Anxious Attachment
Why these two get confused, and how they tend to interact.
High sensitivity (sometimes described as being a Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP) and anxious attachment frequently show up in the same person, which makes them easy to conflate. They're not the same thing, and the overlap is worth understanding.
This is a temperament trait, present from early in life, involving a nervous system that processes sensory and emotional information more deeply than average. It shows up broadly, in noise, lighting, other people's moods, criticism, all of it tending to land harder and take longer to process.
This is relational and learned, specific to closeness and connection, and tied to early caregiving experiences rather than temperament.
A highly sensitive person with anxious attachment will feel relational anxiety especially intensely, because their nervous system is already primed to pick up on subtle signals, real or imagined. This can make the anxious attachment feel even more consuming than it might for someone less sensitive. Treatment usually needs to account for both, building relational security while also respecting that a more sensitive nervous system may need a gentler pace and more room to process than a one-size-fits-all approach assumes.