ADHD & Coaching: Education, Science, Finding a Coach by Phone, in Person, Skype? [Part 2 of 6]

I just want to get organized. I want to overcome procrastination. Eventually. For me it’s my job which I hate by the way.

[Dr. Barbara Luther] and we want to address those things but what I know is if they don’t learn about their brain and how it works. The system or strategy isn’t going to last and I’ll be back with them two more weeks doing another one and that’s not what that’s not useful for either of us.

[David Giwerc] well coaching is a very disciplined process and it’s a conversation a learned conversation with a set of skills that empowers a person with ADHD to make their own self initiated change but it has to occur with educating them first about their ADHD.

[Sarah Wright] and we know that information alone is a very therapeutic if it gives you a chance to understand what’s going on and therefore conceptualize it differently it gives you it gives you tools to work with just by understanding what’s going on.

That’s true. So it’s very rewarding to watch somebody find out that they’re not broken that they have a unique brain wiring and then the coaching begins and that’s a whole process of skill sets, but basically it’s a process of empowerment. So they have to begin to learn with me that we’ve got to help them get a little bit of education about their brain and that begins in those first sessions as well as beginning to identify strengths.

Strengths? like what? I’m a kinesthetic learner and I was actually punished for movement as a kid because I was told you have to sit still you can’t move. You don’t allow me to move I can’t learn. I can’t engage myself especially when I’m bored so the coaching process is about educating them about their unique brain wiring. Once they understand how that wiring shows up in the world then the coaching begins. Trying to help you figure out how your brain works and how to work with your brain I call it love the brain you’re with, because you can’t have the brain you want you got to love what you got and work with it and it’s a really a strength-based program.

So that now they understand their unique brain wiring because everybody has a set of natural recurrent patterns that work well in the right environment and understanding what gets in your way you can be empowered to move forward. and then the final piece of the ADHD

coaching’s the straight-up life coaching which is asking clarifying questions that help people get really clear on what they care about. So solving problems, getting educated, looking for repeating patterns, and then focusing on some of the bigger issues. I’m kind of big on science is there any scientific evidence that this works that it’s not you know voodoo or horoscopes er?

Well in the last five eight years suddenly the general coaching field has said oh there’s neuroscience to support what we’re doing we ADDers have known all along this is a different brain wiring so we’ve been looking and watching the science I think a lot more and teaching the neuroscience as part of understanding our brains. cool do I need a doctor’s referral because I just found out about you on a website? people come to coaching from different areas sometimes a spouse’s said get coaching or else sometimes a therapist or a doctor has said, you’re diagnosed now go get treatment. My clients come from various places I’ve got some very I got a big website or several big websites with a lot of information so a lot of people who will do any search on the web will usually stumble upon some of my sites and there’s a wealth of information on them I have a blog and and I’m very much I tend to be quite generous with information because I think somewhere somewhere somewhere out there somebody’s

looking for the information that I’ve got. I do have a lot of psychologists who diagnose ADDers who send me clients and some of the psychiatrists have found that about found out about me through the grapevine through some of their clients and who have been clients of mine and have sent them over a set has sent other clients over to me.

yeah I just found a list of coaches at TotallyADD.com and there’s another one that Chad and I was told to look in the back of attitude magazine and in the back of attitude magazine there are as a coach directory and he’s my husband Jeff said these these are the ones I see at the conferences and so I made a couple of phone calls I called Jodie Sleeper-Triplett and she said well I just trained somebody who’s in your area, and that’s that’s as easy as how I got I got connected.

Cool my only concern is that I live in a different state and it’s gonna be a 47 hour drive. 75% of ADHD coaching is done via telephone and all the training is done virtually and what we find is for some people physical works but actually physical can be distracting. In an environment on a telephone a cordless where you can move around you can create an environment that’s distraction free.

Oh that’s perfect. So it’s over the phone? Normally they’re done by phone I usually coach by phone I do have a few clients that I meet face-to-face. Most of my clients are want to come and do something in person and I felt the same way when I was coaching. Why? Momentum so if I have an appointment to go someplace well when I’m there I can do this and then then I’ll move on to this so there’s something about actually going and showing up someplace that I think is valuable that people have people appreciate. and I find phone sessions for ADDers although a lot of them will resist it they actually do much better on the phone session that in the face-to-face face-to-face they come to my office I’ve got paintings everywhere my husband’s an artist, they’re looking at this they’re looking at that they’re kind of distracted but on the phone it’s almost like a conduit between you know my ear and their voice their voice and my voice in their ear.

So there’s there’s a few distractions and they’re a lot more able to achieve a lot of things. I like that. Part of the coaching is to help that person create an environment where they can converse on the telephone and move forward. I was really surprised how things work on the phone as well as they do. Me too because I’m so visual. I would say 80% of the clients told me there’s no way I can do it on the phone I’m too visual I’m too

visual and what happens is they realize that the visual was also a distraction that would they learn to become better listeners they learned to pause more.

what about Skype? I have done Skype working with a teenager who wanted to Skype in bed with his laptop I’m going where’s your stuff he’s like oh it’s over there on my desk. I’m like could you put the computer down and maybe put it on your desk. So there’s a little mobility but for the most part Skype works fine and even even phone works fine. I’m a really visual person so sometimes I draw things out as I’m explaining them so Skype works better than just the phone. As coaching is a conversation that’s a natural pause I listen I ask you a question the question is interesting and engaging they have to pause to answer it. So they’re actually learning on the phone how to pause and actively listen and use all their all their executive function to improve. Right right.

It can work in any number of ways and I think part of finding a coach and the modality of it is the person for you’re connecting with and how you’re connecting and how your brain works also a lot of my clients are very kinesthetic. So they can move around in a physical environment they feel constrained they can’t always you know get up and walk around it’s distracting for the coach so we find that this is the best modality for training and for coaching. The other thing I offer a lot of group coaching so group coaching is actually a really amazing way of getting help because you’re not just tapping into one coach you’re tapping into a bunch of very very incredibly creative people who have already solved some of the issues that you may already have.

Plus you have a community because one of the major issues that a lot of ADDers have is they feel very lonely. You know they can’t really talk about what they have a lot of them will ask me should I tell anybody at work you know that’s that’s a big can of worms. It’s always a very very scary thing to decide. Some of them have and have had great results some of them have and have had poor results and some of them just haven’t and have tried to manage things on their own so having a community a small community to get to get back with and then and to to deal with to talk with on a regular basis really really makes a difference as well. Yeah yeah I guess so. Right.