Non-aggressive grounds

I might be angry, but I found myself not to be aggressive. I am very sensitive to any kind of aggression or violence and I usually just run and hide. I had this presentation today and I was very worried it will be a disaster, since it had all the chances to be. I slept for too long and only wrote the slides in the morning, following my notes, my language was fragmented because I couldn't get the thought out fine, the presentation itself was shallow and poorly documented and my points highly debatable. What happened in fact was that people listened to me, asked nice questions, made critical remarks but in an encouraging way, so it ended up engaging the group in a discussion that was still continued on the corridor when the class finished. I was so grateful to my colleagues for being so kind to my poor sorry ass. I think the presentation was bad enough not even to be worth listening to. But they were all supportive and even contradicting my points was done in such a non-offensive way, that I did feel we are all learning together. I was also told that my difficulty to find the words is just a break I put to myself, that everything I need, I have it and I just have to believe in me. That was lovely and it totally erased yesterday's horrible experience.
In 'political parties', my only other colleague who is in the class was making a presentation. Of course, his points and logic were very debatable. But I felt that the other department students were just bashing him in a personally aggressive way. And it was not the interventions, but the offensive attitude that hit me so hard. After the class, I felt like crying for hours. When I got home, I did. My colleague, he's a strong chap, he was holding to his guns. If it was me out there, I would've turned to jelly. It hurt me to see him attacked. Oh, if it was me, I would've cried for days. That's just because I'm a sissy. I was trying to toughen up. To stop caring for other people's opinions of me. To fight back. But I still run and hide. I do believe that we can go on in life without being aggressive and get far. I do believe that the ones who adapt better to change can be the ones who know how to avoid certain risk. I think that aggression can get others off your back, but that knowing how to handle things elegantly is worth much more. And I was truly grateful that I can be what I am in my department and people around will accept and like me that way and never bash me around when they don't agree.