dopamine hijacking, and the fear of slowing down.
“Before I got into therapy and coaching and self-improvement, I was dead,” Marc says. “I was doing all the things right, the gym, dating, building a business, but I just felt completely empty.”
The fix, he explains, requires going inward: starving the dopamine system through deliberate stillness, then learning to feel the body again through somatic awareness. On the other side of the discomfort — the fear, the pain, the noise — is what Marc calls enoughness. A felt sense of safety. Of being present on the earth.
This episode is for men who are doing everything right on paper but still feel nothing. If you’ve been asking yourself “why do I feel empty” and can’t find a satisfying answer, this one is for you.
Emotional numbness in men is a persistent flatness and disconnection, not sadness, but an absence of feeling. Marc explains it’s a neurological issue tied to an underactive opioid system, often worsened by overstimulation and overlapping with anhedonia and alexithymia symptoms.
Marc explains that the brain’s opioid system can go dormant when a man is constantly seeking without ever genuinely enjoying what he’s achieved. The result is a life that looks fine on paper but feels hollow inside.
Anhedonia — the inability to feel pleasure — and alexithymia — the inability to identify and name emotions — are closely related and both common in men experiencing emotional numbness. Marc notes that many men in this state aren’t clinically depressed. They are not sad, not grieving, not in a shame spiral. They simply can’t feel, understand, or name what’s going on inside. No amount of motivation, hype, caffeine, or alcohol can fix this at the level it needs to be fixed.
The core driver is a dopamine system that has been over-tuned by constant input — social media, pornography, alcohol, stimulants, while the opioid system has gone quiet from disuse. Men stay stuck because the brain, under stress, defaults to doing the same thing harder rather than doing something different. The fear of slowing down, of things falling apart, keeps most men grinding rather than going inward.
Marc recommends starting with a deliberate withdrawal from stimulation, a solo day in nature, a quiet overnight, combined with body-based awareness practices. Individual therapy and men’s groups can also help. You can also join the free Men’s Therapy Online Slack community to connect with other men working through these same topics.
You can find Marc at his website Men’s Therapy Online, where he offers therapy, coaching, and a free Slack community for men.
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