Sorry, Can’t Hear You over the Voice in My Head

The two most difficult things to patiently endure when discussing one’s personal beliefs with others has to do with: 1.Navigating the minefield of predisposed prejudices, assumptions and opinions that others have about your beliefs before you even have the chance to explain your position. It’s those Blind Spots that we all have. Sometimes that filter can be so strong, that they may not even be able to hear you over the voice in their own head. 2.Controlling your emotions when someone, intentionally or mistakenly, misrepresents your position. It’s the Straw man logical fallacy where you hold position X; someone disregards certain points of X and instead presents a similar position Y. Y being a distorted version of X. They then attack Y, concluding that position X is false. "A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position." - Wikipedia.com