ADHD Coaching
I coach adults and young adults with ADHD, diagnosed or not. Most of the people I work with have a noisy head, and so do I. That's not the qualification, but it does mean I'm not going to be surprised by anything you bring.
I start from a different question to the one most people have been asked.
Not "what are your symptoms?" but "how do you experience it?"
Two people with the same diagnosis can be living two completely different things, and the strategies that help one can be useless for the other. So the first job is seeing your version of it: what sets it off, how several traits stack up at once, and where there's a workable place to step in.
I work with the whole person and the system around them. Executive function, yes, but also the emotional side that rarely gets named: rejection sensitivity, shame, overwhelm, the anger, the things you start and never quite finish.
And I go underneath the techniques, because techniques don't hold on top of a belief that you're the problem. If years of being told to try harder have worn down what you think of yourself, that's part of the work too.
I've written more about how ADHD emotional dysregulation can turn into shame about who you are.
EMCC Accredited Psychosynthesis Coach
Behind that sits fifteen years of frontline practice in coaching, addiction, crisis and recovery, plus EMCC accreditation, regular supervision, and a long career in the music industry that taught me a lot about pressure, identity and what people do when they're cornered.
What does ADHD coaching involve?
Coaching is a series of regular, confidential conversations with someone who understands the wiring and isn't trying to change who you are. It sits alongside therapy and medical care rather than replacing them, and if something comes up that needs a clinician rather than a coach, I'll say so and help you find the right person.
In many cases, a diagnosis of ADHD, or a suspicion that ADHD may be present, is only part of the picture. I’m very experienced in working with people who are also experiencing issues with substances, behaviours or co-occurring conditions.
I frequently refer people to psychiatrists, advanced nurse practitioners, psychotherapists and other ADHD coaches when a different or additional kind of support would be useful.
Mapping the pattern
Early on, we take time to work out what you want from this, what has got in the way before and what a good outcome would look like for you.
Alongside our conversations, I use a set of interactive tools I’ve built for exactly this: What Flavour Is Your ADHD?, or WFIY. They aren’t an assessment, and they don’t diagnose anything. They’re a way of getting your experience of ADHD onto the page, so we’re both looking at the same thing.
Before we begin, or between our first sessions, you complete a questionnaire in your own time. It asks about eight areas of everyday life where ADHD shows up, from getting started to feelings and reactions, as well as what you’re good at. It asks how you experience each area, rather than asking you to decide whether you fit a box.
From your answers, you get Recipe cards for the experiences you recognised, followed by a first Journey through them. That part is yours to keep, and it’s designed to be useful on its own. By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of your own pattern, in your own words, and one thing to try.
The deeper part of The Map is something we work through together. It helps us look at how your experiences may interact: which ones often show up together, what seems to make them harder to manage and where there might be room to interrupt the pattern.
On my own, I could hand you that as a large pile of information. In a session, it becomes something else. We test whether it feels accurate, you tell me where it’s wrong or too simple, and we turn it into one or two things you can actually try before we next speak.
After each session, you get a short record of the work: what we looked at, what you agreed seemed true, what you rejected or qualified, the route you chose and the experiment you’ll try. It’s there so the work can continue between conversations, and so more of it becomes yours to use independently.
The tools are part of the coaching. There’s nothing extra to buy, and nothing in them replaces a clinician if that’s what you need.
Practical and specific
From there the work is practical and specific to you. Some of it is the day-to-day: activation, time, organisation, the environments you're working in.
Some of it is the part underneath: emotional regulation, boundaries, relationships, self-esteem, and the story you tell yourself about why things go the way they do. We look at where the pattern can be interrupted and widen the gap between what happens and what you do next. Ideas get offered, not imposed. You'll never be told what to think.
Understanding, not fixing
This isn't a quick fix, and it isn't being fixed. The aim is that you leave with more understanding of yourself than you arrived with, and the agency that comes with it, so that you need me less over time rather than more.
Sessions are an hour and take place on Zoom.