^ BASK - Behavior, Affect, Sensations, or Knowledge - Psychcentral
<p>Nov 04, 2014 04:16 PM</p>
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<a href="http://blogs.psychcentral.com/organizations/2014/11/the-line-between-spacing-out-and-dissociation-is-only-degree-and-distance/">http://blogs.psychcentral.com/organizations/2014/11/the-line-between-spacing-out-and-dissociation-is-only-degree-and-distance/</a></p>
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The difference between these and “having another personality” is degree and distance. People for whom dissociation is not a major issue usually continue to know who they are, where they are, and their internal arguing is self-contained. Another difference is the structure of experience. Buddy Braun, a psychiatrist, came up with the BASK model of dissociation, pointing out that a person could “disconnect” from their behavior, affect, sensations, or knowledge (thus “BASK”)—or any combination of these. I met Buddy at a conference for people working with folks who dissociate and I told him that I thought he’d left out an element: a W that stands for Will.</p>
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When you learn to not be present in some way when something happens, it’s usually because you don’t have the choice to distance yourself from the event in some other way. No child would stay physically present for what they can’t endure, whether the cause is trauma with a little t or a big T. If the child can’t leave, how special it is to be able to symbolically create someone else—a partial or full personality, another electrical pattern—to handle the intolerable situation! The challenge is that when this process develops in young children, their will (capacity to choose) is undeveloped, and sometimes their environment doesn’t support being present for difficult times (even those like death of a parent, natural disaster or other traumatic events that don’t depend on another person’s volition). The tool works, and as it does it begins to be reinforced, and a reconfigured self begins to develop that aids this child stuck in the time of the intolerable.</p>
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In this way, profound dissociation is a developmental disorder, one in which children who are stuck in “flight” but who can’t escape physically learn how to flee emotionally in order to cope. And the parts that learn to cope develop at different points and in different ways. So the mosaic has gaps – no one state has all the information or all the “development”. Each has developmental gaps, learned as forms of state-dependent behavior. A state that might be exceptionally bright may have no physical sensation. A state that is pure affect may have no awareness of behavior or knowledge. Another may be unaware that choices can be made.</p>
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Language fails here—any self-respecting part of a person that has pride in survival longs for identity, just as any other “person” would. Yet self, personality, alter, and state all imply ways of being that aren’t quite correct. Pronouns for dissociative identities are awkward. Responsibility is a peculiar crisis: who does what in one skin? And the experience of being the “other” to one’s own “self” is odd in the extreme. Sometimes awareness that an “other” has been in charge may come from a shifted visual field, unusual strength for tasks, changes in food preferences, even allergies. Sometimes physical appearance shifts markedly or subtly. Sometimes preferences of all sorts shift. And how aware one is of these states and perceptions and ways of being varies – just as it does for anyone who is not so diagnosed – only the degree of change between states may be far more profound.</p>
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