Your result from the test Attachment anxiety · – / 5 Attachment avoidance · – / 5
Anxiety high · Avoidance high

Anxious and avoidant

Closeness is a wish and a warning at the same time, and both are strong. This is the most demanding of the four styles, and the only one where this page says up front where a workbook reaches its limit.

What the workbooks can do here → Take the test, 4 minutes → CHF 19 each · PDF · German
Other namesFearful-avoidant, disorganised in child research
Not a diagnosisAppears in no diagnostic manual
First stepA professional, not a PDF
This belongs at the top rather than at the end. This style is more often connected with neglect and with violence than the other three. If that is part of your history, a professional is a better address than a self-test and than a workbook. Not as a formality, but because this involves things where somebody needs to be able to respond. How that works in Switzerland is described in the common questions. In acute distress: phone 143, around the clock.

Does this sound familiar?

What marks this style is not one pattern but two that cancel each other out. That is why both halves of the sentences below usually ring true, and that is the point.

  • You want someone to stay. And when they stay, it gets too close. Both are real, and not in turns but in the same moment.

  • You write a message, delete it, write it again and do not send it. Afterwards you are annoyed at both: that you wanted to and that you did not.

  • Closeness feels like relief and like danger at once, with no order to it that could be explained.

  • You leave because you are afraid the other person will leave. Afterwards you know it was not logical. In the moment it was the only thing.

  • You cannot explain your two sides to anyone without it sounding like an excuse. Not to yourself either, and that is the loneliest part of it.

  • After a good stretch what arrives is watchfulness rather than calm, as if something still open had to be paid for.

Why this does not resolve

With the other two insecure styles there is one strategy that works and has a price. Here there are two, and each makes the other one useless.

01

The alarm goes off

As with the anxious style, something ambiguous gets read as unambiguous and the body goes up. The impulse that follows is: move closer, sort it out, make contact.

02

And with the moving closer, the second alarm

Closeness is the place where it used to be dangerous. So the other strategy takes hold: create distance, get matter-of-fact, leave. Not one after the other, but on top of each other.

03

Both at once, and neither arrives

Move closer to be safe. Move away to be safe. Because each of the two strategies sets off the other, neither one settles, and the relief that at least briefly arrives with the other styles does not come.

That is why this style is more exhausting, not «worse»
04

From outside it looks unpredictable

The other person experiences attention and withdrawal without seeing the rule behind it, and reacts unpredictably in turn. That is the same mechanism that produced the pattern in the first place, now running in both directions.

It is not a contradiction in you. It is two answers to two real dangers, and they come from the same history.

Where it comes from

With the other insecure styles the attachment figure is either unpredictably available or reliably unavailable. In both cases one strategy remains that gets something.

This style arises where the same person was the source of comfort and the source of fear. Then no strategy is usable: going towards is dangerous, and so is going away. A child who has to learn both at once learns both and keeps both.

That is why this style is more often connected than the other three with neglect, with violence, and with losses nobody accompanied. That is a probability and not a statement about you. There are people with this result where none of it applies. It is, however, the reason a notice stands at the top of this page rather than a buy button.

And if you still want one

Then the one for your higher value, and best alongside support rather than instead of it. Further down it says which one that is and in what order.

To the workbooks →

What is not true

More nonsense is written about this style online than about the others put together, and some of it is harmful.

«That is disorganised attachment, that is a trauma disorder.»
Two things get mixed up here. «Disorganised» is an observation category from child research; in the adult model the quadrant is called fearful-avoidant. And neither of them is a diagnosis, because attachment style appears in no diagnostic manual. A trauma-related disorder is something else and is established by a professional, not by a questionnaire.
«You are incapable of relationships.»
The phrase describes nothing and explains nothing. What is here are two learned strategies that block each other, and learned strategies are the part of a person most likely to change. What is true: it takes longer, and it goes badly alone.
«Work on both at the same time, then it goes faster.»
It does not go faster then, it goes worse. Tackling both patterns at once means working constantly against whichever reaction is the other one. Take the scale that is higher and leave the other one standing for now. That is unsatisfying and it works better.
«If exercises trigger panic, you have to push through.»
No. Discomfort while practising is normal and part of it. Panic is a signal to stop, and with this style that happens more often than with the others. From that point on a professional is no longer an addition but the precondition.

What helps first

Shorter than with the other styles, and that is deliberate: what helps most here is not in a workbook.

Look for a professional, alongside everything else

As a first step and not as a last resort. In Switzerland the way in is through your GP. Since 1 July 2022 basic insurance covers psychological psychotherapy on a doctor's referral, and fifteen sessions are provided per referral.

Why this stands at the top Because with this pattern the active ingredient is somebody who responds, and a text cannot do that. Waiting lists are real. Several parallel enquiries are normal and not impolite.

Start with the higher value

If your attachment anxiety is higher, the first lever is the trigger log from the anxious pattern. If avoidance is higher, it is the body signal from the avoidant one. One scale, not both.

How you decide The test gives you two numbers, and the higher one wins. If they are almost equal, take the one whose examples on the respective page said more to you.

Do not rush it

Start smaller than feels worthwhile. A step that is too big sets off the second strategy with this style, and then it was not merely ineffective, it costs confidence in the next attempt.

The stopping rule Discomfort: carry on. Panic: stop, and talk about it at the next appointment. This rule comes before everything else.

And the workbooks?

Honest answer: they are not written for this style. They are made for high values on one of the two scales.

What they can still do: explain the pattern you work on first, and provide a way of going about it. What they cannot do: accompany the interplay between the two patterns. And that interplay is your actual subject.

If you take one, take the one for your higher value, and best alongside support rather than instead of it. Chapter 12 in both workbooks describes the way there.

Both workbooks are written in German. An English edition is in preparation. Please only buy one if you read German, since a refund is not possible afterwards.
See the anxiety workbook → See the avoidance workbook → CHF 19 each

The other three

With this result it is especially worth reading the two insecure pages. There the patterns stand separately, and separately they are easier to grasp.

Anxious The alarm for «could be gone» goes off early Read → Avoidant Strain gets handled quietly, not loudly Read → Anxious and avoidant Anxiety high · Avoidance high You are here Securely attached Asking and being alone are both possible Read →
Take the test, 4 minutes → The model behind the four styles →

If it is acute,
do not wait for
a test result

If you are in a very bad place right now, a questionnaire is the wrong tool. These Swiss numbers are staffed around the clock.

143Die Dargebotene Hand. Anonymous, free, also chat and email via 143.ch. Counselling in English is available. 147Pro Juventute, for children and young people 144Acute danger to yourself or others
OpferhilfeCantonal counselling centres in cases of violence. Free and independent of any police report