Frequently Asked Questions
ADHD Coaching is a process in which an ADHD coach partners with you to help you set clear goals and take consistent action to achieve them. The ADHD Coach specializes in helping you understand and improve your executive functioning skills, such as time management, planning, emotional regulation, organization and so on. In addition, we help you develop personalized solutions, strategies and systems based on your strengths and motivations to address your ADHD challenges.
Executive functioning skills are all the mental processes involved in starting, doing and finishing a task, no matter how big or small. These include but are not limited to working memory, task initiation, sustained attention, impulse control, emotional regulation, time management, organization, planning and prioritization. These executive functioning skills tend to be impacted to varying degrees in those who have ADHD. This is an area that an ADHD coach can help you improve.
Almost everyone can benefit from coaching if they:
Have something in their lives that they want to change or improve.
Are willing to put in the time and effort to make the change.
Are open to working in partnership with a coach.
To use a sport analogy, athletes truly get to their best performances with good coaches by their side. Similarly in life, working with a coach is about being your best and creating the most desirable outcome for yourself.
Specifically, the gold standard for creating optimum outcome in adults with ADHD is currently medication management + Behavioral approaches (ADHD Coaching / Therapy)
In our experience, clients benefit the most from a team approach with a psychiatrist, therapist and ADHD Coach.
If you are not satisfied with where you are in your life or how things are going for you, explore ADHD coaching.
While outcomes vary from person to person, overall we see many of the following in our coaching clients:
1. Improved ability to focus while minimizing distractions, to start tasks without procrastination and to complete tasks in a timely manner
2. Better ability to prevent and manage overwhelm, ADHD paralysis and emotional dysregulation.
3. More consistent use of effective routines, strategies and structure
4. More self care and self compassion.
Please read our clients' reviews for more details.
A typical ADHD coaching session consists of the following:
1. Checking in at the start of your session to see how you did with the previous weeks action items
2. Deciding what to focus on and what outcome to work toward in your session that day
3. Coaching to increase awareness or understanding, identify and shift limiting beliefs, unmet needs or other barriers to progress, learn new skills, anchor new insights, develop new strategies or create new structure to support you.
4. Choosing new action items and further exploration for the upcoming week.
ADHD Coaching or CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) in conjunction with medical intervention is currently considered the gold standard for successful outcomes for individuals with ADHD.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Am I always running late or missing deadlines?
Do I have difficulty starting on important but boring tasks?
Do I put things off till I can’t put them off anymore then rush to do it?
Am I full of wonderful ideas but unable to organize, plan or act on them effectively?
Am I exceptionally good at some things but struggle with seemingly ordinary things?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, ADHD coaching may be helpful to you.
With the right coach and client, ADHD coaching is generally a very positive experience right from the start. You will improve your understanding of your ADHD very quickly and even start to get new insights and shifts in perspectives over the first few weeks to months.
However to unlearn our default or habitual thinking and behavior patterns and to make real change takes time. It can take 6-8 weeks for your brain to form new pathwayd, and another 6-8 weeks for it to become easy or automatic enough.
Other factors to consider are how many goals you are working toward, how broad or specific they are, and how consistent and intentional you are about applying strategies and practicing skills between sessions.
In our practice, clients who get the most benefit from coaching, coach actively for about 3- 6 months.
Consider the following before embarking on your coaching journey:
1. Do you have some goals you want to achieve - something you want to change or make better or easier for yourself?
2. Are you willing and ready to take concrete action toward making those changes
3. Do you believe you can make changes, even if you do not yet know how to do so. As your coach, I will partner with you to figure out the "how"
You also need to have the space, time and resources to engage with the coaching process fully. For this reason, it is important that
1. You are not trying to address an immediate crisis only. Even though a coach may be able to share some ideas to address the immediate need, it is usually hard to develop new skills and systems for long term change when you are in an "emergency" mode.
2. You have addressed or are concurrently addressing any therapy related issues like anxiety, depression, PTSD, relationship counseling etc. so that you are emotionally in a good place to engage with the coaching process.
3. You are not overly committing yourself to multiple programs and courses at the same time. Coaching is a very comprehensive and active process and you need time between our sessions to try out strategies, practice new skills and set up structure, support and systems.
The answer is it depends, and also possibly all of the above!
ADHD is best managed through a team approach. The gold standard for optimum outcomes for adults with ADHD is medication management plus behavioral interventions, such as coaching.
A psychiatrist or other medical practitioner can help with diagnosing your ADHD and managing your medications.
A therapist can help you with processing and healing from past trauma, anxiety, depression as well as help you manage or change current unhelpful thought patterns, limiting beliefs and fears. Some therapists and psychologists also provide testing and diagnosis for ADHD.
ADHD coaching can help you work toward specific goals, improve your executive functioning skills, and develop practical strategies, tools, systems and support to be successful.
Coaches empower you through a collaborative process of discovery to help you clarify the best solutions for yourself.
Consultants usually have expertise in a certain field and will advise you, teach you skills or provide you with information you don’t have.
Another way to think about this is that while consulting gives you a system to use, coaching helps you develop your own system. Both can be helpful, but coaching adds elements of motivation and ownership for the unique system that you develop for yourself empowering you to succeed.
Coaching is focused on moving forward from where you are right now towards the goal you set for yourself, while therapy is more about exploring your past experiences and healing from them.
Both may be necessary for some clients. Some clients move from therapy to coaching or vice versa, while others work with both a therapist and coach simultaneously.