When coaching clients with ADHD, Polly focuses on their strengths and embracing their positive traits; she supports clients to gain deeper self awareness and shares information on ADHD where appropriate in order for clients to learn more about how they may differ from neurotypical people. This greater understanding allows clients to identify their own needs, articulate what they need and be able to share this with others. ADHD Coaching can cover the following topics and many more:

 

Should I share diagnosis with others (work / friends / family)?

Who actually am I?

What am I good at?
How can I be more confident?
How can I be more organised?
Learning to create and enforce boundaries

Self care and self compassion

Self awareness 
Better communication

Managing impulsivity 

Ruminating less 

Feeling more in control

Knowing your limits

Recognising when you’re stressed

Recognising and articulating feelings

Managing difficult relationships

Understanding impact on others

Being heard

Being taken seriously

What gives me energy?

Time management

Resource building and outsourcing where appropriate.

 

Polly doesn’t believe that ADHD coaching is about changing the person, it is about supporting them to understand and accept themselves for who they are and this in turn leads to increased confidence, self esteem and a sense of having more choice about how they live their life. 

 

Having grown up in a neurodiverse family and having neurodiverse children, Polly is very familiar with the joys and tribulations that accompany a neurodiverse brain. As she became more experienced in coaching and her understanding of neurodiversity deepened Polly started to notice how the approach that she used to coach neurotypical clients didn’t always resonate with her neurodiverse clients. In her work as a coach supervisor she began to see how coaches with limited knowledge of the neurodiverse brain could actually be unintentionally exacerbating some of the issues that their clients were bringing to coaching. Realising the need for an adapted approach to coaching, Polly found that there was actually only one organisation accredited by the international coaching federation to deliver training in neurodiversity coaching, which is US based ADDCA. Polly attended training with ADDCA in order to supplement her existing knowledge. 

 

Polly works with professionals and executives with a late ADHD diagnosis, her training is particularly focused on those with ADHD, as to date there is very little training available on coaching autistic adults, however there is a lot of cross over between the two and Polly’s experience allows her to adapt her coaching for other neurodiverse clients with sensitivity and safety. Polly believes that lived experience of neurodiversity allows a depth of compassion and understanding that couldn’t be replicated by a coach who is neurotypical, she has worked through her own late diagnosis of ADHD (which became apparent when her son was diagnosed) and the challenges and delights that came with it. Adjusting to this new understanding of herself was a very challenging time of reflection about her past, with much grief for the 40+ years that she had been misunderstood and under-estimated.  It also became the time when she felt most grounded, most proud of her achievements and most confident in her abilities. She had a new level of self-respect and pride in herself for managing her life so far given the number of limitations she had unknowingly experienced on a daily basis. Sharing the diagnosis with her friends and family created a host of other experiences and a shift in many of her relationships. 

 

Late diagnosis is a complex experience: ADHD shows up so differently in each of us not only because of our unique brain but our traits are also hugely influenced by how we have been raised, for example a girl in the UK will most likely have been raised to understand that good girls sit still and are quiet, this may mean that they have been able to mask their hyperactivity.  The unique presentation for each individual is one of the reasons that it is so hard to diagnose and also why a coach needs to adapt their coaching approach to each individual.  For some, a late diagnosis can suddenly make sense of their whole life experience, or may be something they have always known and therefore offer a sense of satisfaction in having the ‘stamp’ of affirmation. For most it feels like a rollercoaster of emotions: relief, surprise, disappointment, grief of how different their life could have been.  It represents the beginning of an exploration of learning about onesself, an opportunity to finally be able to understand and articulate how one feels or shows up in the world. 

 

There is often a process of ‘un-masking’ with late diagnosis of ADHD, peeling back the layers to try and understand who we really are and what we truly value in life. It can be complex and challenging to unravel, and to understand who we truly are. 

 

We often grieve what could have been, had we had this knowledge of our different and beautiful brain and if it had been celebrated and nurtured for its strengths and sparkliness! This can be an opportunity to practice self compassion and learn a kinder way to talk to ourselves. People with undiagnosed ADHD will often have spent a lifetime thinking; they don’t quite fit in, they are annoying, they aren’t very clever or aren’t very nice, or are too scatty or ditsy.  Imagine if they had been celebrated for their ability to think differently, approach things from a different angle to many others, creative, full of brilliant ideas, fun to be around, intelligent, problem solvers, great under pressure, kind, full of empathy, amazing intuition, likeable and loyal. `These are all very typical traits of people with ADHD diagnosis. Through coaching we can learn to quieten the negative voices in our heads and be proud of who we are, feeling free to live the life that we choose.