The Most Valuable Things I’ve Gained from ADHD Coaching

Self-Confidence

When I came to ADHD coaching, I felt like I was a defective person who needed to be "fixed" in multiple ways. I had very poor boundaries, was letting my energy be sucked up by things I didn't believe mattered, and I was still very desperate to fit in. I felt like everyone who looked at me or interacted with me could see my brokenness. I was frustrated with my "crash and burn" cycle. I had a list of unfinished projects and people I felt like I had disappointed, and I felt like many ADHD people a lot of shame. My coach never made me feel less than. She always emphasized my strengths and reminded me to reflect on my accomplishments rather than my failures. Pausing and reflecting with my coach more allowed me to finally slow down long enough to appreciate some things I had ignored, including my successes and strengths. By learning how to work with my brain, I realized I could do things I thought I couldn't do; I just had to do them in a way that worked for me. The more I worked with my brain, the more I progressed and saw that I was not "stuck" and not "doomed to fail." I realized, "Hey, my brain is pretty cool." I realize I have something valuable to offer the world because of my different brain.

Self-awareness

This was not something I realized I needed to work on when I started ADHD coaching. I thought I actually had pretty good self-awareness…I did not. This was because I was not giving myself enough time to slow down and reflect. I had not yet come to the realization that my main processing style was through writing only that when I was writing more, I was more "calm," I wasn't taking enough time to pause before making a decision about something. I was the kind of person who would "say yes" and figure out the details later.

Self-awareness is a journey, and it's something I still work on daily, but I have ADHD coaching and my coach to thank for starting that journey. There are times when my impulsive nature gets the best of me, but I have a better handle on it now. I've learned to tolerate emotional discomfort more effectively and have a list of tools I can use when I am emotional so I don't just go on a shopping spree, send that email, or cause unnecessary conflict. I know how my body feels when I get emotional, and I have the power to take a step back now. I know not to act or make decisions when I feel like this.

Over this past year, my coach and I have reflected on moments when I was impulsive and lacked self-awareness. It was finally doing that and seeing how acting that way hurt myself and others that made me pull back. It's not a bad thing to be passionate and emotional. It can, I've learned, be channeled in healthy ways. However unmanaged, you can easily and regretfully destroy sometimes permanently, important things in your life. I told my coach, "It's always fun to watch the fire burn, but it's painful to have to sift through the ashes afterward."

To understand the importance of taking care of myself mentally and physically

I've learned over the past year through my coach educating me and through an increase in my self-awareness how important it is, especially when you have ADHD, to take care of yourself. When I exercise, I notice an improvement in my symptoms and can function better overall. With my ADHD symptoms, it was hard for me to sit still or down long enough to put together a meal. However, by working with my ADHD coach and nutritionist, I found ways to do that. I noticed that when I wasn't living a diet almost exclusively of candy and caffeine, I felt better and needed to make specific diet changes to function better in my daily life.

Mentally, ADHD coaching has shown me how much energy I was giving to the wrong things. Because my coach helped me better work on my boundaries and said no more, I finally had time to work on my own projects that I valued instead of spending all my free time and energy doing things and saying yes to people I was afraid to let down. But ADHD coaching helped me finally ask myself, "You show up for other people, but do you show up for yourself? When I reflected on that and said no, I made a number of changes to my life, including saying no more to social outings where I felt overstimulated and uncomfortable, putting more boundaries in place, and leaving certain activities that I no longer had my heart in. Now I can say, "I do show up for myself!"

Hope

Overall, ADHD coaching has simply given me hope. I hope that I can do things, hope because I now better understand myself, hope that I can be understood and better explain myself to others, and hope that the future can be better not only for me but for other people living with ADHD.