About ADHD Coaching
Professionally trained ADHD coaches have essential skills and understanding to meet the coaching needs of people with ADHD. In addition to meeting the standards and qualifications of general personal development coaching, trained ADHD coaches are educated in the field of ADHD and effective ADHD coaching practices.
Like general coaching, ADHD coaching helps clients create the life they want. The coach's belief is that the client is naturally resourceful and creative. The coach partners with each client to provide insights and support, as the client builds skills and takes action to enhance the quality of their life.
"The curious dissociation between knowing and doing..."
People with ADHD often have unique, paradoxical challenges that impact their lives. On the one hand, they exhibit extraordinary talents. They are inventive and intuitive, with an uncanny ability to bring intense focus to a situation. On the other hand, they may be chronically frustrated by one or more ADHD traits. They may have difficulty turning great ideas into actions. Their minds might wander to topics other than the conversation or task at hand. Despite great effort and good intentions, they perform inconsistently.
ADHD coaching helps people resolve the paradoxes of ADHD. ADHD coaches understand the seeming inconsistencies of performance. They know how to help people develop and capitalize on their strengths while managing their challenges. ADHD coaches help people develop a personalized toolkit of strategies, tools, models and systems for staying focused and on track to reach their goals.
ADHD coaches know that ADHD traits stem from brain biology and are therefore neither character flaws nor willful intent (If only you would try harder...). ADHD coaches help their clients better understand the ways their ADHD traits interfere with the quality of their personal and professional lives, and how to successfully work with and around those traits.
"ADD looks very much like a willpower problem, but it isn't. It's essentially a chemical problem in the management systems of the brain."
— Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D.
ADHD coaching is one component of a personalized comprehensive treatment program. Many people also find enormous value in prescribed medication, counseling or therapy, tutoring, exercise, and a spiritual or meditation practice.
In sum, ADHD coaching is a dynamic professional partnership designed to enable clients to find answers within themselves and take actions to improve their lives. It is a liberating, strategic process in which people work intuitively, creatively, and practically to reach their goals.
"You can not teach humans anything. You can only help them discover it within themselves."
— Galileo