I went out for lunch/run in the car with a very close friend about a year ago - big age gap between us (23 years) and she fills a gap as I didn’t have stable parenting/nurturing always during childhood and teenage years. I love her very, very much .
When we last went out we were in car driving home and talking and she said, a bit out of the blue, ‘when xyz happened to you, when your parents did xyz you must have been so frightened’ .
I felt horrendously ill as soon as she said it to the point I remember her telling me to put my head between my knees . She was talking about abuse that occurred a very long time ago, that I’ve only ever talked to her about . I was very, very scared but I’d never thought about it before and when she said it in the car I felt sudden rush of terror, anger mixed together .
I ended up feeling very strange for the rest of the day, and into the morning - as if I wasn’t really here, watching myself on a film or similar . Was a horrible feeling . In the end my GP prescribed me diazepam which controlled it, he said he thought it was a trauma response and that whatever friend said had hit a nerve/brought up old feelings .
I haven’t seen my friend since, we talk every 2-3 days but due to meet up next week and scared the same thing will happen again . I still don’t understand what it was and why I felt like that, and how to control it so it doesn’t happen again . I don’t want to hurt friend by telling her, do I just deliberately try to keep the conversation light ?