Sorry for the wall of text here... this is the kind of thing I can analyze into infinity because of all the confusing pieces of the puzzle I have but have trouble making sense of.
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I've thought about this somewhat…. and I agree with much of what [MENTION=204]FineLine[/MENTION] & [MENTION=5871]Southern Kross[/MENTION] says (with some exceptions - ie. I tended be overly formal in emails, with little flourishes of "hope all is well with you" and "please don't hesitate to contact me should you have any questions", etc. This, oddly, made people MAD. I don't know if they read the formal politeness as "condescending" in its contrivance or what. But I dropped it & became more terse after seeing the success an ESFP co-worker had in sending out incomplete sentences with no punctuation & no greetings, and being a great favorite among clients.).
I definitely have paranoia over being "too much" with others, as well as being a weirdo. I have a problem with picking up on certain social cues, which I can't even begin to describe because it's that big of a blind spot. The only reason I will know I have messed up in some way is I am good, perhaps TOO good, at picking up on emotional responses & attitudes in people (that even they may not be conscious they are sending). However, I tend to not place things in context that well & can blow a small reaction into rejection (I tend to go negative with my readings). I suddenly get the sense of people being careful or cool with me, or polite but not friendly, or even outright snubbing (which I tend to see as cues of "you're not playing our game right" as if it's on purpose, and so I must be shamed/punished for it).
This is especially stinging for me if I feel I ventured out of my shell a bit & being me has just been stamped with disapproval. This leaves me in some paralysis as to how "strong" to come across with people, which leads to a "hot & cold" effect or being so walled-off I think I'm invisible and inconsequential to the point of no one bothering to interact with me.
But to answer your question about others coming on really strong… generally I receive it fine, but with a few caveats that might be predictable for an INFP 4w5:
- Emotional Manipulation - I very am sensitive to it and cannot stand it. I'm sure no one likes this, but many still use it, whether or conscious or not. This includes not only guilt-tripping, but also the social-shaming I spoke of above. It can also be a pushiness to affect me - to change my mood, my feelings, and my boundaries, and it uses underhanded methods. These people can be very gushy & "too much too soon" given the shallowness of the connection.
I mean, in every connection there is some seeking to affect & allowing oneself to be affected, but it's someone trying to force it or its terms that can bug me. I need to be given space to respond in my own time, in my own way (though not to say I am rude).
Fi-dom tend to resist being affected (ie. emotionally moved to a visible response) unless they deem something as having a connection to an existing feeling-concept. So if someone gets pushy about me adjusting to meet some emotional temperature, then I can get more & more walled-off. Like, I'm cool with someone coming up to me & being excited & happy & overflowing with emotion, but don't demand or expect that energy level to be met. It has nothing to do with whether I like you or not. If I don't know you, then I cannot respond enthusiastically because I have no meaning attached to you. So I tend to stay with my own mood, or an indifference which reflects the suspension of judgement I have about you until I get more data.
The reason ExFPs do well with me there, is because they allow me to keep my own state. So I have the impression of them being these warm, friendly, upbeat people who are NOT emotionally manipulative or judgey or projecting crap onto me. Then, guess what? The next time I see them, I am likely to be a bit warmer, because I have a positive value attached to them now, not a neutral one. I don't usually have any problem with introversion intensity, because there's rarely a sense of needing you to adjust to the external in the way Es expect.
This is not to say I am not nice & polite with people I do not know. But this is in response to a value for human beings by virtue of them being human beings, not a value of their individual character. This is perfectly acceptable to many types who think this makes you a nice person to be indiscriminately kind, but it seems problematic with those who may think it's a kind of coldness because it's not gushy.
As a side (like this wall-o-text needs to be any longer), I have a trouble with the kind of chit-chat others seem to bond over. I listen to many conversations and it just sounds like "noise" to me. It's not plain ol' small talk (talk of the weather & polite inquiries into health or work), but some kind of bonding communication people have. I can't even begin to describe it because I don't even know what it IS. I can't identify a content. It's just seems like babble to me. I have no idea how to participate in this or mimic it, and I'm sure this adds to my giving off an impression of being aloof and/or awkward. The only person I've ever seen this aloof/awkward in these situations is an older INFP 4w5 I know. She pretty much avoids group social things for the most part, and I suspect this is why.
If I were to take a stab at this communication, there is something kind of cutesy, playful, and in-the-moment about it. But it still seems to say nothing about nothing. I notice many friendships seem formed & based on this kind of interaction. If I were to try to be a part of it, then I fail at being cute - too intense & awkward. I fail at the playful - too wry & dry, my banter has too much edge at times, aiming for a wit that is half-truth & half-cheeky. Or it's just too weird for anyone to follow. I recently told someone they reminded me of macaroni and cheese (as a compliment of course); don't think it was deemed cute or playful. And in the moment is hard for me, for rather obvious reasons. So when I have tried to be a part of this kind of communication, I find it like a record screeching to a halt. And as this feels vulnerable to me, I'm sensitive to all the signals that I am not being quite appropriate, that my emotional temperature is not in-line.
- Emotional Manipulation Pt II - This is a different variety. These are people who may approach me like a bomb they have to disarm. I get this a lot from e6 women. It's not because I have displayed any "danger", but I haven't displayed much at all. This makes them very nervous. I find them approaching me like I need to be "appeased". There is a lot of false flattery & trying to play to my ego (or what they perceive it to be). They lay it on too thick, basically.
Because I easily sense their nervousness, I tend to find them disingenuous. They are really seeking to form a connection with me to soothe their doubts about who I am & what I may do, not because they have a genuine liking of me. I don't like being "kissed up to" or dealt with as if I need to be handled with kid's gloves, because it's indirectly insulting. I like when people approach me as they would normally approach anyone. There's something more egalitarian & non-assumptive about that that I respond to better.
- Smothering & Suffocating - This is a lack of respect for boundaries & perhaps different ideas of politeness. If I sense someone is demanding something from me emotionally that they are not owed (or trying to indebt me with emotional manipulation), then I begin to assert boundaries. I admit I do this more passively, because it creates too much conflict to be direct with people (which I'd prefer, but it's just way too Te for most). I withdraw, and if they continue to PUSH, then I know they are not respecting my boundary. All I have usually said is "not right now". People either ignore this or take it too personally. Most of the time, I just don't have the emotional energy to give at that moment, and I need that respected.
I can agree with FineLine about a chipping away being necessary, and this general wall or slow to warm up-ness is not the same as the boundary setting I speak of.
Lastly, I have the most horrible sense of time you can imagine. So I drop off the face of the earth easily. The 5 wing can turn even my own desires into "obligations", and then I feel terrible guilt over the emails I don't respond to, the phone calls I don't return, etc. That only serves to make me correlate these things with GUILT, so that it seems like an unpleasant task. So while I am bemoaning alienation from people, I am also avoiding answering my phone. I see the contradiction there & know it's MY problem. One way people can avoid entering this dynamic with me is to just be open to picking up where we left off last we connected, and to not take it personally & get pouty (read: guilt-trippy) about it.
I briefly dated this ESTP recently and it was brief because poutiness and wanting explanations for not returning his calls/texts in a timely manner began to make me associate him with unpleasant feelings. Even though when interacting with him, it was always pleasant & interesting. It was more like during the time we were NOT interacting, I was plagued with guilt about it, and I resented that my time could not be my OWN, as if I had to justify it.
- Emotional Dumping - More than most people, I am very comfortable with messy emotions, intense expression, and generally hearing the more unnerving feelings people may have. But even I have some boundaries. I don't like to feel like someone's free therapist, either because we have no connection or because it's one-way giving. This can often be a matter of how frequently they dump over how intense it is. People may sometimes do this too soon with me, and later on they become uncomfortable about it. They can begin to associate ME with their unpleasant feelings, because I'm now some kind of reminder of it. I'm increasingly careful to avoid this now, because I feel like I get judged as the downer when they are the one compelled to open the floodgates (because of some presence I exude, I guess).
If you notice a trend here, it's that I tend to approach people with e4 hang-ups (shame, intensity, sense of being strange), but I tend to receive them with e5 hang-ups (overwhelmed by emotional "demands", guilted over not giving, suffocated). Then of course, there are INFP problems with reading social cues but hypersensitive to emotional energy & the valuations within it.