You know that look… when someone is staring into the distance, but not looking at anything in particular. Sometimes associated with deep thought — or a complete absence of thought! You wave your hands in front of their eyes: “anybody there?” — then they snap back to reality.
Why do humans do that? What’s happening to the eyes, exactly, that we recognize that “look” as such? Is there an actual term for it? What’s the relationship between the brain and the eyes in that context?
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>Is there an actual term for it?
It’s simply an outdated term for what we now call PTSD, and one of the symptoms is dissociation (detachment from reality).
Not everyone who spaces out has PTSD, some are just lost in thought and not living ‘in the moment’. I used to be like that (spacing out a lot, not paying attention to my surroundings) because I was an overthinker, and people would describe me as ‘distant’ or ‘not paying attention’ if we were talking.
I had to work really hard on that to focus on social situations, be an active listener and be situationally aware. It’s not a skill everyone is necessarily born with.
We pick up a lot of little details we are not fully aware of when interacting with people. Unconsciously tracking what other people are looking at, their facial expressions and it’s changes, and body language all play roles in a person to person conversation.
When someone’s eyes are unfocused, because they are too lost in their own minds, they don’t have the slightly crossed eyed effect of looking at something in their general vicinity. Their faces are often slack and their eyes are not moving around like someone being aware of their surroundings
This gives the impression they are staring at something far far away, when really they are not looking at anything or really aware of what they are looking at.
I have that stare, and I don’t have any kind of PTSD or major traumatic experiences.
The stare is very easy (at least for me) to do. It’s the result of both eyes looking straight ahead, therefore, not focusing on anything. It kind of makes your entire field of vision slightly blurry.
And I use it for thinking. If I’m not visually focused on anything, it’s easier for my mind to process information. So I just stare off in a direction, not focused on anything, and contemplate whatever it is I’m thinking about.
Those are 2 different things: the thousand yard stare and spacing off.
Spacing off is when your eyes are glazed over as you stare into the space on front of you. Usually there is an expression like a furrowed brow or a listless expression.
The thousand yard stare was an expression that came from WW1 to describe the expression of wide eyes and dialated pupils after a soldier experienced [Shell Shock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock) after an intense battle. Its a combination of having to constantly stare as far away as you can to see the enemy before they see you and react and seeing the horrors of watching your friends die horribly or too rapidly to process. Physically, your body does what its trained to do when in battle but you need to process that afterwards emotionally and thats when the thousand yard stare occurs. If the person is not given time to process then the brain will “disconnect” and the person will go into a dream like state in an attempt to distance themselves from the event even if its happening in front of them. Similar to people witnessing a mass casualty event where they freeze.. The same expression is seen with regular people who have witnessed events that are extremely traumatic unexpectedly or for long periods of time. PTSD is the current medical term for it yes, but the term PTSD encompasses alot more than just that. Also, not everyone with PTSD will have the thousand yard stare from what I understand.
Imagine you had two joysticks that point your eyes places. Normally, your brain manipulates them both at the same time to make your eyes focus on things. Your brain might point them both slightly toward the center to focus on something close to your face, or both be pointed generally to the right if you’re looking at something on that side of you without turning your head. Or point them both way inward because you’re crossing your eyes to make a silly face.
Staring off into space is your brain taking its “hands” off the “joysticks”. Your eyes aren’t pointed at anything in particular they’re just sitting there. The eyes aren’t normally that still – they’ll move reflexively to track moving objects that enter the field of view, or there are little jerky motions (“saccades”) as you examine things and your eyes move from point to point. The relative stillness of the “zoned out” look makes it recognizable.
Then you wave your hand in their face close enough to get their attention and the brain says, “Oh shit, I better grab those eyes and point them at things again.”
It’s that your eyes are unfocused.
When you focus on something, your eyes tilt a little toward each other. The closer the object, the more your eyes pull together, until if you stare right in front of your nose, you have “crossed eyes.”
Now, imagine sitting in a perfectly dark room and opening your eyes. There is nothing for you to look at, so there is no crossing of the eyes. They are pointed perfectly ahead, which if someone else could see you then, would make you look like you’re staring *through* everything and into the infinite distance. Your brain isn’t paying attention to anything visual, so your eyes relax. That’s the “thousand-yard stare.”
We recognize it as strange because humans are extremely visual creatures, and almost anytime we see ourselves or another person, the eyes are focused on something. Totally unfocused eyes are a sign of being “not present” mentally, whether because you’re relaxed, daydreaming, reminiscing, stunned, whatever. When you’re in your own head and not paying attention to visual stimuli, that’s odd for others to see.
Thinking is really expensive. We know chess players can consume about 6000 calories in a single tournament day.
So when you are thinking hard, the body/brain adapts by decreasing unneeded activities. Vision is a costly operation which you don’t need much of at that time.
Its very interesting how people can completely zone out. I mean it could be ADHD/ADD. But to me to completely lose your focus on things is astounding. I’ve had that problem, but still find it to be interesting. Like why?
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