Impatience is a psychological factor that varies from person to person and constantly changes with the environment in real time. In this paper, a model based on cellular automaton is presented to investigate the dynamics of bi-directional flow, with considering individual impatient behaviors. Potential field is defined to represent pedestrian’s interest in available space, which provides an approach to the description of proactive mechanism in bi-directional flow. By formulating the dynamics with controllable parameters, individual impatience level is measured, recorded and updated to trigger off the personalized behaviors. Three different patterns of impatient behaviors are modeled and compared with each other. Simulation results demonstrate the different performances of impatient behavior patterns. Comparing with the situation without considering impatience, bidirectional flow is improved in terms of speed, flow rate and waiting time when impatience level is used to triggers off the sidestep behavior. However, the collective performance shows a deterioration at a most density level when impatience is regarded as a direct parameter to estimate the priority to a target cell among several competitors. The parameter sensitivity analysis of impatience intensity and decision threshold shows the flexibility of the model to present the impatience effect. Simulation experiments under different scenarios also reveal the effects of low proportion of slower pedestrians, walkway width and mixed behavior mode on the efficiency of pedestrian counter flow.