“I feel” instead of “you made me” isn’t soft. It’s just more accurate.

One version reports something you know and the other makes a claim about someone else’s intentions. You are the only reliable witness to how you felt, and the moment you tell somebody what they did to you, they can argue, because now it is a question of whether that was their plan. Nobody can dispute what you felt.

Try putting the feeling first and the event second, without softening the event itself. You can be perfectly direct about what happened while keeping the interpretation to yourself. Watch how much faster the conversation gets to the actual problem when there is nothing to deny.