The Two Thousand Yard Stare: 4 ways to Improve your Resiliency

The two thousand–yard stare is a phrase often used to describe the blank, unfocused gaze of soldiers who have become emotionally detached from the horrors around them. It is also sometimes used more generally to describe the look of dissociation among victims of other types of trauma, including an early sign of PTSD in first responders.

We saw those stares coming from Paradise evacuees from the Camp Fire as well as the firefighters working an endless number of record-breaking wildfires in the western United States. You may have seen it in the face of a patient with a chronic life-threatening condition – or in the spouse who has been the primary 24/7 caregiver.

The origin of the phrase

The origin of the phrase comes from Time magazine’s publishing of a painting titled “Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare“, made by World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea. The painting is a 1944 portrait of a Marine at the Battle of Peleliu in Palau (Pacific theater). About the real-life Marine who was his subject, Lea said:

He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges (the enemy) out of holes all day.

Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?

Building your resiliency

Academic research into personal resilience started decades ago. Marston and Marston make four recommendations:

Reframe how you think about stress

How we perceive stress can be just as important to how we handle it as the amount of stress we’re experiencing. A 2013 Harvard study also revealed that when researchers told participants that the physiological signs of stress prepared them to cope better they became less anxious and more confident in stressful situations, viewing their stress response as helpful. As a result, their hearts and blood vessels responded in the same manner that they would in times of intense happiness.

It is possible to have too much stress. Pay attention to the early warning signs such as back pain, headaches, sleepless nights, short-temper or drinking/excessive eating. Become familiar with your own distress signals and take note when occasional signs occur.

Create a healthy relationship to control

Being able to separate out what you can and cannot control is essential. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s easy to assume you can’t change your situation. The research found that business students who believe their success is primarily their responsibility tended to take on too much ownership for events in the external world and in doing so created significant stress for themselves.

Understand the root causes

Take time to reflect on your personal context as well as the larger emergency service context to better understand the root causes and possible ways to alleviate and avoid future stress. Be aware of your habits and instinctual responses and possibly seek additional support to build skills to more comfortably navigate conflict.

Link learning with action

We can choose to see difficult circumstances as learn­ing opportunities rather than as a time to shut down. When we ask “What can I learn from this?” instead of “Why me?” we can shape the challenge to our advantage.

Start by listing three possible ways in which you might be able to learn something from the stress you’re experiencing. It might be something related to identifying or managing your emo­tions, or new interpersonal or technical skills. Reflecting in this way will help you avoid going after fixes or “options” that may temporarily ease your discomfort but don’t address the root causes.

Analysis alone isn’t enough. Researchers point out that analysis without action leads to rumination and anxiety. By identifying actions you can take you’ll be able to experiment with solutions and new behaviors and discover productive ways to handle challenges and stress.

Marston and Marston’s approach is for you to develop individual skills that build personal resistance. Stronger internal resilience allows you to be proactive and intentional. A dramatized example of this is in the movie VICE when  Vice President Dick Cheney is hustled into the Presidential Emergency Operations Center as Flight 77 is headed for Washington. Christian Bale portrays a focused and disciplined Vice President in the center of a chaotic and unprecedented situation.

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Droodkin (2012 September 29) Explain to Me: The Thousand Yard Stare. International History Blog.

Daily, JI, and Warner, CH (2015 May) Images in Psychology: The 2,000 Yard Stare. American Journal of Psychiatry 172:5 p. 425

Marston A and Marston S (2018 January 09) Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1610398060

The feature picture is from Peter Turnley (2011 September 11) The Thousand-Yard Stare. The Online Photographer.

At 6:30 a.m. on September 12th, 2001, in the rubble of Ground Zero, I saw a fireman sitting alone, looking into the distance with an unfocused gaze. This was a look I had seen before in war zones around the world, when someone’s life compass has been shaken so profoundly that all sense of direction has become confused. They call it the thousand-yard stare. As I made several photographs of this man he looked right through me, oblivious to my presence.