Dismissive /

Avoidant
Attachment
Your Personal Report
The Importance of Human Attachment 1

Thank you for your interest in The Attachment Project

This document outlines your results on the self-report attachment quiz. Your personal report can be found from page 2 onwards.

Why Attachment?
Human attachment plays an essential role in our survival as babies
as well as in our relationships and overall well-being later on.
Since our attachment styles are formed so early, we neither
remember much about this stage of development nor do we have
control over it. Therefore, our attachment traits are typically
subconscious and automatic.
As a consequence, we might find ourselves repeating the same
unhealthy patterns - in our relationships with ourselves and with
others - over and over again.

Love & Intimacy

Relationships are a central part of our lives - after all, we are social
beings with an innate need to belong.
When it comes to love and intimacy, attachment has a huge
influence on the way we select our partners, communicate with
them, and act in relationships with them.
For this reason, cultivating attachment security is the key to
building and maintaining healthy, balanced, and long-lasting
partnerships.

Mental Health & Self-Love

Attachment doesn’t only affect the way we perceive others and our
relationships with them; it also affects how we see and feel about
ourselves.
Possessing attachment security helps us to feel calm, safe, and able
to express our true selves.
It enables us to form a clear idea of what we want in relationships
and communicate our needs openly. This not only has a profound
impact on our happiness and fulfillment, but also on our sense of
identity, self-esteem, autonomy, and purpose in life.

Our Mission
Healing an insecure attachment may take dedication, patience, and
persistence - although this might be challenging, it is entirely
achievable.
Cultivating a secure attachment requires knowledge, practice, and
the ability to reflect on yourself (including your experiences, your
relationships, your skills and weaknesses, and your beliefs, amongst
other factors).
Our mission is to provide you with the necessary insight, skills, and
inspiration so that you can develop a sense of security and feel safe -
both in relationships and on your own.

The Importance of Human Attachment

Understanding Your Scores 2

Tips for Understanding and Interpreting

Your Different Attachment Scores
Our attachment quiz includes a scientifically developed and validated questionnaire, called ECR-RS
(Experiences in Close Relationships - Relationship Structures).* As you might have noticed, you
answered a set of questions for different relationships - with each of your caregivers, with your partner,
and with other people in general. Based on your answers, your scores (anxiety and avoidance scores) for
each relationship were calculated.
On the graphic, you’ll find the estimations of your attachment to each of your caregivers as well as to your
partner. Each circle on the graphic has the same color as the one in the results description for the specific
relationship (e.g. Below the graphic, the word "partner" is blue, so the circle representing the attachment for
this relationship is also blue.).

It’s important to keep in mind that your GENERAL attachment score (how you relate to
others in general) is not depicted in the graphic.

We do, however, base your report on your general attachment style, and not on your
attachment towards a particular significant other.

In some cases, you might notice that your attachment scores for all
relationships (caregivers and partner) do not match your profile - your
general attachment. This, however, is nothing to be concerned about. It
might be that you exhibit a certain pattern of attachment towards people
you meet; and yet, in close intimate relationships, you have a different
approach. O r it could be that you have a specific attachment pattern
towards your caregivers, but not towards other people in your life.

The important thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong

when it comes to how you experience your relationships. And there’s
nothing wrong with having different emotional experiences with
different people in your life.

Dismissive / Avoidant Attachment

Profile: Dismissive / Avoidant 3

Dismissive/avoidant is one of the three insecure attachment styles.

Characteristics of Dismissive / Avoidant

Attachment Style are:
You prefer to maintain an emotional distance from others. If someone
does attempt to forge an intimate bond with you, you may pull away from
the relationship.

Displays of emotion, opening up to others, and expressing your feelings

make you uncomfortable. When other people try to open up to you, you
may minimize their emotional expressions.

You may come across as aloof and distant to others.

You dislike being dependent on others, and see yourself as self-sufficient

and independent.

You may present a false persona to the world. Score Mother/CG1: Anxiety: 2 | Avoidance: 6
Score Father/CG2: Anxiety: 2.67 | Avoidance:
Emotional intimacy, trust, and dependency on others are difficult 6.33
concepts for you. You prefer to create personal boundaries and rely on Score Partner: Anxiety: 1.67 | Avoidance: 5.67
yourself. Score General: Anxiety: 1.33 | Avoidance: 7

How does your attachment style develop?

The avoidant/dismissive attachment style is typically formed during the
formative period in a child's life - the first eighteen months, as a response
to the child’s relationship with their primary caregiver(s). It is thought that
this attachment style forms from the child’s perception of how their
caregivers responded to their needs - in their understanding, they perceive
their caregiver as rejecting their needs. However, it’s important to
understand that these caregivers likely do not intentionally reject their
child’s wants and needs, but instead that the child understood their
actions in this way.

This perception of rejection causes the child to withdraw and repress their
attachment system. Their attachment bond with their caregiver is affected
because the child understands that their needs will be rejected, ridiculed,
or ignored by them. Thus, the child’s ability to trust and depend on others is
ruptured and continues to break down.

This rupture to the attachment bond can be the result of caregivers

acting dismissive towards their child’s accomplishments. Based on
this behavior, the child learns that their own accomplishments are not
important and this belief continues into their adult life. On the other
hand, this rupture can happen when caregivers place and express high
expectations on their child. If a child is unable to live up to these
expectations, then their caregivers may minimize their
accomplishments. As a result, the child learns that their
accomplishments and achievements are not important, and this belief
persists into their adult life.

Children with the avoidant attachment style become independent and

self-sufficient adults. Based on their early years, they have learned that
they can only rely on themselves and not to depend on others. All of
these factors don’t mean that someone with this attachment style
doesn’t want to be in a relationship; however, the traits of their
attachment style are interfering with their ability to open up and feel
secure with their partners.
Early Childhood Attachment 4

Why is secure attachment

so important?

Let’s have a look at the five primary conditions for secure attachment and the corresponding
benefits for self-development. Your responses from the self report on the five conditions of
secure attachment will give you an indication of your early childhood experience from your
earliest childhood memories.

Your Results

Mom or Caregiver #1 Father or Caregiver #1

Protection: 1 Expressed Delight: 2 Protection: 2 Expressed Delight: 1

Attunement: 1 Encouragement: 2 Attunement: 2 Encouragement: 1

Soothing & Average: 1.40 Soothing & Average: 1.40

Reassurance: 1 Reassurance: 1

Result Result

Very Insecure Very Insecure

Dismissive / Avoidant Attachment

The Five Conditions 5

1. Felt Safety
As a parent, first and foremost, you want your child to feel protected. If your child feels protected, it feels safe. For
the infant and toddler, safety means closeness to the mother, as she is the source of food, warmth, and protection.
Danger means separation from her, beyond the comfort zone.
The attuned mother is fiercely protective but not overwhelming, intrusive, or ignoring. She gives her child space
and freedom to explore the world, but stays close enough, so that the child has a felt sense of safety.

When the infant strays too far and becomes frightened, they know that they can run to her and envelop her in a
warm, protective embrace, secured against the world. This conveys a message: "You are safe. You are loved. You
are loveable."

2. Feeling Seen and Known / 3. Felt Comfort / Soothing

Attunement and Reassurance
Attuned parents can read their baby’s cues The attuned parent’s arms are open and inviting.
accurately and respond to his or her needs. Attuned When the child is distressed, the caregiver
responses give infants information about the reassures and soothes the child back to a calm
effects of their behavior. Children learn that when emotional state.
they signal a need, they can expect a prompt,
predictable, and accurate response. The result is a Helping the child manage his or her distress and
feeling of control over their lives, starting early on: "I frustrations will help him or her develop an internal
signal that I’m hungry, and I get fed; I signal that I’m model of being soothed and comforted. Over time,
tired, and my mother rocks me to sleep." the child will develop the ability to manage his or
her own distress and self-soothing.

4. Feeling Valued / Expressed 5. Felt Support for Best Self

Delight Children need to feel supported and encouraged to
explore their world joyfully and safely. Parents who
Feeling valued begins in infancy and is the champion this have a deep faith in their child and
foundation of healthy self-esteem development. always provide him or her with a safety net. Deeply
Parents who raise children with a healthy self- involved in their child’s life, parents give the child
esteem repeatedly express their joy about who the space and thrust him or her towards autonomy and
child is rather than what the child does. They focus independence. This sense of security allows the
on Being rather than Doing. Such parents exhibit child to explore, discover, succeed, and fail; and
"expressed delight" to the child and about almost through such exploration, the child develops a good,
everything the child does. They focus not on the autonomous, strong, and unique sense of self.
chores, but on the joys of parenting.

Special thanks to R. Chris Frayley from the University of Illinois for making the use of this test possible and for his contribution to
the attachment field. This test is used with permission from R. Chris Fraley from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

*Source (ECR-RS): Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2011). The Experiences in Close
Relationships—Relationship Structures questionnaire: A method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships.
Psychological Assessment, 23, 615–625. *
*Source Five Conditions: How to Treat Attachment Disturbances in Adults (Brown & Elliott, 2016)

Dismissive / Avoidant Attachment

Profile: Dismissive / Avoidant 6

What can you do?

By this stage, you likely have a deeper understanding of the avoidant/dismissive
attachment style, as well as whether these traits are fitting for your behavior.

If you’re wondering about the next possible steps for you, then it may be helpful to
attempt to recognize your triggers and patterns of behavior within relationships.
By examining your thoughts, emotions, and actions you may be able to figure out
what your needs are, as well as how someone else can meet them in a relationship.

What’s more, an important element in changing your behavior patterns is

recognizing that relationships don’t just revolve around you - you need to consider
the other person’s role in the partnership. Your attachment style does not make
you inherently self-centered, but you may close down to other people because you
subconsciously expect them to reject your needs at some stage.

Instead of relying on preexisting negative core beliefs, perhaps examine what it

might be like if you were to explore the opposite of what you believe - how might
you feel if you were to allow yourself to depend on someone else? What would the
positive outcomes be? What would your life look like if you were to allow others to
grow emotionally close to you?

The goal of this task is to critically examine whether your current situation is
fulfilling your emotional needs, or whether you would feel more fulfilled if you were
to allow yourself to become intimate and emotionally dependent on another
person.

We can help!
We know that having a dismissive/avoidant attachment style can be difficult. It can be confusing and overwhelming to
not be able to open up to others, which is an essential aspect of meaningful and long-lasting relationships.
But there’s no need to feel trapped or hopeless - we’ve got your back!
Below, we’ve outlined a series of steps you can take on your journey towards cultivating attachment security.

The Path to Cultivating Secure Attachment

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-how your attachment style has developed
-how it influences different aspects of your daily life, such as your self-image, romantic relationships,
sexual life, friendships, career, and parenting skills
-how you can use the superpowers associated with your attachment style
-how you can begin cultivating a secure attachment
-and more…

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ATTACHMENT STYLE REPORT
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