‘That’s how I am dealing with it – that is dealing with it’: exploring men athletes’ self-compassion through the lens of masculinity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the growing body of literature in the field of athletes’ self-compassion over the past decade, studies with a focus specifically on men athletes are limited. In addition, although previous research suggests that differential representations of masculinities may impact men’s self-compassion uniquely, the link between men athletes’ self-compassion and masculinities is understudied. With masculinity-based negative evaluations being the source of many difficult experiences for men athletes, perhaps self-compassion can mitigate the impact of men’s challenges in sport. Thus, our research purpose was to explore men athletes’ lived experiences of self-compassion through the lens of masculinity. We recruited 16 men athletes (Mage = 21.4 years; SD = 3.7) to participate in two semi-structured interviews with a reflexive photography task between interviews. The results of our study are framed within two overlying categories (i.e., masculinity, self-compassion), with multiple themes in each category. Our findings suggest that the men athletes in our study generally represent a version of masculinity that is accepting of non-traditional representations of masculinity (e.g. homosexuality), and they were open and willing to accept and embrace self-compassion, particularly if it helps them improve their sport performance. We conclude that self-compassion can be a useful resource for men athletes, and future research should focus on developing and evaluating the effectiveness of a self-compassion intervention, with considerations given to the potential role of masculinity in men’s difficult sport experiences, tailored specifically for men athletes.