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This Is the Face of PTSD
You Wear the Effects of Trauma and Stress on Your Face
A Soldier’s Face After 4 Years of War
These two pictures are shown side by side in the Andrei Pozdeev museum. The museum caption reads: “(Left) The artist Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev the day he went to the front in 1941. (Right) In 1945 when he returned”. This is the human face after four years of war. The first picture looks at you, the second one looks through you.
This rare photo is perhaps the best example of how we wear trauma on our faces. Here’s another example that’s a little more modern:
It’s Called the “Thousand Yard Stare”
From Wikipedia:
The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is a phrase often used to describe the blank, unfocused gaze of combatants who have become emotionally detached from the horrors around them. It is sometimes used more generally to describe the look of dissociation among victims of other types of trauma.
What Causes the Thousand Yard Stare?
From the NPR Article on Zelenksyy:
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the devastation in Bucha this month — where bodies of civilians lay in the street and buildings were destroyed — his haunted face seemed to show the toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The 44-year-old’s normally shaved face was bearded and lined, his forehead scrunched in distress and his eyes with heavy bags underneath.
They are the hallmark physical signs that can appear on anyone who is going through intense trauma and stress — particularly in wartime, according to Glenn Patrick Doyle, a psychologist who specializes in trauma.
When we experience physical or emotional stress, the human body produces cortisol, the primary stress hormone. It contributes to the physical changes of the body under long-term stress, Dr. Nicole Colgrove, a specialist in…
