Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him; and Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David’s enemy continually. 1 Samuel 18:28-29
Nearly everyone has emotional filters that prevent them from hearing certain things that other people say. Your experiences, both positive and negative, color the way you look at life and shape your expectations. And particularly strong experiences, such as traumas or incidents from childhood, can make you tend to react strongly whenever you perceive you are in a similar situation.
If you’ve never worked through all your strong emotional experiences, you might be filtering what others say through those experiences. If you’re preoccupied with certain topics, if a particular subject makes you defensive, or if you frequently project your own point of view onto others, you may need to spend some time working through some of your issues before you can become an effective listener.
Sigmond Freud said, “A man with a toothache cannot be in love,” meaning that the toothache doesn’t allow him to notice anything other than his pain. Similarly, any time a person has an axe to grind, the words of others are drowned out by the sound of the grindstone