Ever had a reaction to your manager that felt way bigger than it should’ve?
When someone regularly turns to their manager for guidance and support, the relationship can start to take on more weight than either person realizes. What appears to be a typical workplace dynamic may actually be something much deeper, especially if old emotions from past relationships begin to resurface. That’s the essence of transference.
👉 Transference happens when a person projects unresolved feelings from childhood, especially those related to parents, onto someone in a present-day position of authority, like a manager.
Some of the emotions involved (like frustration, admiration, or resentment) might be appropriate to the moment; at other times, they’re supercharged. Not because of what’s happening now, but because of everything that hasn’t been processed from your past.
Say your dad used to take your sibling’s side without hearing you out. Fast forward twenty years, and now your manager is siding with your coworker before you’ve had a chance to explain yourself.
👉 Someone without that daddy baggage might feel annoyed. But if you’re still carrying those early wounds, you might suddenly find yourself emotionally back in that childhood loop—angry, helpless, and desperate to be heard.
That’s how one isolated workplace incident can feel like the whole system is against you. You might even assign familiar roles to the people around you. Your manager becomes your father, your colleagues take on the roles of siblings, and before long, you’re reenacting your family story on the office stage.
I’ve experienced this myself. In one job, I saw my manager as my father and my coworkers as family members. I became the “truth-teller,” calling out dysfunction, trying to protect others who didn’t ask for it. I felt righteous at the time, but in hindsight, it was just me playing out old family patterns in a professional setting.
💡The intensity of your childhood experiences can distort how you interpret your current environment. But if you can recognize the distortion and separate the past from the present, you can respond more intentionally.
Have you ever caught yourself responding to a work situation with way more emotion than it seemed to call for?
References: Berne E. A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. 1971.
Post Title: Leadership and jobs would be easier if people didn’t bring their childhoods to work.