Mental distortions

All of us, I imagine, have a preference for congenial relationships. Given the choice, we would rather not have the challenge of coping with difficult people or people who actually wish to do us harm. But if we only have congenial interactions with others, we won't grow or truly understand ourselves. B. Alan Wallace makes this point in a passage from The Seven Point Mind Training:

Again and again, think of mental distortions as afflictions, contrary to nature. When someone is hot-tempered, narrow-minded, bigoted, selfish, or thoughtless, we think, "What a disgusting person!" But all these qualities are afflictions, and that person is the first to bear the initial brunt of suffering from them. The more repugnant a person is, the more likely that person is to be suffering from the mental distortions that render him or her repugnant to us.
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Having engaged in... Mind Training, we can recognize that a person who has harmed us thereby kicks us out of our complacency and pushes us into practice. If we are surrounded by friends, our mental distortions may rarely be triggered and we can easily exaggerate our sense of the progress we have made in our practice. But when hostility triggers animosity, it is like a bucket full of cold water in the face, making it very clear that we have something here to work on.

My own meditation teacher used to say of any difficulty, "It's material; we can work with it." It is amazing how we can alleviate our own suffering by taking this approach -- by seeing challenges (no matter how negative or full of hostility) as material we can work with.