Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social

*Find me in the other place* | Kettle's always on | Early childhood | Y1 #DClinPsy | She/hers

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@weirb4 I went to Appledore Pride and it was gorgeous, despite the sideways rain.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag My hot take: Speak to the feelings not the behaviour. Validate, be empathic. Hold your boundary with warmth, explain why xyz isnt possible and assure them how you know their child wont be adversely affected by the boundary. Return to the feelings at the end.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag I AM NOT ALONE 😆 #NeverKnowinglyDignified

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@DrLKVaughan @LucyGoBag Give pennies to small small charities like the gorgeous Yorda Adventures that I was proudly co-Director of and is still hanging on in there 20yrs later. Tiny, local orgs really need us and they are literal lifelines in their communities ❤️

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Your brain has a circuit that doesn't know you live in a city. Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing. Right now, in this room, it is on.

The circuit predates primates. Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continuity as a predator-detection system for roughly 200 million years. Birds stop singing when something larger moves through their territory. For most of mammalian history, a forest full of song meant no large predator was nearby, and the cessation of sound was the warning. Your nervous system never updated this software.

The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants. Six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size. Six minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same. The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no regular contact with nature. The brain still ran the check.

Birdsong sits in the 1,000 to 8,000 Hz range. Your brainstem reads continuous patterns in that band as a signal that nothing dangerous is currently moving through the environment. EEG data shows birdsong at 45 to 50 decibels boosts alpha wave activity by 14.1% relative to silence. Alpha is the brainwave signature of relaxed alertness. Push the same birdsong above 60 decibels and the response flips. Stress markers rise 29%. The circuit only trusts the signal at the volume of quiet conversation, which is exactly the volume birds sing at from a typical distance.

Three things happen simultaneously when the brain registers ambient safety. The amygdala downregulates. The parasympathetic nervous system takes over from the sympathetic. Heart rate variability rises, cortisol drops. The posterior cingulate cortex, which sits at the center of the rumination circuit, quiets down. King's College London tracked this through a smartphone study with over 1,200 participants and found the mood lift lasted hours after the sound stopped. People diagnosed with depression got the same response as healthy controls.

Most of what gets labeled mental fatigue is hypervigilance running in the background. Birdsong tells the circuit it can stand down, and the brain reallocates the freed compute everywhere else.

A quiet park feels different from a quiet office because the parks have sentinels.

[Meg Naylor_Dclin @MegNaylor_Pain]

Hello! Are you a parent who experiences long term pain? The research below is being conducted by a trainee Clinical Psychologist at the University of Exeter. To take part, please follow the link below or use the QR code on the poster https://t.co/FNU42C5nUJ @loulouscorpio

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag @RslewisSally Live in the gaps. Like that. Worked out a while ago that I could only control the joyful - so that's what I do. And now I can say, I live in the gaps.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag @TurnipRail Mine still houses my certificates. I left school 27yrs ago.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag Wow. How long does it go on?

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag Took an elderly lady to hospital myself the other day who'd fallen on the pavement just head of me, whacked her head. Waited an hour for an ambulance and then carefully got her in the car. Call handler apologetic but powerless.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@ph7litmus @LucyGoBag And if the danger to your life was your own mental health following a life shattering event such as Grenfell, you'd be more interested in access to the therapist than to the medical doctor. They are both highly valuable in their own context.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag The problem comes when we put people against each other. Is the therapist worth that money? Yes. Should the medical doctor be paid more than that? Yes. It's not possible to directly compare the roles aside from saying, both are highly skilled & required years of training.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@AsdaServiceTeam I've spent all afternoon including having to rebook my delivery slot twice trying to pay for my shop and you still won't take my money. Pppplllleeeaaaaassseee take my money.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag Will put it on my 'to read' list, am sure it is worth soaking up. Hope all well with you x

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@Samsara_MD @DrAnnieHickox @psychgeist52 How many of those without childhood trauma go on to develop mental illness?

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@FestivalPain Are these still running? I've been off here for while.

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

Costliest in terms of 'value' of type of neighbourhoods destroyed. Is that what makes a disaster costly? What about human life, loss of belongings of people who already own almost nothing, long term impact of trauma etc - what is the cost then?

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

LA wildfires among costliest in US history https://t.co/0KmHSOvZHO

[Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden]

In October 2022, the seven-year long Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) warned that the government must act urgently on a “national epidemic” of child sex abuse

It made core 20 recommendations, but only a handful have been implemented
https://t.co/WNwciGcDZu

[Meg Naylor / @MegNaylor.bsky.social @MegCNaylor]

@LucyGoBag Thank you!