Excessive Criticism Is a Sign of Internal Conflict (Projecting)

Sometimes it is projection, but sometimes it's just the sadass truth.

The deepest (and most common, looks to me) problem is that nothing makes a stupid person angrier than having their stupidity explained to them.

Stupidity is related to willful ignorance in that it is the result of not just not knowing better, but not wanting to learn how they can be better. it's like they're sleepwalking, but don't want to WAKE UP.

It is not at all uncommon.

Sometimes there might be some insecurities or other not-so-good reasons, in which case I have something to adjust. Other times it can be there was some good reason, I just failed to recognize or express it and things escalated instead.

I'm not perfect, not infrequently I forget my earlier discoveries in the heat of the moment. But overall I do feel it's helpful to try to figure out where these emotions come from.

I do this a lot when I get in a fight with my SO. Being a guy I quickly get over the emotional peak, and we can sit down and figure out what went wrong. For example, after moving together me and my SO got in a fight over not answering her phone if she wasn't at home when I got home from work.

After calming down some and talking, we found out both sides had good reasons to get upset, but also good reasons for acting like we did. I got upset because I was the one planning and shopping for dinner, and not knowing if we'd be two or just me made that very difficult. She got upset because she felt having to answer the phone immediately or tell me where she went all the time was very controlling.

Once the underlying factors had been brought to light we found common ground easily. I just needed to know if she'd be home for dinner so she'd tell me that in advance, and I wouldn't get upset if I called and she didn't answer the phone immediately.

-- GK Chesteron (On Bright Old Things)