In 2020, My daughter experienced a trauma when she was 3 and for two years we sought help with her meltdowns and anxiety, yet no therapy or professional had a solution. Over that time more and more challenge started arising like itchy clothes, food challenges and socially withdrawn etc then an autism diagnosis eventually came when she stopped making eye contact.

I came across Dr Daniel P Browns work that people with a secure attachment do not hold trauma and get PTSD, if you heal the attachment and not process trauma, there is little risk of therapy going wrong. Working in cyber security I liked that concept "how to prevent failures" so I searched for child attachment healing concepts and found Attachment Play by Dr Aletha Solter, at first play didn't work, play looped with no resolve. I then learnt that children in overload can not connect to their parent preventing an attachment from forming via Dr Bruce Perry's work and added cold swimming to get her out of overload and allow the parental connection to be restored and attachment healing and play to start working. His work allowed me to figure out there was a sequence to healing her 'self' and our attachment.

Within 6 weeks of implementing attachment healing concepts, responding to her cry differently, reading her play and jumping in outdoor swimming pools/the sea together, her separation anxiety healed. She walked into kindergarten on the first day with so much confidence. We had played hide and seek a number of times in OT over the two years, yet it never worked because playing out trauma doesn't heal or resolve trauma when in overload, it just re-traumatizes. Cheat and use the divers reflex and shivering to get the missing chemicals released and the body out of the trauma response and into temperature regulation mode instead. Giving you a window of healing. As you get more emotion out, regressions get further apart. Once you heal the cry/trauma shiver, regression have stopped.

By creating an attachment play game for every challenge that had developed over the two years of struggle and receiving her cry in this 3rd way; itchy clothes stopped, 2+ years on she's explores new food and we have used the 9 types of attachment play to help up-skill her social skills and she now plays with both boys and girls instead of just boys. Her self led healing continues. She seems freer and more open. She will always have her sensory profile, she will always feel things bigger than most people and things have been learn explicitly so it will always be on-going journey building a life where her genetics can thrive and find peers to attune to and foster exploration.

When parents are given the skills to create the right environment, you get to see a child's healing needs played out before you via this language of play. You also get to see that your children play the games they need to heal with their friends. You see your partner and friends attachment play and healing needs as you laugh and play together. If 2 people play they release stress, same for 3 and more. A community plays out its stress & trauma. It explains why secure people do not get PTSD as per Dr Dan Brown's findings.

Once emotion is released your child will become so much more connected, they learn quicker and start to thrive. The health of this release of crying and play probably play a large part towards mental health challenges as people develop in life. How it presents is your genetics and environment.

In 2023 I lost my hearing, Sensorineuro hearing loss with hyperacusis in the noxacusis pain form. 24×7 sound pain, the feeling of hot knifes being stabbed into the ears into your brain at the slightest sound, sound pain is processed differently to regular pain, there isn't any medication that relieves it. Drs said there was no solutions and learn to make life adjustments. I managed to heal it myself along with the PTSD to loud noises that developed via these play and healing concepts I was learning for my daughter. Ice baths and acupuncture to de-inflame the nerves and get muscles (tensor tympani that does volume) around them that tensed up from pain making the nerve inflammation worse, stuck in a loop. Then lunches in loud restaurants with people Ive been successful with at work. Use the groups laughter over past experiences to focus on vs loud background peripheral sounds, reminding your body it's safe, letting the brain go back to processing peripheral sounds at the brain-stem level vs fight/flight and limbic processing.

Seeing how unknown these concepts are within the psych industry and how most modern parenting advice out there works against this stress and trauma release we all have. I hope other people can find this and it offers them some help when other avenues haven't shown results. The more people that know of this release, the more we can all help each other through traumas and stressors.

If you want any help implementing these concepts with your child, please feel free to reach out.

steve@playfulcollaboration.com