I'm 44 years old and still freeze like I did with bullies

Yesterday on my way home, I was walking up ahead of some young women who had gotten off the bus, too. They were loud and obnoxious (screaming at someone they knew at the top of their lungs, for one), and after they stopped that interchange they started making squealing pig noises that filtered over in my direction.

My heart stopped. I went into a panic. Years ago, that's exactly the sort of thing a school bully might do. Now, I know that they were probably not even directing it at me (on the other hand although they were all chunky, I was by far the larger, so maybe they were just that obnoxious). What's important was my reaction. I froze. I took it to be directed to me at first, just as all those insults had been when I was a kid. But I had two reactions afterwards which I thought showed promise. One, I realised that even if it were directed towards me, they were obnoxious gets who did not deserve the time of day. Secondly, I felt an upsurge of self-defence and quite frankly considered beating the crap out of them. Fortunately the first prevailed (I can just imagine the new reports: rabid librarian wails on defenceless girls). But the point is I felt anger, and although I controlled my actions, felt the impetus to defend myself. When I was a kid, I just felt powerless, and slunk off, and they kept taunting me because of it. I've only hit two people in my life, both bullies. One was when I was a kid and I never did anything to him when he was bullying me, but he was picking on a 4 year old and I bloodied his nose. The second was when I was older and someone I was living with tried to manipulate my actions and emotions by faking a suicide attempt. I tip-toed on eggshells for a week and finally boxed his ears. He slapped me. That was about as physically negative as our relationship ever got, although he was physically abusive on a daily basis through tickling. Yes, tickling. He would run at me, no matter what I was doing, and tickle me in this bizarre attack mode. It took me awhile to realise how insidious it was, because it was physical abuse, but because he wasn't hitting me, he could say everything was fine, and it didn't leave bruises. But it left me feeling like I would be attacked any minute. And of course, that was nothing compared to the emotional abuse and manipulation. Fortunately I finally came to my senses, grew a backbone, and left all that behind, although it took me a couple more years to finally get the courage to leave. When I did, he came to my house, knocking like he was trying to break the door down, until the nice policemen came and told him to go away or he'd be going downtown. I have had little trouble with him since, and have come to realise that he was essentially a coward and the only real power he had was what I gave him. And he was the last bully I had in my life that I gave any real power to.