Attachment Style

Our earliest relationships influence our capacity for connection, love, trust, and conflict resolution. These tendencies, referred to as attachment styles, mostly operate “beneath the surface,” affecting relationships in ways you may not even be aware of. This attachment styles quiz will help you identify your attachment style, identify your relationship emotional patterns, and understand why certain dynamics in relationships keep occurring.

Your attachment style often forms in early childhood and subtly shapes how you relate to others as an adult, in love, friendship, and even conflict. Take the Breeze attachment style assessment and see if you have a secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style.

This test was developed with insights from attachment theory, trauma research, and clinical therapists. The Breeze attachment test will help you:

• Identify your emotional patterns in close relationships.
• Determine the cause of persistent relationship difficulties.
• Begin developing stronger and more secure connections.

After taking the test, you will receive results that include a detailed analysis of your primary attachment style and insights into how it may impact your relationships. In the Breeze app, you can also receive a personalized healing plan for moving forward with a more secure connection and tools and advice to help you develop one.

This quiz is for you if:

• You feel as though you are trapped in the same patterns of relationships.
• Asking, “Why do I get attached so easily?” or “Why do I push people away?”
• In relationships, you frequently feel too "needy" or too "distant."
• You have a history of trauma, inconsistency, or emotional neglect.
• You wish to develop a more profound understanding of your emotional blueprint.
• Feeling you have a fear of intimacy.

Attachment is the emotional bond formed between a caregiver and an infant, allowing the caregiver to meet the infant's basic needs.

John Bowlby, a British psychologist, was the pioneer of attachment theory. In it, he defined attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between humans." According to this, attachment allows the baby to form a mental image of the caregiver they can rely on during difficult times. [1]

He also suggested that attachment keeps the infant close to the mother, increasing the child's chances of survival. Bowlby's ideas are supported by neuroscientists, who state that attachment is so primal that the brain has neural networks and oxytocin to initiate it. [2]

According to the American Psychological Association, attachment style is the characteristic way people relate to others in the context of intimate relationships, which is heavily influenced by self-esteem and interpersonal trust. There is a correlation between distinct attachment styles during infancy and distinct psychological outcomes during childhood and adulthood.

Psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth came up with these attachment styles.

1. Secure attachment means being able to have healthy, intimate relationships, talk to each other, and still capable of being independent. It means remaining independent while being committed to the relationship and handling disagreements in a healthy way.
2. Fears about their partner's commitment and availability are signs of an anxious attachment. They often find themselves being apart from their difficult partner and need constant reassurance. Sensitivity to criticism, distrust, and fear of abandonment are the most obvious signs of someone who has an anxious preoccupied attachment style.
3. Avoidant Attachment: People with this style may seem emotionally detached or distant in relationships. This type of attachment typically steers clear of intimacy, deep connection, and vulnerability. They also tend to be highly defensive, lack emotional expression, and find conflict uncomfortable.
4. Anxious-Avoidant Attachment: People with disorganized attachment alternate between anxious and avoidant attachment styles. They struggle to set boundaries, have a tendency to be emotionally extreme, and are more likely to be in high-conflict relationships.

Childhood traumas like physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse, neglect, drug use, incarceration, unstable caregivers, war, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, divorce or separation, bullying, caregiver mental illness, and domestic violence can hinder secure attachment and predict attachment trauma and insecure styles later in life.

For instance, a child who has been severely neglected or abused may develop reactive attachment disorder (RAD), which shows up as trouble bonding with caregivers. [3]

Avoidant attachment patterns may also show up in people who have been in abusive relationships, since attachment trauma from those relationships can make images of relationships seem dangerous and painful.

However, anyone can learn how to be emotionally available and enhance their mental health and overall well-being by acknowledging and addressing their traumatic experiences as well as their primary attachment style.