When you boil down a complex spiritual solution like this to one phrase, "accept yourself" seems to be correct. But someone who hasn't gotten there yet can't "un-boil" the solution to make it work for them. The actual solution is probably very specific to that person, and nebulous to the point where they can't put it into actionable words even when they do figure it out.

Example: "you must have good scores at school else you'll have no future" is repeated as "you should have good scores because learning broadens your horizons and helps you to grow"

It boils down to the same thing, but, hopefully, the pressure is weaker.

This does not mean that therapists offering guidance or following a particular framework are chalatans, but it is an encouragement to avoid, as much as possible, to hammer definitions on phenomena too hard. Those frameworks exist, at least in part, because they have proven useful to some people, but none of them is "the answer".

Same thing in philosophy. Very loos interpretation, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein. You need language to communicate, but it is flawed and can't really communicate what you want, but language is all you have, but when the other person does eventually understand, they realize how incomplete the language description was.

- in the Pali Canon (the oldest recollection of "discourses" attributed to the Buddha), the Buddha teaches very different things to different people. There are very technical suttas about advanced meditation practices for monks, but there are also suttas that are very down to earth and centered on "earthly" concerns. There is for instance a touching one where the Buddha teaches to an old couple how to accumulate merit in order to be reborn in a life where they could meet and mary again. - clinging and attachment are two of the "three poisons" in Buddhism. Stopping to cling to things and get attached to them is a big portion of the goal of Buddhism. This is why most teachers repeat to "let go, let go, let go". This includes letting go of concepts (such as the "three poisons") or attachment to experiences (such as calm born from meditation). This can be confusing. A Theravada Abbot named Thannisaro Bikkhu has an interesting twist: he compare the path to a ladder. Obviously, once you are at the top, you should let go of the ladder. But on your way up, you need to cling to the steps of the ladder, otherwise you fall. So he advocates "skillful clinging": cling to the teachings, cling to meditative experiences, get attached to them, this is fine. This will give you the motivation to practice and progress. Just be ready to identify when this is not useful anymore, when you can let go of that step of the ladder to reach for the next.

The main take away is that teachings, in particular in psychology or spirituality, are aimed at persons who are at a particular position on a path. Part of the misunderstanding might be that one fails to see that one is not at the point of understanding that allows to actually get what is expressed. This kind of participates in the beauty of learning and teaching, but also means that one will likely never really understand deeply anything anyone communicates to us. We are just left to experiment on our side, and see if what we understand kind of fits the imperfect descriptions from others, and use those to inform back our search.

well said, i think this applies to meditation too. Often people get into debates about what meditation actually is, as if there was one perfect answer, but the reality is that meditation can be different things depending on an individual's skill and their path.

With a compelling narrative it becomes more palatable, and realizations can feel your own, which is a big contributor to taking action.