don't bring everybody down like this

To "wind someone up" is an idiosyncratic phrase which you don't hear very often, but when you hear it or read it, you can tell from the context what it means.

I'd heard it before, but not for a long time.

Reading The Diana Chronicles, written by Tina Brown, I encountered the phrase twice that I could remember, and looked to find the passages. ...

----------------------[excerpts, The Diana Chronicles]-------------{from Chapter 8, "Whatever In Love Means"...On his tour of India, the press hounded Charles for a commitment, but they were asking him to make clear feelings that were not yet clear even to himself -- something calculated to panic any bachelor.  "I can't live with a woman for two years, like you possibly could," he ruminated aloud in an off-the-record aside.  "I've got to get it right first time because if I don't, you'll be the first to criticize me."  "And then," said Arthur Edwards, "we thought, 'This is the one.'"

The One was furious that Charles did not call from India.  Sarah Spencer, suspicious that her little sister had pulled off the romantic coup she had believed would be hers, wound Diana up further by probing the course of the romance.  Diana confided to Mary Robertson, for whom she was still nannying two days a week, "I will simply die if this doesn't work out.  I won't be able to show my face."

[second excerpt -- Chapter 20, "The Last Picture Show"]---------- [[ The Tiggy Legge-Bourke referred to here was nanny to Charles & Diana's two boys after the parents separated and divorced...]]
Bolland was a shrewd go-to guy with a marketing background....He lived in the real world, not the Palace bubble.  He owed his job to Camilla; he had come to Charles at the recommendation of her divorce lawyer, Hilary Browne Wilkinson.  ...Part of his writ was to end the War between the Waleses.  It got in the way, he believed, of the necessary rebuilding of Prince Charles's image.  Bolland's first act was to persuade Charles to fire his private secretary, Commander Richard Aylard, the facilitator of the Dimbleby fiasco, and rid the Prince's office of holdovers from the bitter years of marital competition.  Nor was Bolland a fan of the undislodgeable Tiggy Legge-Bourke, sharing Camilla's belief that Tiggy spent a lot of her time "winding Charles up."----------------[end excerpts]

> > > The elder sister "wound Diana up further..."
> > > Tiggy spent a lot of her time "winding Charles up"...

On-line definitions / explanations I could find seemed lacking, I thought -- lightly grazing across meanings for the phrase like -- "annoying someone"...
No, it's more than that -- it's -- thicker. ...
It's a process where, the object of the "winding up" is being pushed, or "egged on" to think what they think, believe what they believe, or be insecure about what they're insecure about -- more -- to a greater degree.  It's like -- somebody's upset or angry, and the other person gets them more upset, makes it worse. ...The perpetrator rides the wave of energy from the person who's upset.

------------------------
Contemplating the government shutdown and tea-party-republicans' antics, I thought of the film Nixon in which there are several scenes -- several -- where people are discussing politics in a room together, and they "wind each other up" and the results aren't good.  I think that happens with the current extremists in the House of Representatives.  They have, in a sense, their own world, their own "bubble" -- (not a "Palace bubble," but a bubble....)  Any input they hear is not constructive, they only hear -- or accept -- input that says, "Yeah!  Yeah!  Rah!  Rah!  Rah-rah-rah!..."

In Nixon, as the scenes where he's in a meeting with his advisers play out, you can see where -- a president wants to bounce his ideas off of his aides, and get feedback, they want to give good advice, they want to help, he wants their help and thoughts...and sometimes it works out well.
But sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes they just "wind him up" further.
In one scene Pres. Nixon is upset about something -- exasperated, frustrated -- when you're pres. of the U.S. things are difficult sometimes -- and he's blaming this, and throwing that, and Haldeman sort of adds to it, and you feel pulled between feelings of --
++ Everyone gets upset sometimes and needs to vent, and let off the pressure
and feelings of
++ No no no stop!  Don't keep going that way!  Calm down, this is not helping...sssh...

Henry Kissinger says it:  "Mr. President, I fear we are drifting toward oblivion, here...."

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