Background
People tend to think of separation anxiety as something that belongs to childhood — a kid crying at daycare drop-off, nothing more. But plenty of adults carry a version of this too, and it rarely gets named for what it is. It can look like checking your phone every few minutes when your partner is out with friends, feeling genuinely sick to your stomach before a family member's flight, or planning your whole week around not being left alone in the house. The Deenz Separation Anxiety Scale (DSAS) was built to give this experience an actual shape, instead of leaving it as a vague sense of "I get weird when people leave."
Deenz Separation Anxiety Scale (DSAS) is a 30 short statements covering the everyday thoughts, physical reactions, and habits that show up around separation from people you're attached to — partners, close friends, family. You rate each one from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), and most people are done in under 10 minutes. What you get back is a total score from 30 to 150, plus a breakdown showing where your particular version of this anxiety tends to concentrate.
That breakdown matters because separation anxiety doesn't look the same from person to person. Some people spend all their anxiety upfront — dreading the separation before it's even happened. Others are fine right up until the moment they're actually alone, and then it hits as real physical panic: racing heart, tight chest, trouble sleeping. Others cope by never quite letting the separation happen — constant texting, tracking, following up, making sure they always know exactly where their person is. The DSAS-30 splits these into three subscales — Anticipatory Distress, Somatic & Cognitive Panic, and Proximity Seeking — so the results say something more specific than just "high anxiety."
Scoring & Interpretation
Every item is scored on the same 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) scale. Item 18 — "I'm fine spending a long stretch of time away from people I'm close to." — is worded in the opposite direction from the rest of the scale, so it's reverse-scored (1↔5, 2↔4, 3 stays the same) before totaling. This keeps a high number meaning the same thing across all 30 items: more separation anxiety, not less.
The 30 items split evenly into three subscales, ten items each:
Anticipatory Distress: items 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28 (raw score range 10–50)
Somatic & Cognitive Panic: items 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29 (raw score range 10–50)
Proximity Seeking: items 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30 (raw score range 10–50)
Add up all 30 items for a total raw score somewhere between 30 and 150. Each subscale also gets converted to a 0–100 scale on its own, which makes it easier to see at a glance which pattern is driving someone's score.
Deenz Separation Anxiety Scale Questionnaire
Below is the Deenz Separation Anxiety Scale, a digitally adapted 30- items self-assessment questionnaire. You'll go through 30 short statements about how you think, feel physically, and act when you're separated from people you're close to. Rate each one from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) based on what's actually typical for you — no time limit, so there's no need to rush.