Q: “Will ADHD Coaching Help Me Battle My Shame?”
“By way of helping you understand (and depersonalize) your roadblocks so that you can reach your goals, coaching does a tremendous job of accentuating your strengths, building self-esteem, and reducing chronic ADHD shame.”
Q: “I’m always trying to fix myself. Can ADHD coaching help me overcome intense shame?”
ADHD coaching can be a lot of things to a lot of different people, in large part because no two coaches use the same approach.
But as an ADHD coach myself, I can definitely say that coaching helps individuals overcome the shame that so often accompanies ADHD.
[Read: Life Coach or Therapist — Who Should You See First?]
ADHD coaches help build accountability — a huge step for many people with ADHD who can’t always trust themselves to honor their own promises. (A frequent source of shame.) ADHD coaches bolster accountability by emphasizing what’s going right. They are the outsiders who will hold up a mirror and say, “Look at all the things you’ve accomplished.” They also help you solve problems when somethings isn’t going right.
An ADHD coach will help you understand, for example, what got in the way of the tasks you said you’d complete last week. Maybe you didn’t have enough time, or maybe the task was more overwhelming than you anticipated and it needed to be tackled in smaller chunks.
By helping you understand (and depersonalize) your roadblocks so that you can reach your goals, coaching does a tremendous job of accentuating your strengths, building self-esteem, and reducing chronic ADHD shame.
If you are interested in working with an ADHD coach, use these pointers to guide your search:
[Read: The 7 Most Essential Benefits of ADHD Coaching]
- Find someone who is trained in ADHD and has a life coaching background.
- Talk to multiple coaches before deciding on one whose style you like and who fits your needs.
- Make sure you have time for coaching. Depending on where you are in your life, sometimes adding one more thing — especially if it will burden you financially — may not be the best choice at the right time.
- New coaches are often more affordable than coaches who have many years of experience. Private coaching also tends cost more than coaching groups.
- Coaches are not the same as therapists. Learn more about the differences here to help you decide if therapy might be a better option.
ADHD Coaching to Cope with Shame: Next Steps
- Find: ADHD Coaches via The ADDitude Directory
- Read: ADHD and the Epidemic of Shame
- Read: ADHD Therapy Comparison — CBT vs. ADHD Coaching
- Read: Solid Reasons for Investing in an ADHD Coach
The content for this article was derived, in part, from the ADDitude ADHD Experts webinar titled, “ADHD Is a Whole-Life, Whole-Body Experience” [Video Replay & Podcast #427] with Linda Roggli, PCC, which was broadcast on October 26, 2022.
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