The Opathian state develops when a child's nervous system makes a specific calculation: full emotional presence is too dangerous. The environments that produce this calculation are not always dramatic.

There is a feeling that many people carry their entire lives without ever having a word for it. It is not sadness. Sadness has weight and texture; and direction. It is not numbness. Numbness implies a turning off, a cessation. What this sensation is sits between and beneath both of those, a hollow awareness: the quiet, relentless knowing that emotional depth and genuine connection exist somewhere, just beyond reach.