Attachment styles with you and your therapist

I'm taking an all day workshop on attachment and the therapeutic relationship. I have taken such things before but this is headed by David Wallin who wrote a book that updates and mixes things so a good read.

We are all assigned to try to determine our attachment style before we enter the workshop. And so we were given a self-report that can be scored. We were also given an online version that is not the true assessment but close enough.

Since there have been threads about attachment and curiosity as well as confusion I thought I would post the link. It would be interesting for both you and your therapist to take it and disclose the results.

Here is the link and I just took the online version after scoring the other version. The results were basically the same.

Attachment Styles and Close Relationships

According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is 1.61, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 5.56, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).

Dismissing avoidant. Very much me.

Yep. Fearful-avoidant. My T agrees.

Oh, and can you please bring me with? I've read some of David Wallin's stuff and I would loooove to go to one of his workshops. I'm jealous

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks so much for your post.

But how do you take this? Wasn't there a plotting on a chart to help you see where you fell? It seems like since the scale is 1-7 that a score over the median would mean something. Do you feel that is right for you?

Hmmm I got "secure" but I know that I have relationship issues and depression so maybe I'm not answering completely honest?

I got 1.67 on attachment related anxiety and 4.5 on avoidance and they concluded dismissing.

According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is 1.44, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 2.61, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).

Secure attachment.

Are you saying to take it and have your therapist in mind as the other person in the "close relationship"?

I have taken it before, in relation to my closest friend, and also last romantic relationship. Slightly different results........neither secure though.

This interests me if I should do it in relation to my therapist, because I am suddenly feeling loads of angst around the relationship again.....and had begun to feel fairly trusting and 'secure' in it up until the last couple of weeks....

When I substituted therapist for partner I got 1.36 on attachment related anxiety and 6.28 on attachment related avoidance - dismissing again.

Fearful avoidant
(sigh)

Wow mine has changed. I did this a year ago and got fearful-avoidant, but now I'm just fearful (or preoccupied). I wonder if this is an indication therapy is working?

According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is 6.06, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 5.17, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).

Fearful-avoidant.

Go me? I'm single and just though of how I am in general... with friends, professionals, family, relationships...

According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is 4.94, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 5.94, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).

Fearful avoidant.

(I did it with my spouse in mind)

I scored in the highly anxious/preoccupied category. Sounds very true to me.

I took the test and got "secure." I probably would not have gotten this result before entering therapy.

For myself, I don't think secure sounds more desirable than how I already am. It is not something I have as a goal.

... your attachment-related anxiety score is 5.67, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 3.89, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).

Well, no surprise here. T & I are into our fourth year of struggling with the T relationship .... and I'm still avoidant & highly anxious

Just as I suspected ...fearful avoidant.

According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is*5.44, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is*6.22, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).*

What is undesirable for you about 'secure'? And I guess maybe it depends whether we're talking about therapist or partner?

For me, it took a long time to get to a secure attachment with my therapist and I'd have to say that for me it was a huge relief, and almost magical to first experience a genuine secure attachment. I don't have a romantic partner at the moment to compare it to

If it is good for someone else, then fine. It would not be something for me to have as a goal or ideal, but if anyone else finds it so for themselves, it is okay with me for them.

It also sounds a bit Three Bears-ish.

I've taken such tests before and I don't think they are a useful instrument for me. It's important to remember that every model of reality is just that, a model - people are always more complex, and there is no model that fits every person.

I also really dislike the names they have allocated to the different styles in the model. I strongly believe that none of the styles in the model is inherently good or bad, and so it is unnecessarily judgmental to use one positively loaded term and three negatively loaded ones, as if one style is better than the others. (But this is something I have argued before in other threads, and I know my view is a minority one.)

I'm not sure I understand this. Do you mean that the therapist should disclose their own "attachment style" to their patient? That doesn't sound like something I would want to know about my T, and it couldn't possibly help my therapy. Or that the T should score the test for the patient? Of course it is always interesting to discuss differences between how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves, but I'm not sure I'd do that based on a test. (Though since it is a test that doesn't apply to me, I know I'm biased against it.)

Interesting. When I read Stopdog's statement that prompted this question, I took it to mean that she did in fact feel secure already, but just that her answers didn't correspond to those on the test, if that makes sense. Not that she felt the reality of a secure style was undesirable.

I got secure attachment, and I tend not to be secure in my attachments... maybe I'm more secure than I think? Or I didn't answer the questions properly.