Here are four informative ways to select and really benefit from adult ADHD coaching, therapy, or both, for you or someone you love.  

Know the Differences Between Adult ADHD Coaching and Therapy 

ADHD coaches and therapists focus on helping you evolve, adapt, and make changes. Both professionals can work with fully functioning adults who are working through difficult situations.  That said, they are different practices, each with its own unique value. The following are generalizations for illustrative purposes.

ADHD Coaching helps you develop an awareness of who you are so that you understand your unique brain, innate abilities, patterns of behavior, strengths, and strongest learning styles. Your coach helps you understand how your executive functioning directs your distinctive thoughts and actions. 

You work in partnership with your coach on learning through self-discovery and sustainable action so you can create a more fulfilling life.  You experiment with when, where, and how optimal conditions work specifically for you and your life situation. While your coach asks you questions and may make specific suggestions - if you’re open to it - you make your own best judgment and discover your own answers. 

In therapy, the focus is often on understanding distressing patterns of feeling and behavior and/or revisiting childhood experiences and patterns that may be associated with past trauma, hurts, loss, or abuse. At times you may look to your therapist to help guide you through a crisis, but in time you may take on more as the therapy progresses. 

Therapists can ask why as you engage in deep-feeling work, often freeing you from past pain and suffering and/or current complex personal issues so you can choose new possibilities for the future. Therapists help you heal and resolve the challenges that may be getting in the way of going after what matters most to you. 

Coaches almost never ask you why. ADHD Coaches help you discover the obstacles getting in the way so you can see a clear path to strengthen and fortify renewed opportunities.  Although there’s room for processing emotions, coaches do not profoundly engage with past emotions. Coaches are present and future-oriented, helping you focus on your deepest desires so that you can turn your dreams, thoughts, and ideas into concrete actions to create the life you want. 

Adult ADHD Coaching is experimental in nature. You or your loved one needs to be ready to be a keen observer of themselves. You must be willing to take responsibility for self-discovery and for your learning through your actions. 

If you or your loved one is in a place where there may be mental health barriers that are holding you back from making progress, then there may be an underlying challenge that is typically best worked out in therapy, before the coaching process can move forward.   

To What Degree is Everyday Living Interfering?

If you or someone you love is stuck about a previous incident or trauma, and can’t seem to get past it, therapy is likely required to process the event more thoughtfully and profoundly. If dipping into a past event and acknowledging it is enough for you and you can move on, then ADHD coaching is most likely appropriate for you.

At the same time, if you can groom yourself, (though you'd prefer to be more efficient), eat well, (but maybe you’d like to cook more), get out of bed, (despite wanting a regular wake-up time), clean your dishes, (though you'd prefer more of a routine), and do your work (yet you'd like more consistency)  --- --- you may benefit from ADHD coaching, or perhaps ADHD Coaching and therapy together, depending on the individual.

Are There Any Signs of Distress?

• Noticeable changes in mood, such as anger, sadness, or irritability, that are not attributable to emotional dysregulation or rejection-sensitive dysphoria that you may typically see in ADHD.

• Decline in performance at school or work, or, after working with an ADHD coach, your loved one has not applied the strategies

• Social withdrawal and isolation

• Marked changes in appearance and grooming

• Sleep changes or disturbances

• Excessive worry, sadness, or hopelessness

• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide

• Pre-occupation with food and diet

• Intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks

• Increasing tolerance to, or pre-occupation with substances

• Paranoia

• Incoherent speech

If you decide that therapy is more suitable at this time, please know that we ADHD coaches will always be here when you’re ready.

Confidentiality and privacy are of utmost importance in ADHD Coaching and therapy. If a referral needs to be made, Coaches adhere to the Code of Ethics and Standards set by the International Coach Federation (ICF), while therapists adhere to the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (HIPPA). 

Information shared in coaching and therapy sessions is confidential and not shared outside the session unless mutually agreed upon and documented in writing. The only exception to this is where we are required by law to make a disclosure, or where a coach or therapist has a good-faith belief that disclosure is necessary to comply with the law, to avoid harm or danger to you, your coach or therapist, or anyone else, or to respond to an emergency. In such situations, disclosure is limited to essential information. 

How do you know when to engage with both a therapist and an ADHD coach?