What is acceptance

Acceptance is learning how to differentiate between what is normal and what is abuse.

Under normal circumstances you accept what you can't change and resist what is changeable.

There is a huge misconception, propagated by various ideologies, that will lead you to believe that all sufferance comes from resistance and in order to stop it you have to accept everything. You probably heard phrases like: "what do you resist persist".

Resistance which is the rejection of the outcome of a situation, it is a self-preservation instinct, necessary for self defence and other important function. To frame acceptance as the only root for sufferance is either naivety that comes from a lack of understanding or a way to disarm people.      

It is possible to experience sufferance that comes from resistance, but not all sufferance comes from resistance. It is true that when you resist things that are normal not only you destroy your emotional experience in that moment but you also affect your performance, making it less likely to grow or move on from unfavorable situations.

Resisting the normal consequences of life makes it impossible for you to enjoy life, because you stress yourself normal things that are sometimes impossible to avoid. This is why learning to accept things it is a pleasurable experience, and it will make your life more enjoyable.

For the long term victim of abuse it is difficult to understand what is normal since he never or almost never experience a state of being normal without coercion.

One of the negative consequences of abuse is confusion, the person that suffered the abuse is going to have an inverted perception of reality. He is going to see some wrong things as right and right as wrong.

This will lead to an attempt to resist normal things and accept abuse, which is going to lead to constant dissatisfaction to small trivial normal consequences of life, while simultaneously become an accomplish to his own abuse by tolerating it, because he wrongly believes that it is normal or there is nothing possible to do in order to stop it.

In order to more accurately determine what you should accept and what you should resist you have to clear your own confusion. Learning morality allows you to determine good from evil. If there is one thing that I am one hundred percent sure that you should resist that is abuse. Perhaps the only scenario where this is not true is if you realize that is impossible for you to win that conflict. For example if someone holds you at gun point.