I'm sure we have all been in this position - you are in a meeting where ideas are being shared. Someone puts forward an idea and someone raises an objection. The raiser of the idea reacts as if they have just been punched in the face - angry, defensive, aggressive. Or sullen, withdrawn, silent. Fight or flight. And all because someone raised an objection to their idea. People tend to hold their ideas very tightly. They identify with them. They are their idea. So an attack on their idea is very literally an attack on them.
Or what about this one - you were just in a meeting and someone says to you "that was a pretty bad idea they raised.. what a fool they must be". In this case we are associating the idea with the character of the person who raised it. The idea was bad so therefore, by extension, they must be bad. We see both of these situations all the time. Both associating strongly with your own ideas, and conflating the quality of an idea with the attributes or character of the person who raised it, are things most of us do all the time, and they are both extremely unhelpful.
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