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Pills Don’t Teach Skills
It is often said, in regards to ADHD, that “Pills Don’t Teach Skills.” If you feel you have been treated for your ADHD with the best medication, and yet you still have many areas of your life that frustrate you, you may be lacking skills.
Years ago I created a metaphor for having ADHD. It is like living life with one hand tied behind your back. With the diagnosis and treatment for ADHD, your hand got untied but it is weak and undeveloped A hand that has not been used for a long time might require special interventions like physical therapy to become fully functional, Similarly, you might require the special intervention of ADHD coaching to make you fully functional and successful in life
An ADHD coach has special knowledge about the struggles you have and the skills you need to develop. An ADHD Coach knows how to help you learn these skills and incorporate them into your life. Working with me in a non-judgmental partnership, you will create and practice new habits and behaviors that lead to sustained success.
You Know What to Do; You Just Can’t Get Yourself to Do It!
Perhaps you have always known what you need to do to make your life more satisfying, but you have been unable to do those things. In other words “You know what to do; you just can’t get yourself to do it!” If this phrase rings true for you, do not despair.
Even if you are a notorious procrastinator, ADHD coaching will help you change your approach to life. Even if you have been late for things your whole life, ADHD Coaching will help you be on time, all the time. You have a room or a desk that you have unsuccessfully been trying to keep tidy for 15 years; ADHD Coaching will enable your success.
Within months you will find yourself doing the chores and tasks you have typically avoided—get places promptly– pay your bills on time—maintain a tidy desk—watch a limited amount of TV—spend an appropriate amount of time on the computer. Whatever new behaviors you decide you want in your life, we will work together to make it your continuing reality.
Here are some comments from a past client of mine describing how coaching helped her:
Cynthia is a great coach! She unlocks the magic of her clients’ unique potentials. Her ways are gentle, yet she stretches my boundaries. She has helped me unlock my own potential to create an orderly and peaceful office environment, which I had been unable to accomplish on my own for more than sixteen years. For all those years, I failed over and over again to create the office environment that I yearned for. I felt so much frustration and humiliation. I got very tired of telling my husband, “I have to work on the office.”
Cynthia asked me to dig deeper and deeper to find the missing pieces that would enable me to achieve success in my quest for lasting organization in my life. By asking questions and sharing her ideas, she helped me come up with a change I could make or a task I could do that moved me closer to my goal of a clean desk. Most importantly, she added a very essential step to the process—-reflecting on what might get in my way and how to deal with those obstacles. I learned that my stumbling blocks—procrastination, employing boundless ways to get off track, and most amazingly, not reading my to-do lists after I painstakingly wrote them—needed to be addressed and accounted for.
I learned that I must include in any plan a good amount of transition time from one activity to another. In addition, always, always, she asked for accountability. From week to week, she kept me honest. How did I do on my commitment? What didn’t work out? Re-evaluate, make adjustments, and try again. Don’t give up and don’t trash myself. She stretched me, prodded me, and guided me to find the answers within myself.
Working with Cynthia is fun! It is like being a scientist and an artist at the same time—you try a hypothesis, fail or succeed, formulate a new vision, and try again. You build upon little successes to gain enduring access to your goals. You use your failures to get closer to what might actually work. She helped me unlock my own secrets to success. I have learned how to work with myself toward my own goals—working around or changing bad habits, practicing new skills, and enhancing my organizational and creative abilities to solve problems. Working with Cynthia has empowered me to celebrate my successes and to allow my failures to guide my way to my goals. She has helped me become more of the best of who I am and can possibly be.
~~~~Patricia Alsop, psychologist in private practice