ADHD Life Coaching

Deeply rooted in self-compassion, it is a strictly confidential process based on trust from the outset.  As I encourage you to develop self-awareness you will explore your strengths, values, goals, priorities, and help you re-discover your true nature.  As you start to crystalise your plans, we’ll also be bringing to mind those ADHD challenges which might otherwise sour your progress, such as procrastination, lack of organisation and sub-optimal time management.  

It’s really good that you’ve researched the condition and recognise your challenges and work-arounds.  However, you may have noticed that simply having the intention to change behaviour often isn’t powerful enough to shift gears if you have ADHD traits.  When we work together, I will make sure the conditions are right for you to share, in confidence, how your ADHD shows up in your life.  Having a trusted sounding board will allow you to have conversations around your processes, your strengths, your fears and your passions.  This is work which, without a deeper understanding of your ADHD, you’d struggle to implement alone.   Working in partnership with an ADHD expert can be truly transformative!

‘The Flight Deck Metaphor’ My role is similar to that of a co-pilot.  The Client is always in the ‘Captain’s chair’, in full control of the direction of the flight and in total control of the instruments. The Co-Pilot sits calmly alongside, gathering important information and sometimes, with permission, uses past experience to share suggestions to allow for a smooth, comfortable and successful journey.  

Life coaching focuses on practical strategies and tools to help you re-frame daily challenges, build workable routines, and identify realistic goals. Unlike therapy, coaching is not designed to address emotional or mental health conditions as such but rather to provide structure and support for specific areas of your life.  However, by doing so, many of the less sweet emotions will be identified, treated with compassion and to some extent, be helped to dissolve.

Having ADHD, many of us have a great deal of self-knowledge.  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we take the decisions and actions we know would serve us well.  That’s where coaching fits in.  The coach will help make sense of that knowledge and help clarify and prioritise those actions which would lead to a sweeter life balance.

No, you don’t need a formal diagnosis. Many of my clients are self-diagnosed. 

Just as there is no such thing as a typical ADHDer, there is no such thing as a typical ADHD life coaching session!  However, each individual session will be guaranteed to encompass your way of being at that point.  That means that sometimes you will need a sounding board, sometimes you will need encouragement, and sometimes we’ll be working together on identifying workable processes to carry you to your goals and beyond.  You are unique, and my training, lived experience and maturity are there for us to use and adapt exactly as you wish.

How long is a piece of string? - Almost without exception, all my clients felt better about their specific challenges after they’ve met me for the very first time.  All of my Refresher-zoom members feel better about themselves during the course of the productivity zoom, and all of my 1:1 clients report that they know how to move forward, after each one-hour session.  Imagine what you can achieve with ongoing coaching!

My sessions are for an hour.  We can schedule the frequency to suit your timetable but my clients find they make best the progress if we meet fortnightly.  This gives them time to digest the points we have identified and try out their new experiments and adventures so their new self-knowledge informs and enriches our next meeting. 

In the UK, ‘coaching’ is mainly thought of in the sports context, where knowledge is passed from coach to client.  ADHD life coaching, however, works very differently.   You are already the expert of ‘you’, and I am learning, with curiosity and compassion your unique processes, strength, passions and challenges.  

With my lived experience of ADHD, in-depth training and research, we will work together to build clarity around how you will write the next, and subsequent, chapters of your life.  

Along the way, you will be learning a lot about how your habits serve, or hinder you, how you might be judging yourself and where self-compassion fits into your life.  We will look at how your brain wiring might have led to ‘interesting’ relationships, job choices and money management.

Given these far-reaching benefits, the issue becomes not so much about the price of coaching, but how much not having coaching might be costing you at present. 

There are no quick fixes here, but each of these challenges has its roots in the Executive Function within the brain.  We’ll be diving into the science around these elements and coaching will uncover why these are a particular challenge for you.  Once we understand the context, we can then be working together on finding long-term, tailor-made processes which are truly game-changing.

Yes, in fact I only work on zoom.  My clients prefer it and it means I coach worldwide! 

I primarily work with older adults as, being late diagnosed myself I have a lot in common with them, but of course my Iact and ICF qualifications, training and experience allows me to help all adults, with or without ADHD.

Strangely, yes.  I’m not medically qualified, yet my clients regularly report that our coaching naturally leads to a marked lifting of anxiety and low mood.  

However, if you are currently receiving any treatment for your depression or anxiety, your health professional must be continuously updated with your coaching process.

Everyone, regardless of age, needs a clearcut view of themselves.  And everyone benefits from finding out how their brain works and what impact this may have had on crucial decisions, important relationships and their career history.

The more we know about ourselves, the more context we have and if, as often happens, we’ve become habitually and unreasonably harsh on ourselves, it’s never too late to reset our perspective and make a fresh start from a baseline of clarity, understanding and kindness.

The government generally pays after the coaching has taken place.

• Client is granted award

• Client books one to six individual one-hour coaching sessions on my website.

• Sessions can be booked for any date within the coming 6 months (this is to add urgency) 

• Website informs me automatically

After six (or the minimum number their assessor stipulates)  sessions, client is sent an invoice in pdf form which has to show:

• The sum due for six sessions

• My full name

• The dates booked

• Spoonful of Sugar bank details

• Within two working days (for urgency again), Client uploads this digital invoice to their A2W portal

• I am paid via my Access to Work portal

• Client continues booking as above as appropriate