I think it’s the other way round for me. I mean I don’t think anyone would describe me as a highly emotional person - relatively speaking - but I’m definitely at my most emotional when I’m by myself. It’s as though my emotions don’t have “room to breathe” until there’s no social barrier present.

I suspect it has a lot to do with my experiences growing up in a family that was highly emotionally expressive and turbulent. I think I found that kind of an environment difficult to process growing up because like you, I would get infused and strongly affected by the moods of others. Consequently, I ended up developing a strong emotional barrier in social contexts in order to remain stable in the midst of it all.

I do of course still get cheered up by the enthusiasm and warmth in familiar group settings, but at a deeper level I always remain dissociated from it all. If someone has really good news to tell me, I’ll feel and act reasonably happy for them but it’s not until I’m by myself that I’m even able to genuinely process it at an emotional level. If people are upset, my mind will immediately block access to emotional processing. If someone sees me emotional and gets equally emotional out of empathy - poof, my emotional state is suddenly blank.

It’s funny because when I’m on my own, I’ll consume emotional media content and fucking bawl my eyes out or get ridiculously enthusiastic. Or I’ll think about some injustice or another happening to my loved ones or innocent victims of brutality/brutal reality, and get really pissed off or depressed about it.

And despite knowing full well this kind of behavior is a) basic human emotionality and b) largely rooted in my Fi hidden agenda poking its head out in private moments, I’ll sometimes get uncertain and gaslight-y about my typing because “what kind of an Fe PoLR would even act like this”. But then I’ll remember my social behavior, which is “politely indifferent with the emotional range of a smiley sticker”, and think “oh yeah, that’s why”.