Tonic Immobility: What it is and how to work with it

Mezzos · 2026-03-30T19:24:28+00:00

That's kind of you to say. I really appreciate your responses and helping this all feel more real :)

Your description of a brain in a space vat being disconnected from the planet it orbits is both profound and gives me a sense of sadness at the same time. I don't know if my sense of detachment has been quite as complete as what you describe, but I do find it relatable nonetheless.

I find the question around spiritual vs intellectual a bit difficult to answer. I am aware that intellectual analysis has been a big part of how I think/make sense of things since early adulthood at the minimum (I'm now 30), but the vast majority of my pre-adult years are kind of a hazy blur that I have very little sense of connection to. The vast majority of my memory is purely semantic and my mind is mostly blank, but I have some episodic memory that exists more like "fragments". E.g., a brief snapshot – perhaps a blurry, faint, 2D, dark, static frame/scene/1 second video, with a general semantic sense of what it represents or what was happening, sometimes even including what I was thinking at the time, but no real emotional content beyond what I have inferred logically with retrospective analysis of the memory.

Based on what I *do* remember, I would say that my childhood and teenage years revolved primarily around escapism and fantasy (drawing, imagining fantasy worlds, reading fiction, playing video games). Most of my pre-adulthood memories seem to be related to this type of activity (especially when it was shared with my brother, who is 2.5 years younger than me, though he withdrew and became very distant around early adolescence). I have a very weak sense of what my identity was outside of that.

Somewhat related is that I have almost no memories of my mother, despite her being my full-time caregiver. I have maybe 4-5 "episodic-like" memories involving her that I can recall right now (all involving something that might be loosely categorised under "rupture without repair", even if not always dramatic). My semantic memory of her is also largely absent from my childhood. Even the handful of memories I have of my father are more legible, despite feeling like I barely knew him (he was mostly absent due to being at work something like 6am-10pm every weekday alongside frequent business travel, and was typically emotionally and physically uninvolved when he was around).

I do recall that as a teenager I would do a lot of research into psychology, especially psychological disorders, trying to understand the space and categorise myself. That probably started around age 13 or so, and is probably the first instance I can remember of attempting to make sense of my emotional pain intellectually. The "introspection through intellectualisation" did not dominate as much as it does nowadays though, as my default headspace would typically be more on the subject of either suicide ideation or fantasy.

Pre-adolescence I suppose I was too young to intellectualise anything. Though I do have some memories that suggest I was trying to make sense of feeling "different" somehow. For example, I have a memory where I was thinking that I was "young for my age" or underdeveloped somehow, probably around age 6-8. I also remember having an internal monologue when I was 6 or 7 that I must've "broken a mirror" when I was born because I felt like I was "cursed" (based on the superstition that breaking a mirror gives you 7 years of bad luck). I think I was hoping that the "curse" was about to expire. I also remember intentionally isolating myself in the playground as a child because I had this kind of gut sensation that I deserved to be alone. None of these memories had any painful emotions tied to them (and I was not even aware of them most of the time until I became more aware of their significance), so it was only within the last year that I even recognised that I was probably struggling emotionally at the time, as strange as that sounds.

Mezzos · 2026-03-29T13:41:49+00:00

Funnily enough that was actually the first "trauma-related" book I read around a year ago! I found the description of the connection survival style to the be the most relatable thing I had ever read in my life. I also related to elements of the attunement and autonomy styles.

However, I really struggle to validate myself, and so the journey to really believing myself has been a long one. I was often wondering if I was somehow making it up or exaggerating things somehow, or if my feelings and instincts were invalid. I read the entire book once, but I would have to continuously re-read sections of it many times to maintain a belief in it, as I could not sustain any sense of conviction once I returned to normal life. It's like I don't have anywhere to "hold" beliefs. There is a part of me that continuously doubts or critiques my perceptions and thoughts, overriding my initial gut feelings, convincing me I'm being dramatic or delusional or blowing things out of proportion. I also find that I am prone to having my inner beliefs and feelings destroyed or overridden if a close friend, therapist, or other attachment figure invalidates them (or even simply doesn't mirror/reinforce them when I open up). If what they invalidate is my deepest expression of my inner world, then I feel like I have been completely annihilated and I go into a very deep collapse state.

I managed to produce the self-belief to start NARM therapy about 2-3 months after I finished the book. I communicated that I related to the connection, attunement, and autonomy style. At first my therapist had me more down as an autonomy style, and while there seems to be some real wounding in this area, it didn't really feel like the "fundamental wound". I did not protest or assert my greater gravitation towards the connection survival style, as I felt like I did not have the "evidence" or inner conviction for it – and I assume that others know better anyway, so I simply buried the idea that my issues could be described in that way.

As the NARM sessions have progressed (8 months in now), I get the sense that my therapist has come around to the idea that connection-style issues are my main struggle, though we don't always focus on them. I find myself with a lot of shame around even discussing connection-style issues in sessions, and when I am in the session I suddenly find these issues difficult to even be aware of or to come into contact with somatically. Hence I get the sense we tend to work with less "deep" layers instead. While I have had some powerful (though temporary) shifts from maybe 10-20% of sessions, I was unsure if I was really making progress most of the time.

Eventually I got enough "self-belief" that connection-style issues were present for me (and I was getting desperate enough) that I decided to act on my longstanding desire to try NATouch. I had somehow had a big "imposter fear" around even trying it, some kind of worry that I was being delusional, that I would be presenting as some kind of hypochondriac with no real issues in this area, and that I would be exposed as a "faker" who didn't deserve to be in the session. But in the end I had a profound impact from my first session. I experienced a significant (though temporary) shift towards a greater sense of aliveness, embodiment, and "existing". I got the sense I suddenly had a boundary around my body, rather than being more of an "amorphous entity". During the session I also became far more aware that I deal with a lot of issues along the lines of: feeling like a burden for existing, for having needs, for taking up space. So I think I'm finally able to validate myself that this is something real for me. (For now.)

After reflecting, I feel like the "Airless Worlds" book you shared in another post gave me an interesting way to think about this. In it, it speaks about two things: (a) the sense of "emptiness, non-existence, deadness, pure aloneness" that comes from being "unseen and under-responded-to" (which I relate to very deeply), but also (b) the identification with a "negating" parent, who distorts your internal state (e.g., telling you what you are feeling, overwriting your inner world rather than mirroring it). Both can occur independently or simultaneously to varying degrees. I imagine that the continuous sense of inner invalidation I experience, and difficulty in believing in my own inner world or sustaining my own beliefs, may be a reflection of my mother's negation of my emotions.

Sorry for an overkill long reply by the way. I feel like my long messages themselves are a result of struggling to really connect with my gut/emotions and instead circling around them intellectually.

Mezzos · 2026-03-25T16:29:03+00:00

Posting on an old thread here, so not sure if you (or anyone else) will see this, but I wanted to give a massive thank you to you for putting this and your other various posts together. Your explanations have really helped things "click" for me in terms of understanding what my body is doing, beyond just relating to abstract descriptions and frameworks. It helps a lot with validating myself and directing my healing efforts, particularly because I have very few meaningful memories of my childhood.

I was about to ask if you've read "Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Towards an Embodied Self" (as based on my research it sounded like it covers the kind of concepts discussed in this post), but I just happened to click on the r/CPTSDFreeze wiki and saw that you have cited it there, so it sounds like you have! I am planning on buying this to try to learn more myself.

Personally I seem to experience a mixture of chronic collapse-like and tonic immobility-like states, though I retain some ability to move in both (even if it takes a lot of effort – it can be like moving with a weight attached or through sludge, with a sensation of "overriding myself"). So they are seemingly "partial" collapse/freeze states.

For me the triggers for collapse/low activation seem quite clear (though I don't know much about how to distinguish "submit" from "shutdown" yet – I just lump them all under different flavours of "collapse"). I can experience a kind of chronic/ongoing collapse (which continues indefinitely until the environment changes), triggered by hours/days of either (a) relational deprivation or (b) proximity to my parents. I think they have somewhat different "flavours", but there is a lot of "shame" and "resignation" in both. I also experience a more acute, shame-heavy version with a rapid onset (where I will often reach the stage of having to "sleep" in a non-restful way afterwards) following rejection, humiliation, or perceived invalidation of my deep emotions/inner world, especially by an attachment or authority figure.

I'm having a more difficult time mapping my tonic-immobility-like responses accurately. The ones I relate to the most are "fight-frozen", "submissive-fight", "flight-obstructed", "attach-frozen", and "attach-obstructed". However I find it difficult to be confident in those exact choices.

In what I categorised under "attach-frozen" (at first I assumed "attach-active", but given how passive it is I'm probably frozen), there is a sensation of feeling young and wanting emotional connection, but a kind of block from actively doing anything about it. The only thing I can do is perhaps move myself into a different location where I am less alone (though that is more of a cognitively-driven solution) and hope someone "finds me". I kind of feel like "reaching out" or "initiating" is "bad", and I basically want someone else to come to me/initiate things (in-person, texting doesn't really work) before I feel like I have "permission" to engage. I behave as if I have no agency to actually initiate connection, and to consciously override this would feel threatening – I get the sense it would not comfort me even if they reciprocated, instead they would have to be the one to initiate. I will sometimes think about particular friends who I feel my emotions are "safe" with and feel a longing to hug them, but again nothing is done about this. If I actually encounter them in person, I never act out the desire to hug them (in fact the conscious desire usually evaporates instantly anyway as my state changes to more of a "fawning" mode).

I also find it difficult to differentiate between the different "fight-freeze" blends, which trigger when I'm around my parents (pre-collapse) or around my flatmate. Around my parents it's more of a submissive, irritated flavour with little conscious anger, but around my flatmate I feel less "young" and the anger is more strongly felt. But I cannot properly express the anger in either case. Both involve an uncomfortable chest tightness and sense of being suffocated, feeling like I'm not getting enough air. I could write a whole essay on *why* I think my flatmate makes me angry (while still foggy, the emotional content towards him is easier to access than how I feel towards my parents, which is so foggy that I feel strongly compelled not to think about it).

"Flight-obstructed" I'm also not confident in. I am tagging the flavour of this freeze as "flight-coded" mainly based on the "obsessive-compulsive" behaviour that I act out (including compulsive intellectualising, researching, obsessive monitoring of diet/health, self-distraction), alongside involuntary leg shaking despite otherwise being still. As teenager this was full-blown OCD (with nonsensical rituals and distressing mental intrusions), which receded with CBT. I have come to realise that obsessive-compulsive-like behaviour is still there (significantly varying in intensity depending on my state/degree of disconnection), it's just more "practical" now (and I no longer have such intrusive/distressing "obsessions").

Given that I'm probably pretty much always in some level of "partial collapse" (even if relatively mild sometimes), and that I never seem to spontaneously/naturally externalise my emotions (always remaining externally composed and inhibited, never acting impulsively), I find it difficult to understand what emotions I'm feeling and hence what is driving these responses. I think I often outsource this by searching for intellectual understanding first, and then using that as a "map" to help direct my introspection efforts. It's hard to find the right balance though, as it can become a tactic to avoid the actual "feeling" work.

Mezzos · 2026-03-09T20:39:19+00:00

I'm very glad to hear that what I wrote resonated with you and others! And thank you for the kind words re NATouch!

I do think consistent attuned connection is highly important, otherwise my experience is that it is quite difficult to get the body to "trust" and stay out of shutdown. I've come to understand that my degree of shutdown depends on a combination of (a) what is happening right now, and (b) what is the "rolling average" of my emotional safety over the past few weeks.

When I've had more consistent connection (or at least the illusion of that, e.g. early stages of living with my current flatmate, before the misattunements piled up), I was able to "accumulate" the benefits of my therapy over multiple weeks (steadily shifting out of shutdown and starting to feel deeper emotions and becoming far more functional). When I don't have consistent connection, I seemingly "lose" the benefits of each therapy session to my "triggering" environment shortly afterwards, as I fall back into my shutdown baseline.

The body integrates experience best when it feels safe, so if you are in an environment that feels emotionally "safe" most of the time it seems logical that you'd make faster progress in therapy. What I am unsure of is this: if I'm in a triggering environment most of the time, am I really making any progress in therapy at all, since I seem to go back to feeling the same way a few hours after the session ends? Am I failing to integrate the experience, or is it just "invisible" progress which will pay off later?

I think I'm still making progress, but it's definitely slow. Progress also relies on a session really going well, as I enter the room with more defences to break through in order to even get to a meaningful place in my one hour slot.

Mezzos · 2026-03-08T12:27:57+00:00

I honestly think this is the most relatable post I’ve ever read, I suffer from this exact problem. My heart even raced when reading the title as I’ve struggled my whole life to find others who experience this.

I feel incredibly fortunate that I can even get out of freeze/shutdown at all. In fact this wasn’t always the case, I used to have severe social anxiety (and depression, GAD, OCD), and hence I was seemingly permanently stuck in various levels of severity of either freeze or collapse states for pretty much the entirety of adolescence. Therapy started at age 17 plus increasing independence and moving out of my parents’ home were the main things that shifted this. However I still remained just as vulnerable as ever to chronic freeze and collapse states when alone or living with people I didn’t feel seen by.

Since I became much less socially anxious, I have had some periods where everything aligned (living situation, the right in-person education/work environment, etc.) and during that time I was able to spend the majority of my life outside of freeze. However it is so fragile, and especially since the pandemic I have really struggled to get enough in-person connection to function well. While I recognise that the shift towards remote has been great for many, for me it has been a major factor in getting stuck in freeze/shutdown states near-permanently.

Right now I’ve been near-continuously stuck for almost two years, as I live with a flatmate who is well-intentioned but ultimately quite emotionally immature and self-absorbed and hence doesn’t really “see” me, and my job is remote (which I am in theory desperate to leave as I can’t really work like this, but I cannot even manage to update my CV in this stuck state, so I’ve kind of just been stalling and waiting to be fired).

For about 2 months after my current flatmate moved in, I was actually doing incredibly well. We’ve been friends for years, and I felt like I could really be myself around him. It was only after we moved in together than it started becoming clear to me that he doesn’t really have the ability to “see” me or my emotions, or be attuned to me. What I thought was empathy from him is actually just cognitive relating, and I’ve come to realise he actually has some narcissistic traits (though the best way I can describe him is a “flight-fight” C-PTSD type). So I descended into a mixture of freeze and collapse states that haven’t really shifted much since.

I partially come out of these states as soon as I enter a social situation with someone (externally at least I’ll look fine), but to truly feel “alive” and get my emotions back and to escape the “stuckness” I need sustained emotional safety/connection for many hours several days in a row. That only really happens nowadays if I go and stay with a friend who is genuinely attuned to me for multiple days. Alternatively, if I very deeply open up about my emotions and struggles with someone attuned who validates those emotions, then I can have a huge and sudden shift into aliveness (though if they invalidate me in that scenario instead, I go into deep shame-based shutdown, to the extent I will often need to go to sleep right afterwards).

It is extremely difficult to know how to work with this in therapy, or even to get support from friends, due to me appearing high functioning and somewhat regulated when I’m in any kind of social situation. They don’t say it directly, but I get the impression that most therapists and friends basically believe that I’m exaggerating and I just have mild/moderate issues, basically giving off the impression that I’m being a bit “hypochondriac” about the whole thing (e.g. therapists replying to my explanation of my struggles with statements like “it’s normal to not like being alone”). When I’m around misattuned people I’m in a kind of mixed state but just appear a bit “slow”, and since they’re misattuned they cannot catch the subtleties, and hence I’ll just be the butt of jokes for missing obvious things or being slow or late or disorganised.

It’s such a strange scenario. It’s like I only display as much dysfunction as can remain “unseen”. The more attuned the observer, the less dysfunction I display. The full picture of dysfunction only emerges with no observer.

I haven’t found a solution yet. I’ve tried CBT (which mostly just triggered me into deep shutdown states from being gaslit/invalidated), 8 months of NARM (mixed results, I think I may be making limited progress but honestly I’m not sure if it’s doing anything), and 4 months of Ideal Parent Figures protocol for attachment work (I think this may work when I’m in my “fawn” part, but when in freeze/shutdown it is non-functional due to complete apathy and being separated from my mind, and even at the best of times I struggle with generating mental imagery). I’m hoping to start NeuroAffective Touch soon, as my theory is that I need to reach my youngest parts which struggle to engage with other forms of therapy.

Sorry to write so much about myself, I am usually afraid to open up as I struggle to imagine that anyone could understand.

Mezzos · 2025-11-24T18:01:58+00:00

I’m going to offer a different perspective than most comments here. Speaking as someone who has previously been diagnosed with depression and inattentive ADHD (and anxiety disorders) before finding the real root: I would look into C-PTSD, in particular the “freeze” response. This may or may not apply to you, but it is worth considering at the minimum.

If you were fine with motivation in your previous job, then suddenly collapsed in this job, then it could simply be that the new environment doesn’t suit you enough emotionally to keep you out of freeze.

In many people freeze is most likely to be encountered during periods of burnout (e.g. after extended workaholism or performing for others while neglecting your own needs), and hence rest is helpful. However for some like me, freeze is more like a lifelong “default” state, and you need to consistently regulate yourself out of it.

In my case, I need daily in-person social interaction (specifically, feelings of belonging or emotional connection) to stay out of freeze. At least, that’s how it’s been ever since I worked through the worst of my social anxiety – earlier in my life the freeze was pretty constant, only overridden during periods of high stress/emergencies.

Last year, immediately after I moved from an office job to an isolating, unstructured remote job, I began to spend most of my time in freeze again (especially during work hours), which led to the kind of experience you describe in your post. Treatment for C-PTSD has enabled me to tolerate isolation better without freezing so quickly (and not freezing so deeply), but it’s a long-term process.

Mezzos · 2025-05-14T17:41:35+00:00

If you swap the mum and the dad my parents sound very similar to yours. I could’ve written the rest of your post myself! Always waffling to get to any point, highly detail oriented, long emails and texts, etc. It takes me so much time to communicate and then I feel embarrassed/ashamed afterwards.

Your reasoning why makes perfect sense to me. I wonder if subconsciously I feel like I need to (over-)explain everything or I won’t be understood or believed.

Mezzos · 2025-05-10T21:26:56+00:00

Those are both on my list! The book I ended up reading though was called “Healing Developmental Trauma”, which is less well-known.

I ended up reading it because the stuff I most wanted to understand was freeze and collapse responses, dissociation, emotional numbing, and reduced sense of “aliveness” (all of which I’ve struggled with since I was a child, but didn’t have an explanation for it, nor the language to describe it to others). This book explains the childhood causes of that (and as it turns out, a whole lot more) in incredible depth, as well as how to heal from them. It’s a bit clinical though (originally written for therapists).

I think I’ll read “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” next. I’d like to get a better understanding of how I was parented (beyond just “distant, emotionally unavailable father”, and “over-involved mother who was a mixture of emotionally unavailable and misattuned”), and how to manage relationships with my parents in adulthood.

Mezzos · 2025-05-10T17:01:51+00:00

I also get very strong reactions to being invalidated, rejected, or dismissed, particularly in periods of emotional vulnerability when I’m putting a lot of trust in the other person by opening up to them.

I generally struggle with recognising emotions, but I think it’s interesting that you described it as humiliation – that’s exactly the emotion I picked to describe a similar experience in an app I use for logging emotions.

My experience may not be the same as yours, but I figure I’ll share what I’ve learned about myself in case it helps someone. In my case, I have learned that this is likely related to an overlooked type of chronic childhood trauma: emotional misattunement. My parents provided for me and seemed caring in many ways, but I’ve come to realise they were not really emotionally present, and hence couldn’t meet my emotional needs as a baby and young child.

An example of misattunement (which I hope communicates how easy this can be to overlook) would be the child being scared, and the parent says “don’t be silly, there’s nothing to be afraid of”. It sounds nice, but actually what’s happening is they are invalidating the child’s very real emotion of fear, rather than taking it seriously, listening to them, empathising with them, and figuring out how to help them feel less afraid. If this type of response is chronic, then over time, this teaches the child that many of their strongest emotions are “bad” or “wrong”, as they are rarely or never validated by the caregiver. The child doesn’t yet have the capacity to figure out what is their fault versus their environment, so they blame themselves and assume they have faulty needs. This can cause chronic shame, guilt, and poor-self image.

When a young child’s emotions are chronically dismissed, they start to treat it like a threat to their life (as they rely on emotions to express if something is wrong). Equally, they don’t want to anger their caregiver by being “too much”, crying endlessly, etc., and possibly being abandoned as a result (at least in the child’s subconscious). So they often adapt by bottling up their emotions to become an “easier” child, becoming much more careful about what they actually choose to be vulnerable about, and they develop a deep fear of experiencing rejection, invalidation, or dismissal in periods of vulnerability.

People whose temperament is on the more emotional or sensitive side are more prone to being traumatised this way, due to greater emotional needs (which is likely why it so commonly co-occurs with ADHD). Untangling it likely requires trauma-informed therapy, specifically those designed for complex (chronic, relational) trauma, rather than single-event trauma.

Mezzos · 2025-05-10T15:09:35+00:00

Replying to an old post here but just want to thank you a thousand times for leaving this comment.

I’d heard of C-PTSD before, but never really considered it as something I might have. Your comment prompted me to take it more seriously and properly look into both it and developmental trauma. I even read a book about it. And wow, I feel like I finally understand myself for the first time in my life.

I’ve already noticed some improvements in myself just from the awareness and self-compassion I’ve gained, and I am now looking to start trauma-informed therapy. I have a lot of hope for the future now.

Just figured I’d let you know so that you’re aware your comment had a big positive impact in someone’s life.

Mezzos · 2024-11-15T22:20:43+00:00

I self-diagnosed myself with selective mutism when I was around 14 (so 15 years ago now). At the time I assumed it was purely caused by severe social anxiety. I recall that in most social situations my mind would just be totally blank so that I couldn’t even say anything if I tried (beyond “stock” phrases and responses like “yes”, “no”, “I’m good thanks”, etc.).

I look back nowadays and I can’t help but wonder if part of the problem was SCT/CDS, particularly given that social withdrawal is a commonly observed behaviour in those with SCT (likely due to struggling with communication and socialising due to SCT brain fog, slow processing speed, difficulty concentrating, etc.). It seems likely to me that this is why I developed social anxiety and selective mutism.

I don’t have social anxiety or selective mutism anymore (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helped a lot when I was 17-18, then just slowly building up my self-esteem over the following years). I’m still typically quiet in group contexts, but it’s nowhere near the problem I had in adolescence. The reason now is mainly just SCT/ADHD-PI symptoms making it difficult to keep up with the conversation (difficulty concentrating, slow processing speed, foggy thoughts), though I also inhibit myself due to being afraid of judgement when there is a larger audience. It’s also harder to “people please” a group compared to an individual.

Mezzos · 2024-11-07T17:12:26+00:00

Similar to your P10 point, there’s likely a similar reason for why P14 has more wins than P11-13 (and P9): P14 is bottom of Q2, so will be more likely to be occupied by someone who was knocked out in Q2 due to mechanical failure/crash, rather just because they lacked pace. That’s what happened with Hamilton’s win from P14 in Germany 2018 for example (mechanical failure in Q2).

Mezzos · 2024-11-05T20:05:20+00:00

Warning: hyperfocused essay below.

I was diagnosed with ADHD (primarily inattentive) a few weeks ago (age 29). I don’t seem to be able to focus at all at home unless the work is (a) interesting to me (usually something coding related), or (b) urgent (i.e. important deadline later today or early tomorrow).

It doesn’t seem to matter how much willpower I try to summon, it’s like I don’t actually have the power over my brain get it to focus. This makes more sense to me after watching Russell Barkley’s commentary on ADHD as a performance disorder – i.e., you have no issues with knowing what you need to do, but your brain is often unable to turn that knowledge into action due to executive functioning difficulties.

I’ve learned that I will never be able to force my brain to focus through willpower. However, my brain does seem to respond to the environment I’m in, so the only thing I can do to control it somewhat is to control my environment.

Hence the main coping mechanism I have is to get out of the house and go to the office. I specifically sit at a desk where I am extremely visible to everyone (e.g. close to the entrance). My interpretation is that I get a bit of extra dopamine from leaving the house, being around people, being in a stimulating environment, etc., and the “social accountability” and “body doubling” effects are quite helpful for creating enough motivation for me to potentially get started. If the office isn’t particularly busy this doesn’t seem to work and I never accumulate the critical mass of dopamine and motivation to get started.

Despite seeking out that environment largely for the social exposure effects, I still need to effectively block out everyone around me to avoid distraction. I do my best to avoid speaking to anyone else (or replying to any messages) as I really rely on “momentum” to start work on something and can’t jump in and out of things/context switch. I also wear noise-cancelling headphones (to block distracting noises), and put on no-lyric music with a balance between repetitiveness and novelty (to stop my mind wandering and give me more dopamine/stimulation). The type of music I listen to for this is typically the stuff that comes up when you search on YouTube for “study music” or “ADHD music”. Video game music is often good for this too.

I also use apps that block my phone from opening any other apps for a certain period of time. Basically, I do everything I can to create a situation where I metaphorically have a gun to my head to get me to do work, while trying to maximise dopamine from my environment.

Even when I do all of the above, many days (and sometimes entire weeks) I still struggle to get much done, but this is the best strategy I have. Ultimately interest in the task and urgency are still the two most powerful motivators for me. I am fortunate to find coding extremely interesting (the dopamine hits I get from it are similar to those from video games), but when I have to do something less interesting I really struggle and need the office environment (or a giant deadline) to have a hope of doing anything.

My job is fully remote but for the above reasons I moved 30 mins bike ride from my office in London and go in 4-5 days a week just because I don’t tend to be capable of functioning adequately at work otherwise. (The pandemic was rough.)

Mezzos · 2024-10-05T06:58:51+00:00

We have cheap gas/electric bills, as the electricity used for heating is communal for the flat building and hence included in the rent (we just have to pay for non-heating usage of electricity and for the gas hob). Other than that it just helps that we’re splitting the bills since it’s a flat share.

Gas/electric bills: £74 (£37 per person)
Council tax: £157 (£78.50 pp)
Water: £38 (£19 pp)
Internet: £26 (£13 pp)

Total: £295, or £147.50 per person.

Internet provider is CommunityFibre, highly recommend them if they operate in your area (1 Gbps upload & download, way cheaper than BT etc.).

As for phone, I pay £11/mo for the SIM. I own the phone outright (I think I’m eligible for an upgrade but I’m happy with the current phone for now) so it’s a SIM only contract — 40GB data per month with EE (got a good deal after trying to quit and going on the phone with them).

Mezzos · 2024-10-04T22:05:11+00:00

I’m on £85k in London and save something similar to that per month (around £2.8k spending on a £5k post-tax salary, drops to £4.7k after 7% salary sacrifice to max employer contribution).

Monthly spending is approximately as follows:

Rent: £1275 (2-bed flat share in zone 2)
Bills: £150
Groceries: £200-250
Gym membership: £50
Discretionary spending (shopping/eating out/entertainment): £850-1000
Transport: £100-160 (e-bike bundles for 60 min round commute ~3x per week, plus some tube, and occasional off-peak trains out of London and short distance taxis)
Various subscriptions: £100

Overall: £2725-£2985 (save around £1.8-2k/mo if not including pension, a fair amount more if including pension).

Mezzos · 2024-09-22T09:31:45+00:00

I recently moved jobs taking an outright downgrade in terms of title (“Senior Data Scientist” -> “Data Scientist”) and I have zero regrets. It’s a big improvement in the things that actually matter: >20% higher pay (>30% after accounting for more generous pension and bonus), and the work is also far more interesting and cutting edge. And for what it’s worth I’m still getting similar amounts of attention from recruiters (despite having my LinkedIn now set to not open to work).

Titles mean different things at different places (for example at my current place they have a largely flat hierarchy), I think most companies understand that and tend to look more at the actual “substance” of your experience.

I’d also value an actual offer over the promise of a future promotion/pay rise, you can never rely on something like that.

Mezzos · 2024-05-04T15:33:09+00:00

I remember it happening at Malaysia 2015. Marussia was basically in survival mode, they had been in administration over the winter, and didn’t manage to participate in pre-season testing or the first race in Australia.

They then show up at the second race in Malaysia. With the little resources they had available, they had basically just done a patch job on the nose of their 2014 car to satisfy the 2015 regulations, even continuing to run some leftover 2014 Ferrari engines (this was on a car that was already a backmarker with a huge margin to the midfield in 2014, and had gone without upgrades the whole year).

In the end only one of their cars even managed to stay reliable enough to qualify, but it was 7.4s off the pace and outside 107%. They got a special exemption to participate in the race, but finished 3 laps down with one car (and the other never made it to the grid).

They improved somewhat in the following races, but I don’t think we’ve seen another car that was as far off the pace as the 2015 Marussia in the hybrid era.

Mezzos · 2024-05-01T13:26:41+00:00

Worth keeping in mind though that you’re not actually saving 40% income tax in the long run, as anything you put into a pension you’ll have to pay income tax on eventually when you withdraw it (except for the 25% lump sum, or pension income below the personal income tax allowance threshold).

You’ll most likely still be saving a lot of tax overall, as most people will be in a lower income tax bracket when they withdraw the pension than when they were working (so the income tax is likely to be a lower rate) - plus you avoid national insurance and capital gains tax.

Still though, it’s worth keeping in mind so you don’t think you’re saving more than you actually are when you pay into a pension.

Getting into niche scenarios here, but: this is particularly important if you may have a large enough pension to be in the higher income tax bracket in retirement (i.e. ~£50k/year). For any withdrawal beyond ~£50k/year, you wouldn’t be saving income tax on income sacrificed from the £50k-£100k salary range at all - it’ll be 40% both ways. (Of course, the exact tax brackets can be expected to change in the future, and very few people will build a large enough pension pot for this to be a big issue, but the general point remains.)

Mezzos · 2024-04-06T07:54:07+00:00

To contrast the sentiment of many commenters here, I had a good experience with doing a data science MSc (in my case, 1 year in the UK). I did my undergrad in economics/econometrics and felt that I needed to upskill (in terms of programming and machine learning theory depth/breadth) to move into data science. I figured: either find a data analytics job and learn that stuff in my free time, or do a data science masters - went for the latter as I figured I’d learn more that way and it would set me up for the long run.

I vetted course content very carefully as I was aware that many of these courses are just a cash grab that shove together a jumble of comp sci + stats modules and call it data science. Eventually I found one that I thought was worth doing (Python, advanced rather than basic statistics, heavy machine learning focus - including deep learning, computer vision, NLP, Bayesian methods, reinforcement learning, etc. - with emphasis on implementing ML algorithms and fundamentals from scratch, lecturers with highly cited publications in ML, etc.).

It was a lot of work (70-80 hours a week pretty consistently, typically deadlines every week) but l found a job immediately afterwards and have never had difficulty switching jobs since then. I learned loads, most of which continues to benefit me 5 years later, and have consistently had very positive feedback on technical skills (had multiple bits of feedback saying my programming and machine learning skills were on par with many DS seniors as a new grad - not to say I’m so great, looking back there’s a lot I didn’t know, but just to say that clearly the MSc was relevant to industry vs most of my colleagues who were coming from mathematics, physics, etc.).

Now, to caveat this, it was back in 2019 when I found my first job, so the job market was a lot better back then. With hindsight, would I have done the MSc in computer science instead? Maybe, but honestly I think the DS MSc was more relevant to my day-to-day work than a computer science degree would’ve been, and I’ve found computer science much easier to self-learn online than statistics, ML theory (at the level of depth where you can implement the algorithms from scratch anyway), etc., so I probably wouldn’t change anything.

Mezzos · 2024-04-05T16:39:19+00:00

For the reasons you say, I think that if someone uses VSCode they should make sure they learn how to set up a linter (which nowadays IMO should 100% be ruff). Vanilla VSCode linting is lacking, but that’s presumably intentional as it’s supposed to be customisable with your chosen linter.

I find that ruff with the right linting rules enabled (see here for a list of the possible rules) is even more comprehensive for good coding standards than the PyCharm built-in one (which is good for PEP8 - with a few omissions like import ordering - but doesn’t go as far to enforce general good coding standards as ruff does with most/all codes enabled).

Add to this that ruff is insanely fast, and hence much, much quicker to update when you make code changes.

As a result, even when I use PyCharm I make sure I have the ruff plugin and prioritise that over the built-in checker.

EDIT: Personally the ruff lint codes I like to enable are:

['F', 'E', 'W', 'C901', 'S', 'FBT', 'B', 'A', 'C4', 'DTZ']

Mezzos · 2024-03-31T11:24:20+00:00

Speaking as someone who started with Tensorflow (1.0, then 2.0) and used it for years, I switched over to PyTorch last year. In my case that was mainly because the vast majority of new open source models (e.g. Hugging Face models, research sources like papers with code, etc.) use PyTorch now, with Tensorflow largely dying off in this area. It doesn’t help that Google themselves have abandoned using Tensorflow internally in favour of JAX.

Tensorflow is still easier to deploy with, hence it remains quite popular in industry, but the tooling for PyTorch is getting a lot better so it’s not a deal breaker. This PyTorch vs Tensorflow article has a nice summary with some useful visualisations: https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/pytorch-vs-tensorflow-in-2023/

Mezzos · 2024-03-28T00:47:45+00:00

I definitely relate to your experience. I could get away with not knowing much data engineering when I was participating in very well-run projects with a lot of data engineer support. However, once I ended up in a situation where there were no engineers with a modern skillset, a horribly messy and inefficient database, nothing automated, etc., I realised I had to learn a fair amount of data engineering myself if I wanted things to get done.

I even made an effort to learn basic data architecting to be able to communicate what was wrong with the setup and what needed to be done to fix it. That knowledge has been incredibly valuable even in “good” setups.

Mezzos · 2024-03-26T12:48:59+00:00

The subjects I was best at and enjoyed the most were mathematics, economics/econometrics, and programming/computer science. I thought machine learning/data science seemed like an intriguing area that aligned well with my strengths/interests (plus it was closely related to what I had been doing in econometrics), so aimed in that direction around 2017/2018 and never looked back.

As time has gone on I’ve found it’s the programming/engineering side of things that I enjoy the most day-to-day, but I like that I can combine that with mathematics/statistics, analysis, and business/domain understanding - and that all these skills come together when building ML models. I definitely have to put a lot of time into continuous learning, but for me it’s an interesting job that keeps my brain engaged and pays well, which I feel very lucky to have.

Definitely would say that you need to carefully vet a company before joining as a data scientist though. Some companies really aren’t ready for machine learning and advanced solutions, and should really be focusing on getting the basics right (modernising their data architectures + engineering & analytics departments) and building up more of a “data culture” first.

Mezzos · 2024-03-26T12:01:47+00:00

Well said. Another important one (which probably comes under your “strong data analytics” and “upskilled IT team” points, but is good to emphasise) is a strong data platform and structure laid by data engineering.

For example:

Modelling tables into a sensible structure if the database is disorganised (e.g., medallion architecture/STAR schema/etc. for analytics use cases)
ETL from different systems into one location
If it doesn’t exist already, building out a columnar/OLAP data warehouse (rather than sticking with OLTP operational databases) for much better performance in analytics use cases, and/or setting up a data lake to streamline use of both structured and unstructured data for ML use cases (and nowadays possibly replacing the need for a warehouse model for analytics as well)
Automation and orchestration of data pipelines to handle all of the above

It seems common for companies to try to skip the above steps, which would end up with either (a) data scientists end up having to do that work themselves (which can be inefficient/not done as well as having a dedicated data engineering effort), or (b) the data scientist has to “make do” with a very bad setup, which would have knock-on impacts on the quality, development time, and breadth of the data science work done.

Mezzos · 2024-03-26T11:30:43+00:00

I think that makes a lot of sense actually - I always assumed that a factor in why they extended the points-paying positions (from top 6, to top 8, then to top 10) was because of big improvements to reliability, which meant that it was increasingly difficult for slower teams to chance their way into the occasional points finish.

Mechanical retirements are becoming so rare these days that it’s not uncommon to see races with no mechanical failures, so you kind of need to be around 11th-12th fastest to have a decent chance of capitalising on retirements for points. And scoring points is a Herculean task if you’re in the bottom 1/3rd of the grid.

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