When I was a kid we used to have a dog that loved to run around our backyard. But of course it would swerve to avoid the big tree in the middle of the yard.
One year my dad had the tree taken down. Even though there was just an empty space where the tree had been, the dog still kept avoiding the tree. Whenever he got to that empty spot in the yard, he would always go around it.
I think people are like that. Everyone, in their own way, needs to run around trees that other people cannot see. In some cases, those trees were cut down many years earlier.
But still, people will keep anything they can to avoid that tree, and nothing you can do will make them run through it. Once you start to understand that, you start to understand people.