It is common for people to talk about transference occurring in relationships. All of us experience at times incidents where our emotional reaction seems stronger than it should be for the situation or we become aware of being in relationships with people we are attracted to who are so different in values, behaviors, communication styles, and personality than ours. If we stop to think about these things, we often find there is more going on than we realize. We’ve had a boss who triggered  unwanted anger or fear inside us, only  to discover later he’s just like Dad.  A spouse  becomes cold and distant when we don’t do what they want, and suddenly, the fear of abandonment causes us to do what we really don’t want to do.  In every area of our lives it can occur without warning and most of the time we don’t recognize what’s going on. We tell ourselves all kinds of things in order to ignore the situation. We especially do this if we have formed a bond with someone, an attachment of some sort.

GoodTherapy.org recently put an article on their blog titled:”Wounded Attachment: Relationships of Survivors of Childhood Sexual Assault,” written by Valerie Kuykendall-Rogers which was written on June 27, 2013.  She wrote about a pattern of behavior she had begun to notice and she used the term, “wounded attachment. She defined it as ” the unconscious way of being attracted to  or attached to someone or something that reminds the survivor of or reinforces the wound/ trauma…It’s the way in which survivors subconsciously seek out relationships that reinforce the wounded aspect of themselves.”

This is fascinating to look at in terms of how we end up with the spouses we have, or where we end up employed, or even who we ultimately end up in counseling with and what occurs there in the therapeutic relationship if a “wounded attachment” has formed. (More of this will be discussed in Part 2 of this article.”

Yu/stan/kema