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What Type of Anxiety Do I Have? Take The Free Test
Written by Oliver Drakeford, LMFT, CGP.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, California license #104987, and Certified Group Psychotherapist.
I've treated anxiety in private practice for over a decade, and I built this test on the Ten Rules of Anxiety, the framework I use with my own clients in West Hollywood.
Last updated: July 23, 2026.
The Anxiety Type Test is a free self-assessment that measures two things. First, which anxiety pattern fits you best: social anxiety, generalized worry, panic, or perfectionism-based anxiety. Second, which of the Ten Rules of Anxiety your mind enforces without your permission. Most anxiety tests tell you how anxious you are. This one tells you what shape your anxiety takes, because the shape determines what actually helps.
Anxiety is common. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 19.1% of U.S. adults had an anxiety disorder in the past year. But no two of those people run the same patterns. Your friend dreads presentations. You replay every conversation for mistakes. Someone else can't make a decision without researching it to death. Same diagnosis category, completely different machinery.
Take the Anxiety Type Test
The test takes about 3 minutes. 12 questions, no right answers, instant results sent to your email
Sample questions from the test
You rate how strongly each statement fits your experience. Three examples from the actual test:
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"After social interactions, I frequently replay conversations looking for mistakes I might have made."
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"I'll find myself rehearsing or planning for situations that haven't happened yet."
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"I tend to delay making decisions until I have all possible information, even for relatively minor matters."
If you nodded at one of those, you already have a hint about your pattern. The first points toward social anxiety. The second toward generalized worry. The third toward perfectionism-based anxiety.
What Does This Test Measure?
The test screens your answers against the Ten Rules of Anxiety, then maps your loudest rules onto four anxiety patterns. Two layers, one result.
Here's the thinking behind it. Research on anxiety keeps arriving at the same engine: intolerance of uncertainty, the tendency to experience not-knowing as a threat. Psychologist R. Nicholas Carleton and colleagues built the standard measure of it, and their work shows it running underneath worry, social fear, panic, and obsessive checking alike (Carleton, Norton & Asmundson, 2007). Everyone with anxiety struggles to sit with not-knowing. What differs from person to person is the strategy the mind uses to escape that feeling.
Those strategies are the rules. Some minds escape uncertainty by comparing ("at least I know where I rank"). Some escape it by worrying ("if I rehearse every outcome, nothing can surprise me"). Some escape it by shrinking life until nothing unpredictable can get in. Your top rules are your escape routes, and your escape routes are your anxiety type.
This is not a severity screener like the GAD-7, which measures how much anxiety you have (Spitzer et al., 2006). This test measures which kind. Both questions matter. They're just different questions.
The Four Anxiety Patterns the Test Screens For
Social Anxiety: The Post-Mortem Pattern
The tell isn't nerves during the interaction. It's the review afterward. Hours replaying what you said, scanning for the moment you embarrassed yourself. In my practice, people with this pattern describe conversations the way athletes describe game tape: frame by frame, always looking for the error.
Common markers: avoiding events, physical symptoms in social settings like blushing or freezing up, and self-worth that rises and falls with how you think others saw you. If this is your loudest pattern, the [Comparison Contract] and [Constant Threat Imperative] rules usually score highest.
Want a test focused only on this pattern? Read about therapy for social anxiety.
Generalized worry: the pattern that feels productive
Worry that spreads across work, money, health, and family, and refuses to switch off at night. The trap is that it feels useful. People with this pattern often defend the worry: "but I have to think this through." That belief, that worrying is preparation, is exactly what keeps the loop running.
Common markers: worry about small things as much as big ones, endless research before decisions, asking for reassurance and needing it again an hour later. The [Worry Is the Solution Paradox] and [Demand of Control & Certainty] rules dominate here. More on this pattern in how to stop worrying and overthinking.
Panic: the pattern that lives in the body
A racing heart becomes a heart attack. Dizziness becomes a stroke. The mind reads normal body sensations as emergencies, and the fear of the next episode starts organizing your life. Many people with this pattern have been to the ER convinced something was medically wrong, then felt embarrassed when the tests came back clear. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Panic is the body's alarm system firing without a fire.
Common markers: fear of the sensations themselves, avoiding places where escape feels hard, and relief that spikes the moment you cancel. The [Doom Loop Clause] and [Law of Inadequacy] rules usually run this pattern. The inadequacy isn't about the situation. It's "I can't handle the panic."
Perfectionism-Based Anxiety: The Pattern That Looks Like a Work Ethic
This one hides best, because it looks like a work ethic. Rereading emails five times before sending. Delaying decisions until you have all the information, which never arrives. Research as a socially acceptable form of avoidance. I describe it to clients as intolerance of uncertainty wearing a very good suit.
Common markers: procrastination on anything that could be judged, discounting past successes ("that was different"), and a self-attack after every mistake. The whole self-critical cluster fires here: [Comparison Contract], [Law of Inadequacy], [Self-Attack Statute].
The Ten Rules of Anxiety: The Framework Behind the Test
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The Ten Rules of Anxiety
1. The Comparison Contract
Everyone else is doing better. Use them as evidence of your failure.
2. The Demand of Control & Certainty
You must control everything and know everything to be safe.
3. The Self-Attack Statute
If something went wrong, it's your fault.
4. The Doom Loop Clause
One anxious thought is proof of impending disaster.
5. The Law of Inadequacy
You don't have what it takes to handle this.
6. The Constant Threat Imperative
Danger is everywhere. Escape is the only safe response.
7. The Small Is Safe Directive
Stay inside the comfort zone. Anything beyond it is unsafe.
8. The Worry Is the Solution Paradox
Worrying about it protects you from it.
9. The Principle of Priority
Every anxious thought is urgent and deserves immediate attention.
10. The Boomerang Effect
Trying to push anxiety away makes it stronger.
The last rule is worth a word, because it's the one people fight hardest. Trying to suppress a thought makes it come back stronger. Psychologist Daniel Wegner demonstrated this in his famous "white bear" experiments (Wegner et al., 1987): told not to think about a white bear, people thought about it more. Your anxiety works the same way.
Pushing it away is the boomerang throw:
Most people run two or three rules loudly and the rest quietly. Finding your loud ones is the whole point of the test. For the full framework, read the Ten Rules of Anxiety.
What Your Results Tell You
Your results name your primary anxiety pattern and your top-scoring rules, sent straight to your email. You also get free access to The Missing Piece, my five-video mini course on the layer underneath all of this: the uncertainty your anxiety is trying to escape, and how to build tolerance for it instead of chasing certainty that never arrives.
What you do with the results is up to you. Some people just want the language for what's been happening. Some take the results into therapy they're already in. And some decide it's time to work with someone.
If that's you, here's how I work with anxiety therapy in Los Angeles.
Is This a Diagnosis? No. Here's What It Is and Isn't.
This test is an informational self-assessment, not a diagnostic instrument. No online test can diagnose an anxiety disorder. Diagnosis requires a clinical interview with a licensed professional, because the same behavior can mean different things in different lives.
What this test does well: it identifies patterns. Which situations spike you, which rules your mind enforces, which strategies you use to escape uncertainty. That's genuinely useful information, and it's the same information I gather in a first session, just in a shorter form. I use a fuller version of this kind of pattern work in my Anxiety Audit sessions, a structured clinical assessment for people who want the thorough version.
If your anxiety includes chest pain, difficulty breathing, or other intense physical symptoms, see a medical provider first. Rule out the medical explanations before settling on the psychological ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the anxiety type test take?
About 3 minutes. 12 questions, and you rate how strongly each statement fits you. Results arrive by email right away.
Is the anxiety test free?
Yes. The test, your results, and The Missing Piece mini course are all free. No credit card, no upsell mid-test.
Is this test scientifically valid?
Honest answer: it's science-informed, not a validated psychometric instrument. The framework it's built on draws from established research, including intolerance of uncertainty (Carleton et al., 2007), social comparison theory, and thought suppression research (Wegner et al., 1987).
But it hasn't been through clinical validation trials the way the GAD-7 has. It's a pattern-finder built by a clinician, and that's how to use it.
Do I have anxiety, or is this just stress?
Quick way to tell the difference: stress has an off switch and anxiety doesn't. Stress rises with a real demand, a deadline or a conflict, and settles when the demand passes.
Anxiety keeps scanning after the demand is gone, or fires without any demand at all. If your worry outlives its cause, runs most days, or has you avoiding things you used to do, it's worth taking seriously.
What types of anxiety does the test cover?
Four patterns: social anxiety, generalized worry, panic, and perfectionism-based anxiety. These are patterns, not formal DSM diagnoses. Real people usually blend two.
What happens to my answers?
Your results go to your email and nowhere else. Your answers are never shared or sold.
About Oliver Drakeford, LMFT, CGP
I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #104987 and Certified Group Psychotherapist practicing at 8702 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood.
I've spent over a decade treating anxiety, and most of what I've learned comes down to this: the content of your anxiety changes week to week, but the rules underneath it don't. Learn the rules, and you finally have something to work with.
If your results land and you want to go further, I offer anxiety therapy in West Hollywood and online across California. Or start with the test. It's the same first step my clients take.
