CLIENT SERVICES
Coaching
A lot of people with ADHD feel like they aren’t quite where they’d like to be in life. Schooling, personal relationships, job satisfaction, financial concerns and many other areas can be affected by living with this diagnosis and coaching is a great way to address this dissatisfaction.
Coaching is not therapy. It is a detailed process of identifying problematic patterns, creating solutions, reviewing and refining, all with a view to the particular symptoms that ADHD brings to the mix. It’s about transitioning from where you are in life to where you’d like to be.
Coaching can also be helpful for parents or other loved ones who are living with someone who has ADHD and are trying to figure out the best ways to approach these relationships without falling into common traps like blaming and shaming. This can be particularly helpful for those who do not have the diagnosis themselves and are often mystified by the behaviours of the one who does.
Once individuals are well on their way to achieving identified goals and are making strides toward their preferred paths, they can become fearful of falling back into old ways, and with good reason. It is the nature of ADHD to cause slip-ups and a return to old strategies that don’t work very well.
When an individual “falls off the horse” so to speak, feelings of frustration, self-loathing, self-blame and depression can arise. This is why structure and accountability are so important. Check-ins can be a critical element of ongoing success and can keep consistency toward goal achievement in place.
Check-ins and General Support
Problem Solving
Although part of the coaching process, problem-solving is in and of itself a critical element of success when living with ADHD and is worth mentioning independently. Often individuals are not even aware of the nature of the problems that are affecting their daily lives which is why the solutions they have tried to employ are often only minimally effective or not effective at all.
Using accurate information about what ADHD is and what it is not, a good problem-solving process involves identifying points of breakdown and creating a work-around plan. This is best achieved with support from professionals and family/friends alike.
While not strictly an element of ADHD management, counselling can be helpful in dealing with the side-effects of living with this condition. Growing up without understanding why things were going wrong, constantly being told your behaviour is “unacceptable” and grieving the loss of not being “just like everyone else” are some of the themes that can be explored using this process..
Often the coaching work can shift emotional stress because achieving one’s goals feels good! As individuals integrate the knowledge that this condition is not their fault and begin to find a preferred way forward, mood and emotion frequently shift for the better.
Some problems can be persistent however, and counselling can assist with a variety of concerns like anxiety, depression, interpersonal conflict and grief work. See: How I work
