Secondhand Therapy – Episode #110

“Emotional Numbness, Triggers & Childhood Patterns”

Hosted by Louie Paoletti & Michael Malone
Release Date: December 8, 2025
Duration (content only): ~00:07:39–00:58:39

Episode Overview

In this candid and often humorous episode, Louie Paoletti and Michael Malone unpack their recent experiences with emotional numbness, grief, and the generational patterns that shape their reactions. Through raw self-reflection and real-time conversation about recent therapy sessions and everyday triggers, they explore how childhood influences still inform their emotional landscape—as well as the messy, circuitous process of trying to heal and grow. Along the way, they challenge each other and themselves with vulnerability, poking fun at their own patterns and each other, but always returning to honest emotional truth.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Returning After a Break: Emotional Fallout & Avoidance

• [07:26] The duo returns after a brief holiday break, prompted largely by the emotional heaviness of their previous episode.
• Louie shares that his Thanksgiving was spent almost entirely in bed, feeling not so much sad as numb ([08:01]), describing, “It wasn’t really like a sadness. It was more like a numbness.”
• Michael coaxed him down for a meal: “Just come eat. There’s chicken, mac and cheese—it’s all been temperature checked!” ([08:29])
• Real, simple acts of care—a meal, a donut—lifted Louie’s spirits, if gently.

2. Grappling with Grief: “Finding a Home” for Loss

• Louie’s Therapy Takeaway: He launches into a recent therapy session on grief, describing lifelong struggles with processing emotions:

  “I was just taught to keep it moving...there’s just so much [grief] that I think I’m further along, and then something like a holiday or a celebration just beats the shit out of me.” ([10:39])

• His therapist suggests grief is “spilling over” because it isn’t organized or given a “home” in his life ([11:09]).
• Analogy: Louie compares it to hauling an overstuffed suitcase, feeling encumbered while others glide by:

  “It feels like I’m late for a trip and I have just thrown everything into a suitcase…I described it as, remember the old Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail, where the guys have luggage stacked on their backs? That’s how I feel.” ([11:49]–[13:28])

• Actionable Advice: Therapist tells Louie, “You need to spend more time with [your grief],” like looking at old photos or speaking to memories out loud ([14:32] & [15:22]).
• Louie: “I used to do that a lot, and I’ve stopped.” ([15:59])
• The Big Obstacle: Leaning in to grief often triggers intense waves of shame and a harsh inner critic (“What the fuck are you doing?”), tying the inability to sit with emotion to generational family patterns ([17:03]).

3. Patterns of Shame, Numbness, and Emotional Regulation

• Shame and Foolishness: Louie admits, “I feel foolish. Feels—I feel dumb, dude.” ([17:37])
• He traces the inner critic’s voice (“What are you doing?”) to inherited, possibly parental, attitudes about emotional vulnerability.
• Painful Crying: When Louie allows himself to cry deeply (“physically painful...uncontrollable...heavy weeping”), he often forcefully shuts it down, feeling “embarrassment, shame, and stupidity.” ([18:05]–[19:06])
• Michael relates, but notes most embarrassment around crying only happens in front of others ([20:07]).

4. Childhood Roots & Masculinity

• Louie: “You just don’t do that”—on generational expectations about suppressing emotion, especially as a man ([25:12]).
• It’s “me now versus 40 years of me, you know what I mean? Having that thinking…” ([25:33])
• The complexity and resistance of unlearning family, especially maternal, patterns runs throughout the episode.

5. Emotional Triggers in Everyday Life: The Chipotle Saga

• The pair recount a minor but illustrative trigger: a frustrating Chipotle experience ([28:23]–[38:14]).
• Louie tries hard to control his anger after poor service, but confesses “so much anger” remains in his body ([29:53]).
• He and Michael debate coping strategies—pretending not to be mad vs. examining and naming the true source of anger ([31:09]–[32:33]).
• Louie: “When you start working on something, you’re just kind of pretending until it’s real. Like, I’m still mad, but I’m pretending I’m not mad until eventually…I’m really not mad.” ([31:19])
• Michael prefers examining the why behind anger, “reminding myself of the reality,” not just performing calmness ([32:28]).

Root Cause Revelation

• As Louie narrates his frustration, Michael prods about what’s actually making him mad.

  Louie: “Why am I fighting for your attention right now?” ([35:22])
  Michael: “It’s almost like your nervous system remembers having to fight for attention, and now you take that as an act of aggression.” ([40:18])

• This unlocks the realization: customer service triggers tie back to childhood experiences of seeking parental attention ([44:09]), particularly from Louie’s mother.

  Michael: “That bitch cooked your nervous system.” ([43:47])

• Louie simultaneously laughs and bristles at the accuracy, reflecting on how “cold shoulder” cues (from employees, from parents) produce outsize emotional reaction ([43:03]).

6. Triggers, Responsibility, and the Modern World

• Michael draws on a book he’s reading about triggers:

  “What a trigger is, is you intake information, your nervous system has a reaction, and then now you believe that what you took was an act of aggression when that is not what happened.” ([47:54])

• He differentiates between being responsible for your triggers and expecting the world or others to accommodate them:

  “It’s not about tailoring the world to your triggers. It’s about managing your triggers so you can exist in the world.” ([48:41])

• This launches discussion on the difference between societal, justified triggers and those rooted in personal, often childhood, wounds.

7. Vulnerability, Projection, and Clarifying Communication

• A meta-debate unfolds about whether caring about bad customer service to others is proof of empathy or selfishness. The two unpack the difference between micro and macro reactions—and the loaded nature of words like “selfish.”
• Michael: “You’re judgmental as shit. So you think everybody’s judging you as well, that’s what’s happening.” ([55:49])
• Louie: “How else am I supposed to receive that information besides—‘you’re selfish’?” ([53:11])
• The discussion becomes a comical but revealing navigation of how deeply held beliefs about the self influence how we hear each other (and the world), not just what’s being said.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“It wasn’t really like a sadness. It was more like a numbness.”
— Louie ([09:12])

“When your grief is not organized, it’s spilling over into other things, and then it becomes overwhelming…because it doesn’t have a home.”
— Louie, paraphrasing therapist ([11:09])

“I was just taught to keep it moving…there’s too much of it.”
— Louie ([10:39])

“You need to spend more time with [your grief].”
— Louie’s therapist ([14:32])

“I feel foolish. Feels—I feel dumb, dude.”
— Louie ([17:37])

“You just don’t do that. And so it’s a deep shame of, like, you’re crying right now.”
— Louie ([25:12])

“When you start working on something, you’re just kind of pretending until it’s real.”
— Louie ([31:19])

“Why am I fighting for your attention right now?”
— Louie ([35:22])
“It’s almost like your nervous system remembers having to fight for attention, and now you take that as an act of aggression.”
— Michael ([40:18])

“That bitch cooked your nervous system.”
— Michael ([43:47])

“It was about being treated like a good boy. And that’s—oopsie, not at Chipotle.”
— Michael ([44:28])

“Triggers are your responsibility and your problem.”
— Michael ([47:45])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [07:39] – Return from break; Louie describes Thanksgiving numbness
• [09:12] – Discussion of numbness vs. sadness; therapy session about grief
• [11:09] – “Organizing” grief and the suitcase analogy
• [14:32] – Therapist’s “bad news”: Spend more time with your grief/memories
• [17:37] – Rooting the shame of emotion in childhood family voice
• [25:12] – Generational masculinity and suppression of emotion
• [28:23–38:14] – The Chipotle frustration saga; emotional reactions to daily triggers
• [35:22–40:18] – Core realization: “Why am I fighting for your attention right now?” and nervous system responses rooted in childhood
• [44:28] – “It was about being treated like a good boy. And that’s—oopsie, not at Chipotle.”
• [47:54] – Michael on triggers and personal responsibility

Tone & Speaker Style

• Open, self-effacing humor: Frequent joking about their own hangups (“Catatonic for the holidays—tradition around here, dog.”)
• Relatable, direct language: “Dude, that bitch cooked your nervous system.”
• Deep vulnerability, interrupted by comic relief—the hallmark of the podcast.
• Michael often challenges Louie, but usually with warmth and a therapist’s ear, if unlicensed.
• Louie is reflective and quick to turn jokes in on himself, often seeking clarification on whether the pain and patterns he recognizes are unique or universally male.

Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode lives at the intersection of insight and insecurity, hilarity and heaviness. By dissecting their own emotional shutdowns, shame cycles, and daily frustrations, Louie and Michael model how humor and honesty can co-exist with real emotional work. Their explorations expose the deep roots of emotional numbness and triggers—often looping all the way back to childhood and parental dynamics (“Why am I fighting for your attention right now?”)—while ultimately grappling with the reality that healing isn’t linear, and never as simple as just “moving on.”

The pair provide not just laughs and lively language, but genuine strategies and new perspectives for listeners muddling through their own emotional clutter.