Psychological support
5. Acceptance and adjustment
Acceptance is not approval, resignation or giving up. It is stopping the fight against what is already true, so your energy can go somewhere useful.
What acceptance is not
- It is not liking it.
- It is not abandoning treatment or hope.
- It is not 'being positive'.
- It is not a one-off event — it comes and goes, often daily.
Clean pain and dirty pain
Clean pain is the unavoidable suffering of the situation: the illness, the losses, the fear. Dirty pain is what we add — self-blame, comparison, rumination, fighting reality, shame about struggling.
You cannot remove clean pain. Almost all of the relief available comes from reducing the second layer.
Adjustment happens in stages, non-linearly
- Shock and disbelief.
- Searching for causes and control.
- Anger and bargaining.
- Low mood as reality lands.
- Reorganising life around the new facts.
- Finding meaning, sometimes — and cycling back through earlier stages when things change.
Values as the compass
When goals become impossible, values remain available. You may not be able to work, but you can still act with generosity, humour or courage today.
Ask: what kind of person do I want to be in the middle of this? Then find the smallest action consistent with that, and do it now.
Try this
Willingness exercise
About 8 minutes
- 1Name the thing you are fighting — a symptom, a limitation, a fear.
- 2Notice where you feel the fight in your body.
- 3Say: 'This is here right now, and I do not have to like it.'
- 4Loosen the physical bracing — jaw, shoulders, hands.
- 5Ask: given this is here, what do I want to do with the next hour?
Where to go next
Afya Companion offers education and self-help support. It does not diagnose, treat or replace care from your doctor, nurse, psychologist or dietitian. If something in your health changes, speak to your care team.