Table 5.

Themes and Subthemes of Facilitators and Barriers During the MBCT and Corresponding Quotations.

	Facilitators	Barriers
Environmental factors	Support from family: And if they say “go take a three-minute break,” then I take a three-minute break.	Experiencing life stressors: It was really personal circumstances that made it harder. That made it impossible for me to concentrate and extra difficult for me to go there.
Training
Training program	Weekly sessions: When you come here, you’re here for two and a half hours and you force yourself to do things you’d be less likely to do at home.	Lack of repetition: That you don’t get something new every week while you feel the last thing hasn’t really sunk in yet, because it’s not in your system.
Content of the training	Silent day: You’re just silent for a day so you consciously don’t do things and you very consciously avoid social contact. That takes getting used to. But it’s also wonderful. ( . . . ) I’m not allowed to contact anyone, ( . . . ) so then you need to take a different direction and yes, that creates opportunities.	Long silence during meditations: In the long version ( . . . ), there’s two minutes in between and I really couldn’t concentrate on that. Because they say nothing for two minutes and I’m thinking, “is it over, is it over? Oh no darn, there’s another thirty minutes.” And then you’ve immediately lost your focus.
Mindfulness teacher
• Didactic approach	Directiveness: That she also briefly interrupted people, told them to take a moment. Stop ranting and raving, for example.	Homework presented as compulsory: If you set it as a task, for me it immediately becomes this big mountain, that ( . . . ) yeah I have to get over. Then I just give up.
• Attitude	Non-judgmental: Maybe also that it came up throughout the whole training: things are not right or wrong or it is what it is. Maybe that’s also what gave me a little push, to let things go a little more.	Not feeling accepted: I brought it up as a problem that I was struggling with, but [name teacher] was sort of like ( . . . ) that it was totally normal. Yes, I felt disappointed for a bit ( . . . ) that I didn’t really feel it was accepted that I had a problem.
Other participants	Contact with fellow ADHD patients: So that your own discomfort is suddenly shared by someone else and “oh yeah, okay, so it’s not me,” and that puts it into perspective.	Arriving too late: What I thought was a pity, ( . . . ) was people arriving late. I can’t recall a single session where everyone was on time.
Material	Folder: If you read the folder, I think it’s written really well. [ . . . ] It doesn’t tell me what to do, it doesn’t say what that person’s going through but I think it’s also written in the “we” form.	Space: Yes, lots of noise. That you heard people walking and that people also just came in, the door opening and closing during the exercises. That was a bit disturbing.
Participant
ADHD symptoms		Feeling restless inside: Either I felt hugely restless, or my head was somewhere else entirely.
Additional symptoms		Physical complaints: At a certain point I was really ( . . . ) bothered by the pain. I just couldn’t do certain exercises any more. Suddenly I had to resort to the lying-down things ( . . . ). I even did the sitting meditation lying down. So that restricted me.
Personality traits	Perseverance: I’m not a quitter ( . . . ). Yes, if you shy away from the hard stuff, that’s nice and easy but you don’t really achieve anything. ( . . . ) And I thought that now too: “I can stop, but then I don’t know if it’ll work.”	High expectations of self: Well, for me ( . . . ) that’s the expectation, because for me I think, “I’m going to do this properly again, every day straight away, I have to” and then you don’t manage to do that.
Coping strategies	Self-talk: Yes, just by saying to myself, “focus on your breathing, try to get into it.”	Procrastination: The will to do it is in there somewhere, but you put it off ( . . . ) postpone, postpone, postpone, avoid: “yes, soon,” or thinking vaguely again, “oh, I have to do that too.”

Note. MBCT = Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.