Brokenwing
I know when I went through a trauma when I caught the home care person abusing my mother when she was dying of cancer, then the home care person tried to have me falsely arrested for abusing my mother.......the stress from that trauma made me feel so sick to my stomach that I lost so much weight I ended up in the medical hospital because of the anorexia & had to have IV nutrition to just stay alive at the time when my mother died.

The point.....sometimes when trauma/stress hits us, that sick feeling strikes....& it's not initially our desire to loose the weight that starts the process.....that logic just kind of falls into place when we are loosing the weight because we are feeling so horrible from the trauma.

7 years later, I have not entirely processed the trauma I went through....the police didn't have enough evidence to put her in jail because I did too good of a job protecting my mother from what she was doing (go figure). On top of that the struggle I had with my mother & the oncologist not being willing to include me in on the decision making process of the care my mother needed was all the causes that went into the home care person getting into the picture in the first place......so I had & still have a lot of anger that I haven't been able to let go of or really process. In my DBT group & with my psychologist......they validate the feelings that I experienced & that I still experience it seems every year when the fall weather hits until the end of January.....on top of that, this year a dear friend from church just died of cancer.......& all that experience hit at exactly the same time of year that I deal with the PTSD from the trauma I went through. Every year at this time.....I struggle with that sick feeling that causes me to not feel hungry & not want to eat & end up loosing weight.

The point is that your T needs to work with you on processing the trauma of being attacked....the horrible feeling of having privacy being completely invaded & all the emotions that are involved from anger to shame & everything inbetween. Our emotions come out in the form of the ED, whether anorexia with or without bulimia, or overeating (like it hits other people). For me, stress in my life has always manifested itself in weightloss from the time I was a child.....I'm guessing that you may have experienced similar experiences.

I am not good at stopping the weight loss altogether.....but I have been able to put my need for the feel of control into being able to control my eating so that I do not loose weight to an unhealthy place anymore. I am living alone & have no one to take care of me after leaving my husband 5 years ago (after 33 years of marriage). Needless to say, he was a huge contributing factor to my level of stress even though it wasn't related to any trauma. Since placing myself in total control of my life & moving to a state where I didn't know anyone & had to make completely NEW friends, I found that focusing my control in more healthy directions help me in so many ways & even though it didn't completely take away the weight loss when I end up dealing with the stress from the PTSD at this time of year or when other stressful things strike me at other times of the year.....I am still able to keep my weight at a healthy level.....all I have to do now is deal with the high blood pressure that I have found has hit me from the current stress I have been going through.....something I want to control through nutrition rather than putting meds into my body.....so it's a great incentive to try to direct my control into the care of my health.

I hope that you will be able to process the attack & trauma that you went through. Anytime that happens to us.....there has to be a level of stress & some Post Traumatic Stress that we go through that needs to be dealt with. To deny the damage that the stress from the trauma causes to our mental wellness is harmful to our recovery.....& without the recovery process in dealing with the trauma, the recovery from the ED that's caused by it will be even more difficult.

The one thing that I have learned over the years is that we do have to radically accept that what happened to us happened & there is nothing we can do to change that......but we can program our mind to go on from there & make it know that we are not defined by what happened to us......there is nothing unclean about us because when we are forced into a situation against our will, it isn't our choice that caused it to happen & we are innocent of all that happened & without blame......it's after we can accept the reality of the situation that we can begin to heal completely from the trauma.

One has to heal the root cause of an injury before the symptoms can go away.......your ED is a symptom of the injury of your trauma & when that gets healed, your ED will more easily be controlled. Unfortunally, not eating can become a habit on top of it being the symptom......so there is a lot involved when it comes to eating issues....but it's a well known fact that most ED issues evolve out of a unprocessed trauma we have gone through.

Wishing you the best with all you are going through. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss anything in a more private way......I will be glad to help in any way I can......I am very sorry that you are going through this.....none of us deserve to be treated the way we have that has caused the trauma's we go through.......sending you gentle 's