Attachment-style self-reflection

The secure type — someone balanced between trust and independence

The secure type holds "I am worth loving" and "people can basically be trusted" as two beliefs inside them. This is based on the experience of receiving consistent affection and a sense of safety from a caregiver in early childhood.

Features in love:

• Does not doubt the other person's feelings excessively and can take them at face value
• Sees a fight or a disagreement not as the end of the relationship but as a chance to deepen it
• Can enjoy both time alone and time together
• Can put their own feelings into words and convey them

An everyday example:
Their partner was busy with work and no message came for two days. A, a secure type, thought they must be busy and that they would hear about it at the weekend, and threw themselves into their own hobby. When they met at the weekend, A said naturally, "Looks like it was a tough week. Tell me if anything's going on."

The secure type is explained in detail in The traits of the secure attachment style.

The anxious type — someone who cannot stop checking for love

The anxious type always carries the fears "I am not sure I am worth loving" and "they might leave one day". The experience of a caregiver whose responses were unstable in early childhood — sometimes deeply loving, sometimes absent — is at work here.

Features in love:

• Reacts oversensitively to the smallest change in the other person's manner
• Ends up asking again and again for proof of being loved
• Anxiety builds when alone, and they easily become dependent on the other person
• After a breakup, tends to run straight into a new relationship

An everyday example:
No reply came from their partner for three hours. B, an anxious type, starts going round and round: did I make them angry? have they found someone else? Unable to bear it, they send message after message — are you busy? are you angry? — and then sink when told they are too much. And it repeats.

The anxious type's patterns in love are explained in detail in Attachment difficulties and love.

The avoidant type — someone who flees from closeness

The avoidant type holds the beliefs "I protect myself" and "leaning on people gets you hurt". Behind this lies the experience of a caregiver who was emotionally absent in early childhood, or of being pushed too hard toward independence.

Features in love:

• As the relationship deepens they feel suffocated and unfree, and take distance
• Avoids emotional conversation and turns the talk aside with logic or jokes
• Takes showing weakness as dependence, and carries it alone
• Looks fine right after the breakup, and regrets it months later

An everyday example:
Six months in, their partner began saying they wanted to be together more, and to talk about the future. C, an avoidant type, suddenly felt suffocated and started cutting down how often they met, on the grounds of being busy at work. They really do love them, and yet they flee by reflex when someone comes close.

The avoidant type's traits are explained in detail in Avoidant relationship patterns.

Fearful-avoidant — someone who wants closeness but is frightened by it

The fearful-avoidant type holds Both both, and is the most complex type. It is said to form easily when a caregiver in early childhood was at once the secure base and the source of fear — abuse or neglect, for instance.

Features in love:

• Wants people, and yet gets frightened and runs when someone comes close
• Feelings swing to extremes (love them → suddenly cold → missing them again)
• Sometimes destroys a relationship that is going well, themselves
• Cannot understand their own feelings and behaviour patterns, and is thrown into confusion

An everyday example:
After a happy date, thinking they want to be with this person, the very next day the fear strikes: if I love them this much, it's over when they leave me. D, a fearful-avoidant type, goes cold on their partner out of that fear, and then, when the partner is hurt and takes distance, clings: I do love you, don't go. They wear themselves out in the repetition.

The fearful-avoidant type could be called the fiercest form of the chase between the anxious and the avoidant type.

Understand attachment style as a gradient

In attachment research, the mainstream model does not sort people neatly into four boxes but grasps them along two axes, anxiety and avoidance.

Low anxiety, low avoidance → secure
High anxiety, low avoidance → anxious
Low anxiety, high avoidance → avoidant
High anxiety, high avoidance → fearful-avoidant

In other words, there are secure types leaning anxious and fearful-avoidant types leaning avoidant: everyone sits somewhere on these two axes. Having yeses in several groups in the self-check is perfectly natural.

It can also change with the situation and the person

"I'm secure with friends, but anxious in love"
"Usually I'm avoidant, but with one particular person I turn anxious"

This is not unusual. An attachment style is a pattern that is activated by the context of a relationship, and the same style does not come out in every relationship.

A romantic relationship in particular has the closeness nearest to the early-childhood relationship with a caregiver, so it is a scene where attachment patterns that are usually hidden surface easily. If you have experienced becoming a different person in love, it may be that a particular attachment pattern is being activated in romantic situations.

Grasp it as a main type and a sub type

If you fit several types, it is easier to sort out if you understand the type that comes out most strongly as your main type and the next as your sub type.

For example, with a main type of anxious and a sub type of avoidant, the anxious response pattern is usually at the centre, but when the anxiety reaches its limit you suddenly shut down like an avoidant type — that is one conceivable pattern.

Knowing your own main and sub makes it easier to predict when you switch into which pattern, and easier to handle.

The ECR-R (Experiences in Close Relationships — Revised)

The most widely used self-report attachment style scale. You answer 36 items on a seven-point scale, and scores are produced on the two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance.

Features:

• Measures attachment style in romantic relationships
• You can answer it yourself, and it is relatively easy
• It has a rich record of use in research and high reliability
• But it has the limit of assessing yourself by yourself (it cannot pick up unconscious patterns)

A Japanese version also exists, and it is sometimes used in psychological counselling.

The AAI (Adult Attachment Interview)

This is what is called the gold standard of attachment research A semi-structured interview method. An interviewer with specialist training spends one to two hours asking about early-childhood experiences, and analyses not the Contents but the pattern of how it is told.

Features:

• It can measure attachment patterns at the unconscious level, which self-report cannot see
• Four categories: secure-autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied and unresolved
• Only trained specialists can administer and score it
• It costs money and time, but is the most accurate

There are few places where you can take the AAI, but consulting a clinical psychologist or counsellor versed in attachment theory can sometimes get you a referral.

Counselling as an option

There are parts that a self-check and knowledge from books will not show. If any of the following apply to you in particular, we recommend getting support from a professional.

• Your fearful-avoidant tendency is strong, and you feel you cannot control your relationship patterns yourself
• Early-childhood trauma — abuse, neglect, a parent's addiction — seems to be involved
• You repeat the same pattern not only in love but at work and with friends
• Your self-understanding has advanced, but you simply cannot change the behaviour

Experiencing a new secure base inside a safe relationship with a counsellor who knows attachment is itself a powerful way to change an attachment style.

Can I trust the self-check result?

This self-check is a guide for roughly grasping your own tendency, not an academic diagnostic tool. Use it as a trigger for noticing that you seem to have a certain tendency. If you want a more accurate result, please use this site's full quiz (46 questions), or a professional scale such as the ECR-R described above. That said, if there was an item in the self-check where you felt "ah, that's me," that is an important sign. Instinctive noticing is not to be underestimated.

Does an attachment style never change for life?

It changes. An attachment style is not something genetically fixed but something that keeps being updated by the experience of relationships. Through a relationship with a secure partner, exchange with a friend you can trust, a safe experience in counselling — becoming "earned secure" is entirely possible. Research reports that with the right support, large changes occur over months to years. For details, see How to change your attachment style.

Is it all right to do this with my partner?

It is, but care is needed. Sharing each other's results deepens understanding of the relationship, but there is also the risk of it becoming a tool for labelling and blaming — you're avoidant so you're the bad one, you're anxious so you're a nuisance. What matters is using it constructively, purely as a hint for knowing your own pattern and building a better relationship.

Can I self-check a child's attachment style too?

This self-check is adults, chiefly attachment in romantic relationships. Assessing a child's attachment style uses a specialist observation method called the Strange Situation Procedure. If you are worried about a child's attachment, we recommend consulting a specialist in child psychology. Also, since the parent's own attachment style affects the child, having the parent take this self-check first is also worthwhile.