The Swansea City keeper reacted angrily to the challenge from the Leeds player during the second half of the Swans defeat on Saturday and called the player out of order for the challenge.
"The challenge was out of order," de Vries told the Evening Post. "I already had the ball in my hands so he shouldn't have come in, and these things happen too much in football.
"As a goalkeeper you cannot protect yourself. You try to make yourself as small as possible, but these things don't have to happen at all.
"I must say that I'm disappointed with my response, but there's a bit of history there. It was a flashback to QPR and at the time I thought 'Oh no, not again'. He caught the nerve on the outside of my knee and I thought it was a bad one. I thought it was much worse than it was and I let my head go, but thankfully it felt all right later on.
"I'm lucky to get away with a yellow card, and also lucky to walk away with my leg in one piece
"I think he should have got a red for the challenge but, if he had, the ref probably would have sent me off as well, so maybe it's good that we both got yellows.
"It's frustrating because we could have been 2-0 or 3-0 up but we ended up losing because of one spell in the second half," de Vries said.
"Both goals were disappointing because they came from rebounds, which are always annoying. You hope the ball is gone, but both times they had a guy in the right place.
"But we have bounced back well from the defeats at Hull and Norwich with good home wins against Preston and Burnley, and now we have to do the same again."
