My Approach to ADHD Coaching
Coaching is a partnership between you and me. I will create a safe space for you where you can share your successes and challenges freely and where we both come up with ways to help you overcome your difficulties so you can reach your goals.
Below you will find three specific areas that I tend to focus on during our coaching sessions and my rationale for why I approach ADHD coaching the way I do. Overall, I want you to value your own superpowers, work on selected executive functions that cause you trouble and help you develop your own success strategies.
When we feel that we are in charge of our lives again, we develop a new sense of confidence that we can handle life’s challenges in a way that was impossible for us before. We simply trust that with a bit of creativity, patience and resilience, life is full of possibilities that we can use to our own advantage.
And it is my goal to create this confidence in you and help you tap into your own superpowers so you can lead the life you want!
Tapping into Your Superpowers
When you encounter difficulties that are related to ADHD, we tend to focus solely on our weaknesses and how to overcome them. Yet, there are many positive aspects that come with ADHD, aka your superpowers, such as heightened imagination, creativity, more energy, empathy or tenacity. Instead of ignoring those fabulous qualities, we will tap into your resources and redirect them in a way so that they will benefit you rather than harm you.
Strengthening Your Executive Functions
In addition to your existing superpowers, we will also focus on a few executive skills that might need some improvement. Executive skills such as working memory, emotional control, sustained attention or time management are important for a successful life. Most people have strengths and weaknesses in certain areas of their executive skills, but people with ADHD tend to face particular challenges with regard to organizing their days, following instructions or completing assignments. We will work specifically on strengthening those executive functions with a number of exercises that will help you gain control over your life again.
Learning through Graphic Medicine (i.e., Comics)
The term graphic medicine was coined by physician Dr. Ian Williams in 2007 and describes how we use comics to talk about health. Graphic medicine can be found in schools, doctor’s offices or hospitals to educate patients and the general public alike about health conditions like ADHD (see Resources), By reading comics excerpts that focus on the daily lives of people with ADHD, we learn vicariously through other people’s experiences and through those problem-solving strategies they employ. By discussing those strategies and their effectiveness, we can more easily come up with our own techniques and find out how we can best succeed in life.