Participles and related derivatives establish a relation between a bearer and an action or quality. In metaphorical use, a source action or quality is applied to a resembling situation; a derivative then characterizes a person or object by that transferred meaning.
For illustration, describing harsh criticism as “wounding” does not assert a physical injury. It maps the painful effect of criticism onto a wound and then uses a derivative to express that effect.
The decisive feature is the derivative's dependence on an underlying meaning: criticism is depicted through the effect of a wound, then characterized by the transferred quality.