Since I'm back home and thought about this thread some more:

Regarding defenses and therapy:
Lots of people in therapy have developed extensive defensive mechanisms in order to avoid getting hurt. Detaching yourself is one way, extensive anger can be as well (it makes people avoid you usually), and there's many other mechanisms including acting like you're completely fine, distraction, black and white thinking, even delusions can be a defense. Most of these things are completely normal to do, yet they can get out of hand. Distraction is a good example of this. It's completely normal and okay to take your mind off of things from time to time. Read a book and don't think about anything in life. Yet, if life suddenly consists of going from one thing to another, just so you do not have to think about anything regarding your actual existence, that's something I think most people agree on is not beneficial.

Therapists are sort of trained to pick up on defensive mechanisms and might point them out. But that doesn't mean they should want to tear all of them down or even need you to take them down. If you allow me to take your two examples, being detached and being angry:

It's certainly fine to be angry. My therapist actually tries to teach me right now to be angry at somebody. I was hurt a lot by that person. Yet, my whole mind refuses to see them as bad or be the slightest bit angry. Even though I know objectively what happened was wrong.
The issue is with emotions that are too extreme. I have this issue quite a lot with sadness. I get so sad that I physically can't calm down anymore, I have to always remind myself to stay grounded, to stay mindful of what's happening, else I drift off into being way too sad. This isn't helpful, I can't concentrate on anything in that state. I certainly can't learn anything about myself or my feelings in that state. So I need to calm down first, just enough so that I'm still sad, but completely breaking down.

It's the same with anger, and anger is usually perceived as very negative, so I imagine that if a therapist is not skilled enough or just can't work with that, it might be hard to interact. I don't think for therapy to be useful you have to be very soft and not get angry, but it could be useful to seek out therapists that are knowledgeable of anger as a thing in therapy.

Regarding putting up a wall or being defensive, I've too had some therapists tell me things such as "you need to open up more" or "next week we should explore your anxiety issues" after two weeks. I even had some friends suggest I share some things with therapists, even though I wasn't comfortable with it yet. A good therapist should respect your boundaries regarding any topic at all, and if you do not want to discuss some topics or seem "not open enough", that shouldn't affect your work. As long as the conversation focuses on you and your experience of life, the therapist shouldn't push you any way most of the time. With my current T, our first 6 months of working together was me sitting there in exactly one position, stating all my issues in a very matter of fact way, we didn't discuss anything a whole lot, it was basically an objective overview of what was happening in my life. Yet, that was completely fine, even though my T knew I was clearly struggling from medical reports. In my opinion, you can only develop feeling safe if you are allowed to be yourself, whatever that might look like. I can understand how it was hard to feel safe around therapists who pushed you another direction too much.