A6: Individuals using a compulsively self-reliant strategy (Bowlby, 1980) do not trust others to be predictable in their demands, find themselves inadequate in meeting the demands or both. They inhibit negative affect and protect themselves by relying on no one other than themselves. This protects the self from others, but at the cost of lost assistance and comfort. Usually this strategy develops in adolescence after individuals have discovered that they cannot regulate the behavior of important, but dangerous or non-protective, caregivers. They withdraw from close relationships as soon as they are old enough to care for themselves. There is a social form of the strategy in which individuals function adaptively in social and work contexts, but are distant when intimacy is expected, and an isolated form in which individuals cannot manage any interpersonal relationship and withdraw as much as possible from others.