Adult ADD & ADHD Coaching
I would like to introduce you to Bonnie Mincu. She is an Adult ADD & ADHD Coach. She has written an article to summarize the role of coaching for adult ADD or ADHD.
I am sure that you will find this information helpful. If you want to learn more, you can visit: Adult ADD Coach Interview to participate in a live, free, teleseminar when I will interview Bonnie about how adults can succeed with their ADD or ADHD.
Here is Bonnie’s article - and please visit her site listed at the bottom of the article:
What is Adult ADD Coaching, and What Can it Do for You
By Bonnie Mincu
As a coach specializing in adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, I often get asked about what I do. As more and more people become aware of Adult ADHD and search for solutions, they are encountering coaches. Often they are puzzled as to how a coach can help them.
Coaches work one-to-one with individuals, often by phone, to help them in a variety of ways: to reach goals, enhance performance, make decisions, improve relationships, and advance their career. Many coaches choose to specialize in one or more of these areas. ADHD Coaches usually work with people on all of these matters. But the difference is that ADHD Coaches are trained to understand the particular challenges of ADD Adults.
“I know what to do, but how do I get myself to do it?”
With ADHD Coaching, it’s often not as much a question of helping a client determine what to do, as in creating a strategy for how to get them to do it.
Solutions for an individual with ADD need to be tailored to that person’s unique set of preferences, personality, strengths and weaknesses, focus pattern and attention span. If a person can’t relate a solution to their own life, the solution won’t work for them.
An example is the typical problem of lateness. ADD Adults who request coaching almost always have a pattern of being chronically late. But if I questioned ten different ADDers about their traits and habits, I’d find ten different reasons for the lateness. A one-size-fits-all solution would be worthless. Each individual needs their own process for changing the behavior and thinking that leads to their lateness.
What comes first, coaching or medication?
Adults who are newly diagnosed - or self-diagnosed - sometimes think that medication will replace coaching, or vice-versa. Or they ask which they should start first.
It really doesn’t matter which comes first. Medication for ADD is designed to help improve your focus, but it will not necessarily change your habits. So while it will increase your attention span to allow you to write that boring report for work for longer stretch of time, the pill probably won’t keep you from procrastinating in starting the report. It won’t help you find out the pieces of information that you might need that are buried on scraps of paper buried all over your office. And it won’t remind you to make an entry on your weekly status report or to get it in to your boss on time. These things probably require coaching to help you develop organized habits and a good system that you can follow.
On the other hand, without ability to focus, it’s much more difficult to concentrate on your new habits or on following any system.
The bottom line is, medication and coaching are not mutually exclusive. Both are beneficial in different ways.
Forget about discipline; go for the flow
How many times a day do you tell yourself things like: “I should organize my closet,” or “I just need to get disciplined about my expense reports”?
How well does that work for you?
ADDers can rarely force their brains into action. You’ll do much better with learning what it takes to get your brain into flow. Once your brain flows into action, what has seemed so difficult before can be accomplished painlessly.
Being coached can make you money
While ADDers usually call for coaching in order to overcome problems, I most enjoy when I can help them realize opportunities as well. Having been an executive / corporate coach for ten years prior to ADD coaching, I’m proud of the role I play in helping my clients achieve major turnarounds in their business and careers. Several ADD entrepreneurs turned their businesses around in just a few weeks, simply by learning how to change their habits.
How much money or opportunity are you leaving on the table, by assuming you can’t change? I challenge you to find out. Call an ADHD Coach and invest in yourself!
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Bonnie Mincu, M.A., is the founder of “Thrive with ADD” (http://www.thrivewithadd.com), a program of positive coaching and self-paced learning solutions for ADHD Adults. Her “Thrive with ADD” Workshop at New York University and her self-paced Workbook / CD package are designed to help ADDers coach themselves in the many different challenges they may face. Her five-minute online video, “The Attention Movie” at http://www.theattentionmovie.com, has had emotional impact on ADD Adults around the globe. Contact Bonnie for a complementary coaching consultation.
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Written by Dr. Kenny Handelman - The ADHD Doctor
To find get a FREE special report on ADD/ADHD Medication, visit: Medication Mastery
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February 6th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this interesting article , showing in what areas the med helps and where the coaching plays a role. The question is why is not this coaching , working with approach not suggested for children. I think our children deserve to be coached, taught skills and not just be manipulated with rewards , praise and punishments
Allan
March 19th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Hi,
I think that coaching is not suggest with children because , most parents seem to take on that role.
Many time the doctors or the perfessional make suggestions to the parent(s).
THe chances that the parent has ADHD is highly possiable as well therefore it is hard for the parent to follow through on these suggestions.
It most be best to get a family coach.
The problem is our health system doesnt pay for this. It maybe great if you have private insurance that does but we all dont.
I think anyone who has ADHD should have equal rights to this, the family, the parent(s), the child and sibblings. ADHD has more impact on a family then some are awear.
THe school has a difficult time with families as they dont seem to realize that adult/parents have ADHD aswell.
I think coaching and educating would be be helpfull.
It also hard to find the right educated coach.
nancy
Nancy