Trauma is not required to improve your emotional intelligence or communication abilities. While expressing an often repressed emotion may appear traumatic, one can improve this simply by being aware of it and learning how to express them. However, reading and doing are different things and challenging the personality an INTP has become comfortable with is unlikely to yield good results as the INTP protects the ego above all costs.

Somewhere in my late twenties I got much more open emotionally. I'm not sure if it was natural growth, but it felt like I had an epiphany. I realized that I did all these things because I 'didn't want to appear [negative quality]', but those actions were giving me other negative qualities instead. Like a very basic one, I don't speak first because I don't want to look like a fool, but always holding back made me look like a pushover or stuck-up or stupid. I don't let myself act goofy because I don't want to look like I'm dumb, but always acting serious makes me look like I've got a stick up my bum. I'm not comfortable sharing embarrassing things about myself because I don't want to look weak, but never sharing makes it seem like I don't trust anyone and in turn, no one trusts me. Etc.

It was like I'd been hamstringing myself for years without ever knowing it. So I stopped.

The weird thing is that I feel like if I went back to me at 22 and said this, I doubt 22yo-me would even be able to see it. So I sort of feel like there was some natural growth that had to occur before this was possible. I think that it was poor little last place Fe finally kicking into gear. Like for all these years I'd had to use Ti to work out how to act, Si to keep track of social rules, and Ne to carry it out in it's oddball way and then - boom! - here's Fe to interact with people naturally.

As far as Fi goes, if that's what you were referring to, that still hasn't made contact with the mother ship.