Attachment Theory Glossary
The vocabulary is a mess, and not because readers have been careless with it. Three separate bodies of work are using overlapping words: the developmental research that began with children, the adult tradition that measures two dimensions with questionnaires, and the internet, which has invented terms of its own and borrowed several from clinical language where they meant something narrower. So dismissive, dismissing and avoidant appear as three words for one thing, disorganised and fearful-avoidant turn out to be neighbours, and trauma bond means whatever the last video said it meant.
Who this worksheet is for
You have read a fortnight of articles and still cannot say whether dismissive-avoidant and avoidant are the same thing, or where disorganised is supposed to fit.
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The terms, in six groups
Read these rather than fill them in. The write-on lines under each group are the short part.
1. The four styles and their aliases
Six names for four things, plus two that are not aliases.
Secure. Anxious, also written anxious-preoccupied or simply preoccupied. Avoidant, also dismissive-avoidant, dismissing-avoidant or dismissing; all one thing. Fearful-avoidant, also anxious-avoidant, and used in adult work as the counterpart of what the child research calls disorganised. What are not aliases: anxious-avoidant does not mean an anxious person paired with an avoidant one, which is the commonest mix-up online and is a description of a couple rather than a person. And disorganised is not a fifth style sitting beyond the other four.
Prompts
- ●Which of these did I think were two different things?
- ●The name I use for my own pattern, and the alias I now know it has:
- ●Where I first picked up the version I had:
2. What the theory says a relationship is for
Secure base, safe haven, internal working model.
A secure base is the function that lets you go out and do things, on the understanding that somebody is there. A safe haven is the other half: the place you come back to when something has gone wrong. One relationship is meant to provide both, and they fail separately, which is why a partner can be excellent in a crisis and no use at all for ordinary confidence. The internal working model is the set of expectations formed early about whether people come when called. Not a belief you hold. A default you act on before you have thought.
Prompts
- ●Base or haven: which does my main relationship do well?
- ●What I expect people to do when I need them, before I think about it:
- ●Where that expectation came from, if I can name it:
3. Activation and deactivation
The two directions the system moves, and their strategies.
Activation is the attachment system switching on: the pull towards contact when connection feels threatened. Deactivation is the opposite move, the system turning the need down until it stops registering. Hyperactivating strategies are the behaviours that go with the first, turning the volume up until a response arrives. Deactivating strategies turn it off: finding fault, remembering an ex more fondly, becoming suddenly busy. Neither set is chosen in the moment. And deactivation is not the same as not caring, which is the most expensive misreading in the whole vocabulary.
Prompts
- ●What my own activation looks like from the outside:
- ●The deactivating move I recognise, in one line:
- ●Something I read as not caring that may have been deactivation:
4. Protest behaviour, and what it is not
The behaviours that get named worst and understood least.
Protest behaviour is what the system does when contact is not forthcoming: repeated calling, keeping score, engineering a reason to be contacted, a withdrawal staged to be noticed. It was named in the childhood research, describing what a separated child does, and it looks much the same in adults. What it is not is manipulation, which is deliberate and has a plan. Protest is loud, unstrategic and usually costs the person doing it more than anyone else. Stonewalling belongs to a different vocabulary again, from conflict research, and describes a state during an argument rather than a style.
Prompts
- ●My own version of protest, honestly described:
- ●What I was actually asking for underneath it:
- ●A time I read protest as manipulation, or the other way round:
5. How it gets measured
Why two sources can give you two different answers.
Two traditions. The developmental one observes behaviour, originally through the Strange Situation, a laboratory procedure watching how a small child responds to a parent leaving and coming back; its adult version is a long interview, scored on how somebody talks about their childhood rather than on what they report about it. The other tradition is self-report: questionnaires, including the free quizzes online, which place you on two dimensions, anxiety and avoidance. A style name is a convenient summary of a position on those two. Interview and questionnaire measure related but different things, so they do not always agree.
Prompts
- ●Which kind of measure gave me my result?
- ●Where I would put myself on anxiety, and on avoidance, high or low:
- ●What changes if my style is a position rather than a type:
6. The borrowed words
Clinical terms doing work they were never built for.
Attachment disorder is a childhood clinical diagnosis, made about severe early deprivation, and it is not a stronger version of an attachment style; nobody has one because they are anxious in relationships. Trauma bond describes an attachment formed under abuse and intermittent relief, not an intense relationship, and using it for the second has largely emptied it of meaning. Codependency comes from the addiction field rather than from attachment research and means something narrower than its usual internet sense. Attachment style itself is not a diagnosis and appears in neither DSM-5 nor ICD-11.
Prompts
- ●A term I have applied to myself that belongs to something else:
- ●Where I picked it up:
- ●The plainer word for what I was actually describing:
7. What you had wrong
Three lines, and the most useful part of the sheet.
The value of a glossary is not the definitions. It is finding the two terms you had swapped, because a swapped term quietly alters the conclusion you built on top of it. People commonly arrive believing that avoidant and dismissive are separate styles, that disorganised is a fifth category, or that deactivation is a decision somebody makes. Write down which one you had, then write the sentence you had built on it. That second line is the one worth keeping, since it is usually a sentence about a person rather than about a definition.
Prompts
- ●The term I had wrong:
- ●The conclusion I had built on top of it:
- ●Which term describes me, and which describes what I assumed my partner was doing:
- ●One thing I now want to look up properly:
Where these words came from
Attachment theory began with John Bowlby, who was interested in what separation does to children, and Mary Ainsworth, whose Strange Situation gave the field a way of observing it. Most of the first four groups above descends from that work. The adult vocabulary arrived later and from a different direction, which is the honest explanation for the mess: nobody ever sat down and agreed the terms across the two traditions.
That history is also why one word can be technical in one place and loose in another. When a term appears to contradict itself between two articles, it is usually worth checking which tradition each is drawing on before concluding that one of them is simply wrong.
Before you use this
Nothing here is a diagnosis, and the borrowed terms in group six are the ones most often used to explain away behaviour that should not be explained away. No attachment pattern makes it acceptable for somebody to frighten, control or hurt you. If that is what you have been trying to find a word for, the word is not on this sheet and a domestic abuse service will be more use than a definition. Refuge and Women's Aid run confidential lines in the UK, with equivalents in most countries.
The terms make more sense with a result attached
Group five explains why a quiz places you on two dimensions and then hands you a single name for it.
What's Your Attachment Style?
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Take the Free Quiz →Attachment Theory Glossary Worksheet: FAQ
What is the difference between avoidant and dismissive-avoidant attachment?▼
Is disorganised attachment the same as fearful-avoidant?▼
What does deactivating mean in attachment theory?▼
Is attachment style a diagnosis?▼
Worksheets for the other styles
- Anxious Attachment worksheet — You re-read messages looking for tone changes, feel panic when replies slow down, or find yourself doing things to get reassurance that you later wish you had not done.
- Avoidant Attachment worksheet — You need space when things get close, go quiet under conflict, find faults in partners as intimacy grows, or feel relief when plans get cancelled.
- Fearful-Avoidant Attachment worksheet — You crave closeness then feel trapped by it, end relationships you wanted, or feel like two different people depending on the week.
- Secure Attachment worksheet — You came out secure and want to know what to keep doing, or you are building earned security and want the target described in behaviour rather than adjectives.
Worksheets by situation
- Attachment worksheets for teens (13-19) — Teenagers (roughly 13-19) who want to understand why friendships, group chats or first relationships hit them harder than they seem to hit other people. Also usable by a parent or school counsellor handing it to one.
- Anxious attachment worksheet for teens — Teenagers who spiral when replies slow down, keep score of who reached out first, or feel one unread message cancel out a whole good day.
- Avoidant attachment worksheet for teens — Teenagers who go quiet instead of kicking off, live behind a closed door, answer "I'm fine" on reflex, and find other people's emotions -- and their own -- easier at a distance.
- Disorganised attachment in teens (teen + adult sheet) — Teenagers who swing hard between needing people and needing them gone -- and the parents, carers, foster carers and school staff trying to stay steady next to them.
- Anxious-avoidant couple worksheet (the trap, mapped) — Couples where one partner mostly seeks closeness under stress and the other mostly seeks distance -- and both are tired of having the same fight in different clothes.
- Attachment workbook for couples (six weekly sessions) — Couples in a workable-but-scratchy relationship who will actually show up to a weekly appointment with each other. Not for mid-crisis triage -- containers hold weather, not hurricanes.
- Attachment workbook -- start here if you don't know your style — Anyone who suspects attachment is their problem but bounces between the four labels depending on the article, the week, or the relationship.
- Attachment worksheets for adults (four-domain audit) — Adults who want one honest pass across their whole relational life -- especially anyone whose pattern behaves differently at home, at work, and in the group chat.
Or go back to all free attachment worksheets, including the one-page cheat sheet covering all four styles.
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