To lift myself out of darkness I had to deal with the life that I had. My body was a prison, and my mind a prisoner who had memorized a schedule of submissions to avoid the electrified bars. I could sense my body’s dimensions in the points of pain that decorated my limbs and torso like chains of stretched glass encompassing countless minuscule cracks and burns. To move was to transform one coordinate system of ordeal to another. The devil I knew – the places I wished I could not feel and the restlessness I knew was only a tease – was always less frightening than the future’s unknown. And besides, the only true relief I had learned (for so long) was that of relenting to the invariable, yielding to the posture of least force and negligible aspiration.
Across the unrelenting passage of the nights, I taught myself small games to distract me from my prison: strange postures and flexes, and memories revisited in a form familiar to old storytellers. But the morning would always insist upon its arrival, with a fanfare of mordant light and animated sounds.
I recognized the early bird calls as sounds of dread and promised torment. The day was unavoidable, and it held no expectations of respite. It demanded to be filled, and it was impossible to cross in the same lethargic and prone posture that had carried me through the night. Perhaps, I would hope, by the next night I would be so exhausted as to collapse into the respite of a death-like sleep.
The temporal axis of pain
A thesis on pain needs to be written, explaining that pain is like colours, infinitely divisible, categorizable, and combinable into textures and forms and landscapes. – This shall have to wait for another day.
But aside from all that complexity, pain is also variegated by its relation to time. Pain can stretch away from the present, or dissociate itself completely. It is possible to ache for a pain already experienced and remembered and traumatized, and similarly to ache for a pain expected and feared for the future. It is possible to extend a present pain along the tail of its past, mourning how far it has already extended. And similarly, it is possible to cast the shadow of a present pain forward, until nothing can be seen ahead but darkness.
The dread of pain’s prognostications demand retreat. There is too much pain promised down this path, I must avoid it. It becomes impossible to do anything except through forceful expectations and necessities, or the occasional minor achievement of momentum. Some activities defy the dread because of a greater fear, or obligation (than avoiding pain), or because the mindless mind achieves momentum as it becomes distracted by itself and its quagmire of desires.
Algorithms for escaping the future
I created for myself algorithms for actions. I did not plan to do so, but these resulted as I lay awake with a notebook and a pen and an obsessive desire for things to be better. I identified the problem in different ways: lack of momentum, “too much pain, fear, can’t do anything, don’t want to do anything”. And I studied the manifestation of this problem in my experiential life. 
I noticed what happened as soon as an action-desire thought flitted across my mind’s sky; it would be overcast by a dominating cloud of fear.
I developed a better understanding of the problem; every time I considered doing something I would start to think of reasons not to do it, and then get caught in a loop of fear and depression. And if the original choice was reconsidered, then immediately it would be hidden, like a ray of light by expansive and oppressive dark clouds.
This self-study exposed the fear as out of proportion to the pain that could possibly be experienced. What’s more, any pain that I did experience as a result of the action would be over soon enough, never to return, and without any negative impact on the rest my day or night. It was not as if I was afraid of injury; I was afraid of the ambiguous promise of greater suffering, and its insistence that I could not do this, I was too weak. This belief that I was too weak was integral to the mind’s auto-hypnosis – that it could not deal with the ordeal of action. And so I targeted this belief.
I practised an algorithm that overcame my fear of being too sickly and poor to complete the action. In its generic form, my first algorithm for dealing with my paralyzing fear of action, pain, and weakness was this:
protocol Goal_is_too_hard:
1. Identify the first sub-goal needed
2. Notice that sub-goal is easy
3. Complete sub-goal
4. Loop back to identify next sub-goal
Common goals that I needed to perform related to self-care (e.g. shower, food), chores (e.g. laundry), or care for others (incl. animals). The only things that I needed to do was notice that I wanted to do something, and then notice that I wasn’t doing it. Then I could call upon this technique.
The first step was (1) to identify the first next-thing that I would need to do if I wanted to achieve my goal. Often I would be lying in bed and nearly always I would need to be out of bed to complete my goal. Thus my first sub-goal was virtually always to sit up on the side of the bed. As a first step this became familiar and ritualized. Sitting on the side of the bed became recognized as a precursor to previous and future actions, and this too made progress easier with time.
In the early days, when there was strong resistance even to sitting up, I would need to make an accounting of just how possible the action was. This was the second step (2), namely realizing that I can do it, and that it is all I have to do right now. This meant removing all expectations of the future, and often reminding myself that if it really was too bad then I could abort, and return to my bed.
The amount of time I sat on the side of the bed debating further action varied, but in the end somehow I overcame myself and (3) did what I knew possible.
The first sub-goals, often actions like getting up from my bed, or walking to another room, were often the hardest, but once I established momentum, it became easier and easier to repeat this process (4) identifying the next and next sub-goals and focusing on just how easy they were without any expectations for the future.
Algorithm for escaping the fear
Sometimes I could quickly move from noticing the sub-goal (and how easy it was) to its completion, but sometimes this involved an internal battle. The sub-goal was virtually the next smallest action that I could complete to achieve my goal, and it was unreasonable for it to elicit paralyzing fear. Yet it still often would.
The goal of the first algorithm was to focus on actions that I knew I could perform to trick myself into completing larger goals that overwhelmed my fear circuit. But there was a major vulnerability. It worked well for very fixed and discrete task, like going to get a specific item from another room. But it began to break down as soon as choices needed to be made during the operation. Some choices were qualitative choices (e.g. should I heat up a meal or cook something), and some were quantitative (e.g. how well should I do this).
My trained, prisoner mind’s instinct was to always choose the route that most resembled escape. And the experience of grappling with choice would always increase my anxiety, despondency, and sap my will.
Thus I added some new protocols:
protocol Goal_is_too_hard:
1. Identify the first sub-goal needed #e.g. stand up
2. While noticing sub-goal is easy:
2-a Stop focusing on the pain
2-b Focus on the action
3. Complete sub-goal
4. Loop back to identify next sub-goal
Self-observation revealed that noticing the ease of what I wanted to do, could involve an oscillation between (a) remembering that it will be terrible and I can’t do anything, and (b) remembering that it is in fact easy and viable. Thus what I needed to do was (a) every time I caught my mind snared in fear, (b) simply, but firmly and without negotiation start (and continue) to think about the action. It was amazing to observe just how tenacious my mental habits had become, and how quickly and subtly the mind would return to its obsession with fear.
In performing this protocol I was practicing both (i) returning from negative to positive thoughts, and (ii) acting upon positive thoughts. And over time strengthening both capacities too.
Algorithm for escaping repetition
These strategies (or algorithms or SOPs) involve a return to the present moment and an awareness of its contents. This expanded my self-awareness during my internal battles for action. Doing so revealed many of the mechanisms and maneuvers my mind automatically employed when faced with the choice of action (in the face of expected pain). A major motif was anything that took my mind away from action and towards pain, since once I was thinking about pain (broadly defined as all those reasons that I should not act).
It could happen like this: “I should wash myself. Everything hurts. No, but I can sit up. Sit up. Everything hurts. No, I can go to the door. Everything hurts and the rest of the day is going to be horrible and there must be some way that I can do this without pain maybe I should be doing something different or is it because of some particular mistake that I made earlier which I should work out how to avoid…”
Something about a pattern of thoughts which have been repeated often enough, and which serve a purpose (namely avoidance), makes them like a tipping point. Once I’d tipped over into them it could be very hard to notice that I was anywhere else. And just because I’d just noticed that I’d tipped over into those thoughts, and moved away from them, did not mean I wouldn’t tip over again immediately.
Thus I expanded:
(i) If focused on pain:
(ii) Stop
(iii) Recorded_mistake = result of the obsession #i.e. nothing, pointless, circular
(iv) Don't repeat recorded_mistake #intention
What I needed to notice (over and over and over again) was that my mind would begin these games with the promise of resolution – as if something new was going to be worked out, or resolved, or considered afresh. This was virtually never true. Instead, the avoidance thoughts would loop pointless, never leading anywhere constructive. I needed to (iii) notice that these patterns of thought were invariably pointless, circular, and resulted in nothing, and (iv) tell myself not to repeat the same pointless, circular cycles, if it should start again. Seeing this (over and over and over again) helped me notice quicker and sooner, and also be more determined in cutting them off – not listening to their ambiguous promises of alternatives and substitutions.
There was a confidence I needed to develop in order to stop negotiating with my mind, and simply and swiftly move from attending to fear and towards attending to action.
Moving towards movement
All together it combines to this:
protocol moving_towards_movement:
1. Sub_goal = easy sub-goal immediately relevant
2. While noticing sub_goal is easy:
.a If focused on pain:
..i Stop
..ii Recorded_mistake = result of the obsession
..iii Don't repeat recorded_mistake
.b Focus on the action
3. Complete sub_goal
4. Loop until goal complete
Or again:
How to get things done despite fear and pain:
1. Find the smallest, easy task that is the first/next thing to do
2. Notice that this is easy and without true negative consequences
.a If I start obsessing over the pain or fears:
..i Notice the train of my thoughts and stop them
..ii Note pointless and circular nature
..iii Learn to recognize these thoughts
.b Thing about the easy task and how easy it is
3. Do the easy task
4. Move onto the next easy task leading to my goal
It wasn’t easy. But it helped me build momentum. It helped me become self-aware of the procedures to which my mind had become habituated. And it helped me achieve my goals, no matter how minor or irrelevant they seemed in the face of the world’s grandeur and wealth of opportunities. These were all necessary for getting to today.
