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Chronic headaches can have a major impact on your life. And it takes quite a bit to go from being frustrated to accepting your headaches. It is a process in which you learn to deal with chronic pain by making emotional and mental adjustments. This process often starts with frustration, anger or sadness about the impact that chronic headaches have on your life. Acceptance is being able to acknowledge that the pain is a part of you, without it defining you as a person.

In this blog I want to go through the steps of this process with you, so that you too can reach the point of acceptance.

Frustration, anger and sadness.

Frustration, anger and sadness are very natural reactions when you are dealing with chronic headaches. You may even deny it at first. And this is also completely normal.

Did you know that these are the same reactions that belong to the first 2 stages of grief? And that is also logical. You are in fact in mourning. You are mourning the loss of the life you knew. The life you had, that was so familiar has changed because of the chronic headaches. You can no longer do everything you used to be able to do. And that is okay. It is completely normal to mourn this. It is a loss and with loss comes mourning.

In addition, you can also feel that you are losing control. After all, you have no control over where, when and how often you get a headache. And how severe that attack is. This feeling of loss of control can lead to feelings of frustration and anger.

Frustration, anger and sadness.
subconscious mind

Limiting beliefs.

We all have ideas about how our lives should look, about the expectations that others have of us and about what we expect of ourselves. These ideas, these beliefs, are deeply ingrained in our subconscious and originate from our earliest childhood. Sometimes they even originated somewhere in the ancestral line before we were born.

Some of these beliefs can be that you always have to be productive, that you have to fulfill social obligations or that you should not be a burden to others.

These beliefs only increase your frustration. You think you should be able to do it, but you can’t. The fear of what others will think of you only increases as a result. And this seriously hinders your process towards acceptance. It is therefore important that you can let go of these beliefs. I will describe how you can do that later in this blog.

Acceptance is not something you just do.

Acceptance is not something you do when you wake up. It is not something you say to yourself one morning: “Okay, from today on I accept my headache.” Unfortunately. If only it were that easy.

Acceptance is a process. A road along highs and lows, with good days and bad. I would actually even say that acceptance is an ongoing process. It is never really finished.

It starts with understanding what the concept of acceptance exactly is. It is not that you have to give up the pain, or that you have to give up trying to get rid of it. Acceptance means nothing more than acknowledging the pain, without being overwhelmed by it. That you learn to live with the pain, without it completely defining you as a person.

Acceptance is a process
Mindfulness

But how?

To help this process, there are a few practical things you can do.

  • Mindfulness: Practice being in the moment, living in the moment, without judgement. There are various exercises for this on the internet. I always prefer guided meditations and visualisations. I have recorded a number of them myself. If you are interested, send me a message via Instagram with “Visualisation and meditation bundle” and I will send you the bundle with 8 visualisations and meditations for free.

    Mindfulness can help you to take your attention away from the pain and focus on what you can still do. Because as I wrote in my blog about self-stigma: “you are more than your pain”.
  • Self-compassion: This means nothing more than that you are allowed to be kind to yourself. Be your own best friend. Talk to yourself as you would to your best friend. Do not judge yourself when you are in pain, cannot do something or have to cancel an appointment. Also allow yourself to ask for help or to be cared for. You do not have to do it all alone.
  • Learn to set boundaries: This is actually also part of self-compassion, but it deserves its own heading. Learn to indicate your boundaries and stick to them yourself. If you don’t accept your own boundaries, why would anyone else? If you don’t respect your own boundaries, why would anyone else? So learn to say “no”, learn to recognize what you can and cannot do and learn to indicate this.

    This also includes learning to listen to what your body has to tell you. Do you find this difficult yourself, but would you like to know what your body wants to tell you? Then my Intuitive Body Scan might be something for you!

Communication is key!

It sounds like a cliché, but communication is incredibly important in the process of acceptance. Your headache may not be your favorite topic of conversation, but you will have to talk about it with your loved ones.

Does this mean that you can only talk about your headache? No, certainly not. But it is important to involve them in what your chronic headache means to you and your life. Tell them about your struggles, about what you are up against. Talk to them about your frustration, your anger, your sadness and perhaps even the fears you have.

You cannot expect them to understand you if you keep your mouth shut. You cannot expect them to accept your boundaries if they do not understand why that is important to you.

Ask them to help you, ask them for understanding if you cannot do something or if you have to cancel an appointment. Do not be afraid of rejection or rude comments. Those comments and that rejection often come from misunderstanding. If you take them along in your process, you will see that they are much more understanding than you might think now.

And… here you see again that acceptance is a process. As long as you accept yourself and your headache, your environment will do the same. If you do not accept yourself, you pass that energy on to your environment and they will not accept you and especially your headache either.

Communication is key!
Inner power

You are not giving up!

Many people think of acceptance as giving up. They think that acceptance means that you can no longer strive for change or improvement. When I was still working as a nutritionist, I often said that losing weight started with self-acceptance. What I often got back then was: “But if I accept myself as I am, how can I lose weight? If I accept myself, then I like myself as I am and I no longer strive for a healthier weight.”

The first part of that statement is true. If you accept yourself as you are, then you like yourself as you are. But liking yourself as you are does not mean that you can’t strive for a better version of yourself!

Accepting your headaches does not mean that you can’t strive to have fewer headaches. Or even to be headache-free! It does not mean that you give up.

Acceptance means that you are flexible enough to adapt your life to your new reality. Because even if you strive to get your old life back, your life before you had headaches, your chronic headaches are currently your reality. And you will have to deal with that.

Acceptance is a sign of strength, of your ability to change your perspective and focus on what you can do!

Are you curious after reading this blog whether and how I could help you? Then send me a message on Instagram. Or contact me via the contact form.

Every month I raffle 2 free headache sessions. During this free session I will look at your headache and its cause with you. I will look at the limiting beliefs that are lurking under the surface and resolve them for you. In addition, I will give you some tips and advice that you can immediately start using to experience less headaches immediately after the session.

My client Karin said about this session: “Immediately after the session I already experienced much less headaches”.

Do you want a chance to win one of those sessions? Then fill in the form here to participate.

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