ADHD Counseling or Coaching?
What’s the difference and how to choose?
An ADHD coach helps people with ADHD learn and implement practical skills to manage some of the struggles accompanying an ADHD brain. A good coach will be well-versed in up-to-date research on ADHD and have extensive knowledge of how the ADHD brain works.
A coach looks at a client’s strengths, personal narratives, and core values and uses these to help them identify priorities and goals. A coach will also educate about ADHD and work with the client on ways to overcome obstacles and create action steps to achieve success.
A counselor does many of the same things but, unless they specialize, tend to be more of a generalist. Counselors focus on helping the client find an emotional resolution to the presenting problem. Counselors look into the past to explore factors contributing to a client’s emotional issues. Counselors are trained to work with various mental health issues that coaches are not including anxiety, depression, and trauma.
The neurotypical brain operates much like a linear game. It focuses on the task at hand until it is completed (or timed out) before moving on to the next task. Any information not directly related to the task at hand becomes irrelevant. The ADHD brain works more like a web design game.
ALL information is potentially relevant to the task at hand. If the ADHD brain becomes bored with the task, it explores the available information to add to the task at hand or work on a different task. This is often described as being distracted, but it is more accurate to say that the ADHD brain is attributing relevance to everything in its environment.
Using this imagery can be a way to help others understand the ADHD brain as well as provide visualization for self-compassion when you find your mind engaged in more than the present task.
Interested in the research? Here’s a great resource: https://www.muih.edu/sites/default/files/2017_research_symposium_abstracts%20_posters.pdf
Interested in pursuing coaching? At ReVision ADHD Coaching and Consulting our coaches have been extensively trained in working with the ADHD brain. To learn more, click below.
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