Practicing debating skills on subjects you don't agree with can be enlightening. Often you will broaden your perspectives, and sometimes you find better ways to argue with how you actually feel outside of a debate context.

I try to internalize a lot of this when I find myself ignorant on a given position one way or another. It helps one to get out of ones' own box. It's also a skill that I feel too few people genuinely exercise and resort to talking louder and trying to shut people down instead of debating a position rationally. Once you lose your temper, you really lost the argument as far as most observers are concerned and look a bit like a nut.

I think too many people spend too little time in uncomfortable or awkward situations to a point where they're literally unable to deal with them. We've had a level of societal protection for our youth to a point where we're no longer raising functional adults but really big toddlers emotionally speaking.

Rational people should be able to have rational conversations with any rational person regardless of differences of specific opinion. We're at a point where that's approaching an exception and not the rule that most people are rational.