From pain to sensation
The next big transformation in Niek’s life started three years ago. Until then, he sometimes took up to forty pills a day of medication, including morphine. “And that’s great because you’re in pain and then you swallow that and after ten minutes your pain is gone. But at a high price.” First of all, it takes a number of years off your life – and they felt extra valuable to Niek once he and Kim had children. In addition, it is very addictive. “You’re constantly figuring out when to take the next pill. And it’s sedating, so you’re never quite there.”
Enough reasons to reduce it, but the pain remained. “Very slowly, little by little, I started looking for another way to deal with it. I started working with a social psychological therapist in the field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). “
First, he learned to distinguish between pain and sensation. “There’s always a sensation. Now too. It’s like a light current is running through my hands and arms. It’s not, there’s nothing wrong with my hands and arms, the sensation plays out in my brain. But if I do have pain, like this morning for example, because I had a bad night, then some kind of lightning bolts shoot through my hands and neck, and they shoot upwards.”
The formula for suffering
And then he had to find the balance between acceptance and fighting. “There’s that famous saying: accept what you can’t change, and change what you can’t accept. I’ve had to learn that that first step is the most important. Accepting what’s there without wanting to fix it. I’m going to be in pain for a while. Look, when we humans experience pain, we only want one thing and that’s to get away from it. Then we’re going to make jokes or play sports very hard or drink a bottle of wine or buy a new car. You distance yourself from what you think you can’t bear it.”
But that doesn’t make the pain go away. “There is a very nice formula: pain x resistance = suffering. If you remove the resistance to the discomfort, then the suffering disappears. That is such a beautiful thing. What we often do is fight, move away from the pain. But then the resistance. As long as you don’t take it away, the pain will always come back and with it the suffering. What I’ve learned to do on those nights when I experience incredible pain is to stay with it. Not wanting to solve anything, no distraction search, face what is there in silence. I do breathing exercises, go to the place in my body where I can deal with my pain.”
