
ADHD Coaching Blog
Hey!
Coaching often brings new insights into the ways that ADHD shows up for my clients. I like to write and coaching provides plenty of topics to write about! If you’re looking for productivity hacks, tips and tricks you won’t find many here. I like to create new knowledge, not rehash common topics. So, you will find articles here that you won’t find elsewhere. I hope you discover new insights into your own ADHD and that they take you forward in your own journey.
warmly,
Tony
Polarising ADHD Around Gender is Wrong. Here's Why
Let's get straight to it - the notion that ADHD presents fundamentally differently between genders is flawed. While there are some variations in how symptoms manifest, polarising the disorder around gender oversimplifies its complexity and does more harm than good.
The Kaleidoscopic ADHD Brain: Turning Ideas into Innovation
The ADHD brain possesses a remarkable ability to think creatively and see possibilities that others miss. It's like having a radar that can scan far into the future and perceive a wide context around any given situation. The ADHD creative mind can connect seemingly disparate ideas and envision innovative solutions. It sees a project's original scope, but also recognizes opportunities to expand and enhance it in ways that surpass initial expectations.
Why Self-Compassion is Essential for Adults with ADHD
Living with ADHD can be a rollercoaster that leads to frustration and self-doubt. Let's look at why self-compassion is so crucial for adults with ADHD.
ADHD Coaching Demystified: What You Need to Know and How to Get Started
ADHD coaching is a unique and highly specialised form of coaching designed to support individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). An ADHD coach is a trained professional who collaborates with clients to help them better understand their ADHD, develop strategies for managing its challenges, and harness their strengths to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Unlocking Self-Awareness: Essential Steps in Managing ADHD
One of the most important aspects of managing ADHD is developing greater self-awareness about where we may hit challenges and what we need to do to support ourselves.
This can be a substantial ADHD challenge in itself since it requires - foresight, planning, organisation and probably most importantly of all and often overlooked - permission from ourselves to make our own lives easier.
Constructive Conversations: Rebuilding Communication in ADHD Partnerships
The love, trust and companionship of my dogs has been a constant in my life for 25 years and I wanted to share some key learnings that I think are very relevant to the ADHD experience.
Emotional expression requires trust and things start to get complicated when we anticipate the responses of other people. Of course, we want to be honest and kind yet unambiguous and usually day-to-day this isn’t too much of a problem. But it can really become a problem if one of two things happens. Or much worse both.
The first of those things is responding to the response instead of the stimulus. The second ‘thing’ is when this plays out with, or includes, big and important values and emotions. Like trust, loyalty, anger, shame, guilt, respect, honour, love etc.. In these situations responding to the response can quickly become supercharged, toxic and destructive. Personal boundaries are going to be seriously challenged.
Streamlining Immediate Goals: A Simple Filtering System for ADHD
I was helping a client to explore her need for a filtering system to prioritise her demands, without this the ADHD brain is frustrated by executive challenges.
Ironing Out ADHD Wrinkles: Finding Structure Through Daily Routines
We hate structure but we need it to function as it has a close relationship with the concept of control. We need to feel we have control.
Recognising Vulnerability: The Key to Managing Burnout and Preventing Escalation
I’ve had an interesting conversation about stress and burnout recently. Burnout and tiredness often go together and this can impact cognitive functioning.
Overthinking
The creative brain is a fantastic thing. Many of my clients are solutions imagineers in some way, seeing the possibilities, making the impossible possible. I find their company rewarding and stimulating. But the creative brain comes with some challenges of its own including the propensity to overthink.
My Teddy Is Art
I’ve been thinking of putting Teddy on the wall as a piece of art in a display case in my new place. Sometimes, we have the idea first without really understanding where the idea has come from or why and it’s taken a while to understand some of the things that Teddy represents for me.
Piglet Thoughts
Have you ever seen piglets sleeping? It's the most amusing thing, for piglets sleep in a pile of little bodies, all bundled on top of one another. This has some parallels with the way creative ideas surface in the ADHD brain.
Now, Not Now, Not
During a recent coaching session, I was helping a client explore her need for a simple filtering system to help prioritise a large number of opportunities. Without this, the ADHD brain is frustrated by basic executive skill challenges such as time management, goal setting and visualisation…
The Need To Be Busy
One of the things I've noticed recently is that there appears to be a dynamic that ADHD adults quite often fall into. It’s the need to be busy. The need to be up to capacity when it comes to all the tasks that they have to manage. The need to do this thing and that thing and not forget.
ADHD in the Workplace
Learning to understand how your own ADHD manifests itself is the key to developing appropriate ways in which to manage the challenges that it can bring. These challenges are often particularly relevant in the workplace. However ADHD workplace challenges can often be substantially reduced by making small but effective changes and embedding them until they become habits.
Crossing My Own Desert
In October 2017 the BBC broadcast a Horizon programme presented by the comedian Rory Bremner about how he discovered that he has ADHD. At the end of the programme my wife turned to me. “That sounds a lot like you” she said. “I was thinking the same thing” I said.
Why ADHD is so misunderstood?
‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’ is very commonly misunderstood. The first misunderstanding is that the words appear to be descriptive. The second problem are the words themselves. The word deficit implies ‘less than’ and the word disorder implies ‘malfunction’. The ADHD brain isn’t broken, it is wired a little differently and it’s unique.