"One thing that stands out to me is asking him how he feels. That question tends to really freak INTPs out. You want to see a deer in the headlights, fire off that question."
Hypothesis: Inferior extraverted feeling makes sincere expression of feeling politically incorrect
Here's the usual experience for ITPs:
Friend/spouse/parent: (Say, while having difficulty making a decision at the pet store.) Would you share your true feelings with me?
ITP: Well, OK. I hate puppies with sad eyes. Their cuteness makes me want to vomit.
Friend/spouse/parent: How dare you say such a thing!
The lesson learned before long is that "Please share your true feelings with me" is a conversational gambit: the other person is looking for a chance to pour shame or guilt over you, by getting you to say something honestly. Either that, or the other person doesn't want you to share your true feelings, they want you to say something false, that confirms your willingness to knuckle under to some politically correct lie. If you say the truth, that will only confirm for people that you're not of the tribe. Give them true knowledge of your feelings, and the tribe will start itching to tear you apart limb from limb.
The need to take a clear political position, guaranteeing to others your faithfulness to what people have agreed is socially acceptable--letting them "know where you stand"--clashes in the most direct possible way with the frame of mind where you respond spontaneously and by inspiration to the inherent "logic"of your material.
A social fiction of "you" gets in the way of putting yourself aside and letting the material be what it is. The social fiction is a left-brain phenomenon that exists only in the social world of sign and symbol. Your sense of "the groove" is a right-brain phenomenon, involving direct, a-social response: you're faithful to the material and not to a preconceived self-definition that other people can count on or understand.
Consequently, TPs often experience "cute" things as attempts to guilt-trip them out of their ability to lock on to "the groove" and follow it wherever it leads. Big false smiles, sad puppy eyes, the word "love", even a hand placed on a shoulder--all are perceived as attempts to shape their responses to things so they're no longer natural, faithful to their material, and untainted by a sense of self: as attempts to overpower or bully them with a threat of ostracization or perhaps a tribal lynching.
FJs, by contrast, have shaped themselves to genuinely feel what one ought to feel in any social situation. They likely expect that everyone has done that, because, after all, that's the only decent way to be. Of course you should be pleased to see a newborn baby, and of course you should be sad to hear of the death of your friend's father. That's what life is all about. How could you possibly feel disgusted by a newborn baby or pleased when a friend's father dies? Why, if you didn't like babies and feel sad about death, you would scarcely be human. You'd be a monster! Paradoxically, this leads to a lack of spontaneity about expression of feeling on the part of ITPs, and genuine spontaneity on the part of EFJs. A person with developed extraverted feeling can trust his emotional response to be OK to share in words, whether it's joy, sadness, fear, or even anger. It might be hard to understand why it's not that way for everyone.
(FJs, especially IFJs, might well not feel what they're supposed to feel about deaths or babies, but Fe typically leads them to wonder if there's something wrong with them. But that's another topic.)
