For Tørnquist, a well-known Norwegian comedian and TV host who loves to travel, it all began with a strong desire to visit North Korea.

One way to enter this closed-off country is by taking part in an annual marathon. But while training for the half marathon, one of his knees began acting up.

“I made it to North Korea and completed the race, but it hurt really, really bad during the run,” Tørnquist says.

That small training injury marked the beginning of a nightmare of pain that eventually nearly took over his entire life.

Couldn't play with his children

The rehabilitation programme that was supposed to fix his knee led to pain in his Achilles tendons. The exercises for his Achilles tendons then caused pain in his thighs.

“Nothing I tried to fix made me better. Everything just led to a new injury. It just got worse and worse. In the end, I was in pain all the time,” he says, adding:

“I couldn't play with my children, couldn't lift them, couldn't do normal things. My whole life revolved around looking for an explanation for the pain. I received new treatments and new diagnoses. Nothing helped.”

One day, after his wife told him she no longer recognised him, they went to his GP together.

There, Tørnquist received yet another new diagnosis: depression. He was put on an urgent waiting list for psychological treatment.

Watched a TV show

Shortly before this, Tørnquist had watched the VGTV documentary Harald og sytepavene (Harald and the Whiners), created by fellow comedian and TV host Harald Eia.

The series followed six patients with long-term chronic pain who were treated by psychologist Silje Endresen Reme and pain specialist Andreas Pahle.

The therapy they used is called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT).

Some experts believe this therapy has enormous potential. Others argue that its methods are already well known and produce fairly modest effects. Read more about the debate in this article: Is it really a miracle cure?

Helps the brain interpret signals

Instead of waiting for treatment for depression, Tørnquist decided to try this therapy first. He was referred to a psychologist who works in private practice.

At the first appointment, psychologist Jonas Sharma-Bakkevig began by assessing his pain.

The symptoms indicated that he had nociplastic pain.

This means that the nervous system can become more sensitive to signals from the body. As a result, the body may feel injured or ill even when no actual injury or disease is present.

Sharma-Bakkevig explains it like this:

“The treatment is about helping the brain interpret the body's signals less as danger and more as safety. The goal is not to say that the pain is ‘all in your head,’ but to understand how the brain influences bodily experiences and how the pain system can be calmed down.”

Made a strong impression

At the end of the session, the psychologist told him that the goal of the treatment was for Tørnquist to become completely pain-free and that it should happen quickly.

“That made a huge impression on me. Every other therapist had told me that pain was something I had to learn to live with,” Tørnquist says.

He was also given homework: read and told to listen to a podcast about it before returning.

After the appointment, Tørnquist walked home. He hadn't done that in a long time.

Later that day, he picked up his son from daycare, and when he got home, he lifted him into his arms.

“It was a very powerful moment, because I hadn't done that in a long time either,” he says.

The evening before his next appointment, Tørnquist decided to go for a jog. It had also been a long time since he had done that.

“I ended up running a whole ten kilometres without feeling any pain. I just kept running and running and felt almost euphoric,” he says.

Not the same for everyone

By then, Tørnquist had experienced more or less constant pain for seven years. But when he met with the therapist the next day, they agreed he didn't need any further treatment.

Sharma-Bakkevig notes that this is not how it goes for every patient.

“Some people improve dramatically. Some improve gradually. Some improve partially, and some experience little benefit. There is no miracle treatment, and we still have a lot to learn about who responds best and why,” he says.

Even so, he believes many people can achieve significant improvements, especially when their symptoms are largely driven by an oversensitised alarm system.

“But it requires work, motivation, and individual adaptation,” he says.

At the same time, the psychologist stresses the importance of careful assessment.

“For some people, physical illness, trauma, or other mental health problems also play an important role. In those cases, treatment often needs to be combined with other approaches,” he says.

Home exercises are important

Tørnquist felt completely healthy for a long time, but this winter he suffered a strain injury that caused the pain to return.

“Then I used the method I had learned. It involves locating the pain and describing it as precisely as possible,” he explains.

The then pain changed character.

"It first moved outside the original pain field, before it disappeared. That convinced me that it's my brain that's creating the pain," he says.

Like a personal trainer

PRT is built around several core principles, but the treatment still has to be tailored to each individual, Sharma-Bakkevig explains.

“It's a bit like physiotherapy. Some people need more strength training, others need more mobility work, even though the goal is the same. For some patients, we also need to work with emotional burdens or trauma that may affect the nervous system's alarm sensitivity,” he says.

Teaching patients techniques they can practice at home is an important part of the treatment, he adds.

“I tend to say that I'm a bit like a personal trainer. Much of the benefit comes from what the patient practices between sessions. At first, we do much of the adjustment in the therapy room. After that, patients do the same work at home: attention exercises, working with expectations, gradual exposure, and safely returning to normal activities,” he says.

Thinking differently about diagnoses

Einar Tørnquist has received many diagnoses. In retrospect, he thinks about them differently now.

“While I was in pain, I had a lot of trust in the professionals who diagnosed me. They were the ones I trusted most. Now I think that professionals who don't find anything are perhaps the ones you should listen to the most,” he says.

But he fully understands why people with chronic pain want a diagnosis.

“It provides an explanation for the pain. And an explanation and a treatment can in themselves also have an effect,” he says.

———

Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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