‘A way of being in the world’: an exploration of the experience of developing self-compassion through online training

Introduction: Compassion-focused Therapy (CFT; Gilbert, 2005) has increasingly been shown to have a positive impact for people experiencing a range of difficulties, and online self-help formats could provide a way of increasing its accessibility and scalability. This study explored adult participants’ subjective experiences of engaging with online self-compassion training drawn from Compassionate Mind Training (based on the CFT model). Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants who had completed online self-compassion training, and the interview data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Results: The analysis generated four main themes and 17 sub-themes. The four main themes generated were ‘A way of being in the world’, ‘Old habits die hard’, The learning process, and Context and resources. These themes showed that while the process of developing self-compassion was often challenging, most participants described experiencing positive changes in their ways of relating to themselves and others. Participants identified many facilitators and barriers to change, including factors related to the training format and their wider social contexts. Discussion: These findings support previous research into CFT, particularly in relation to some common positive changes people experience and some of the difficulties with this process (e.g. fear of compassion). Participants’ descriptions offer promise that approaches based on the CFT model can be experienced as acceptable and helpful by people engaging through an online self-help format as well as through individual and group-based interventions. The facilitators and barriers to change that participants described indicate the strong influence of people’s contexts and the need for these to be considered when designing and implementing approaches