How is ADHD coaching different from life coaching?
- tarahpeltz
- Mar 12
- 3 min read
ADHD coaching falls under the overall life coaching umbrella, which includes other focuses like executive coaching, career coaching, relationship coaching, and more. However, ADHD coaching is a highly specialized outlier among these other categories. Let's explore what makes ADHD coaching so unique.
What is ADHD coaching?
Let's start by defining ADHD coaching. CHADD describes it as "a practical intervention that specifically targets the core impairments of ADHD such as planning, time management, goal setting, organization and problem solving." To add more detail:
ADHD coaching helps the client create personalized, sustainable solutions to ADHD related challenges
Sessions are tactical and future focused rather than deeply exploring the past
ADHD coaching strengthens executive functioning skills to address the unique problems of ADHDers
ADHD coaching uses a strengths based approach with well-defined goals to create accountability and track progress
ADHD coaching is generally occurs over a limited set of sessions rather than indefinite recurring appointments
What does ADHD coaching have in common with life coaching?
ADHD coaching shares certain structural aspects with other forms of coaching. In fact, many ADHD coaching certification groups offer blended coaching fundamentals courses with other focus areas, but this is an approach I personally disagree with. In my opinion, the techniques and clientele are so meaningfully different that it does everyone a disservice to combine ADHD coaching with other varieties.
Nonetheless, all types of coaching share the same format of being client focused, structured, and skill building. The idea is to help the client build lasting skills so they aren't dependent on coaching forever, similar to how a physical therapist would teach you exercises to physically strengthen your muscles without you being dependent on weekly physical therapy sessions forever.
What are some examples life coaching principles that clash with ADHD coaching?
Outside of the format, ADHD coaching has meaningful differences from other types of coaching. For starters, ADHD coaches generally either have ADHD themselves or have an intimate knowledge of ADHD. Some of the core tenants of life coaching are also in direct conflict with the needs of ADHD clients, which means the sessions can look dramatically different. Here are a few examples:
Life coaching principle #1 - The answer always lies within the client
At face value, this life coaching rule is meant to empower clients. By continuously reinforcing that the client was able to come up with their own solutions through gentle coaching assistance, you help teach them long term skills and ensure clients don't become overly dependent on coaches to fix problems for them.
However, the nature of certain ADHD coaching problems are different because ADHD has many well researched common challenges with documented solutions. For example, it wastes everyone's time if a client is exploring an intense emotional reaction at work, but they have not heard of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD). Instead of waiting for you to rediscover the concept of RSD, a good ADHD coach will teach you about RSD and help you to examine whether this incident is an example of RSD. If it seems like you are experiencing RSD, your coach will explain the typical approaches to manage RSD and work with you to determine a game plan for testing out the techniques most likely to help you.
In short, ADHD coaches play a more active advisory role around ADHD education and management techniques rather than making the client come up with every solution.
Life coaching principle #2 - The client sets the agenda for the session
Once again, this is a seemingly benign life coaching rule. After all, the session is meant to help the client. They should be fully in control over the work they are doing in coaching.
But it's not so simple for a client with ADHD. How many of us have gone into a meeting with our manager, therapist, or even doctor and completely forgotten what we wanted to discuss? Working memory issues make it difficult for someone with ADHD to set the agenda on the spot every time and maximize the usefulness of the sessions.
To help with this, a good ADHD coach will determine the client's overall goals and challenges during intake. If a client can't think of a topic during a future session, the coach might suggest topics mentioned in the past that were not yet explored or even suggest new topics, like working on specific executive functioning deficits.
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