Notice what you defend hardest when someone criticizes it. People rarely fight that hard for things they don’t care about.

The heat of your defence measures how much something matters, not how right you are. Nobody argues for twenty minutes about something they are indifferent to, so an unusually hot reaction is a pointer: either you have invested there, or you are afraid the criticism might be accurate. Indifference is quiet, and that is the whole clue.

After the next time you dig in, come back to it once you have cooled off. Ask which it was, something you care about or something you fear is true. If the first, you have found a real priority; if the second, there is a specific thing you could work on.