The Concept of Acceptance

Acceptance of the pain as an illness is a very important concept. There are actually scales that measure a person’s degree of acceptance. The road to acceptance of a chronic illness can be littered with many wrong turns along the way, searches for instant cures.  In the end, when people have accepted that they have a chronic illness, when they know the situation is bad but they don’t have to give up and suffer, they can accept that the pain is chronic; there is no cure and it needs to be managed. This relieves a lot of inner angst, where patients feel driven to find a cure. So we do promote acceptance. Acceptance does not mean resignation; people need to realize that much can be done about the headaches.