News and updates
Hello!
Usual blog post below, but also:
Two things that have happened recently and are really quite nice, and one request
Full Certification (click arrow to read more)
I am now an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) through the International Coaching Federation – this is from having completed my study, having hit 100+ coaching hours, and having done an exam.
My rates are not changing as a result, you will just see a different shiny badge on my emails.
Always Be Tinkering – Moving to new URL and Email (and possibly calendar platform) (click arrow to read more)
I’m moving to another email address (sam@adhdcoachingmelbourne.com) but doing it very gradually. If you’re an existing client I probably won’t put you through this change, but you may start getting meeting bookings from this new email address.
I’m also exploring other meeting platforms that are less clunky on the back end. I’ll double check you have received bookings if this happens while we are getting used to things. Thank you for your patience with this!
An ask: Check in! (click arrow to read more)
If it’s been a while, and you want to check in – just book a short hello through my Calendly.
If you’re thinking “I’ve been meaning to but it’s been too long”, or “I don’t know if I can commit to more”, or “I don’t know what I need but I need to talk it through”, or even “I don’t want a Coach, but I need to be pointed in the right direction”, then:
Still, book a check in with me.
I will not expect you to start up with me again. Unfortunately for my profit margin, I really just want us ADHDers to have as good a quality of life that we can muster, and we have to work together to do that.
If you just want to email a bunch of thought bubbles instead, please feel free to do that too: sam@adhdcoachingmelbourne.com
And if nothing else:
If you want to rate me on the googles visit this link
Please visit this link If you want to leave me a testimonial or feedback
Blog Post – The Promise of coping to thriving can make things harder – so here is another way to think about it
In which I talk about how the journey to a late diagnosis often comes about because something changed in your life that meant all the granular things that had previously helped you to cope, have stopped working for you.
When things start to fall apart, the last thing you want is someone telling you that one day you are going to thrive.
But underneath the structures that have fallen over, are the core values that drive you.
The first shock was that I didn’t even know I was coping. Or kind of coping.
I’m sure someone else has used the Jenga metaphor before, but I am going to use it again. The wobbliness and tightness in the chest has been building over time – and then something happens to pull the piece holding the tower up, and it all falls to shit.
By seeking support for our ADHD – whether that is a diagnosis or connecting with the community – we are demonstrating the hopefulness that I love most about ADHDers. But as we research, try to form new scaffolds, and new tools, the heaviness can also grow. The path ahead is daunting, and the reflection on your past, the grief, can be a weight.
Sometimes we don’t realise that it’s grief we are feeling. The need to shake away the past, re-design our lives, and ourselves, becomes the aim of the game.
Starting again does give us access to hope – but if we are unstuck by our diagnosis, by the very concept of the person we thought we were, then we can also risk sinking a hell a lot of time into browser tabs and pinterist boards without understanding why we are doing it.
If we decide everything we were doing before was wrong, and we are figuring out who we are now, as an ADHDer, we risk reconstructing that Jenga tower right back up again, only with a nicer planner, and a hope we can pile it even higher.
If we are feeling unstuck, and are concerned about our impact on others, as the ADHD diagnosis process can make you feel, then there is a risk that you can redesign your life based on the wants, needs, and values of others, all over again.
The promise of moving from coping to thriving can feel ridiculous.
Especially if the idea of thriving feels selfish.
Serving others to death
We know what it feels like to have our values dismissed, and our needs and sensitivities misunderstood. The fear of disappointing others can feel kind of normal.
The diagnosis can explain many of the times you say to yourself ‘why am I like this?’, but if the intention of that is to explain it so you can stop doing it, then it’s still ignoring the needs, wants, and values you need to survive.
With the diagnosis comes the temptation to fix yourself, to double down on your to do lists, to find more strategic approaches to make yourself small.
We ADHDers really care about other people, so using this new information to make ourselves convenient to others, feels like a natural next step.
Our energy can be unbounded when it comes to care. In the scheme of things, exhaustion is a small price to pay when we can see the benefit our physical and emotional energy brings to others.
There are fits and starts of satisfaction, that often outweigh the racing thoughts and exhaustion.
Then something changes – work, housing, relationships, health, hormones1. The coping makes itself apparent, because you can’t any more.
Maybe it’s your nervous system giving in and you just can’t summon the energy to turn on the oven, let alone go into work.
Maybe it’s a full schedule suddenly dropping away, a series of free weekends, and you still can’t get going with what you want to do.
As I have said before – we are hard on ourselves, we are hard on ourselves, we are hard on ourselves.
As easy as breathing.
Thriving isn’t even on the menu at that point.
What I think is going on – your wounded values
The Jenga tower falls after you hit a tipping point
But what I have found, is that the crash can be significant, because the system you have in place is:
- elaborate (but works for you)
- kind of secret from others because every time you’ve tried to show a system that works for others, they have challenged it and told you to do it another, ‘easier’ way2
- no longer in place (see above) so it’s all gone to shit.
Often you’ve changed the way you do things, or taken more things on, or not said you were not coping for really really good reasons, in theory.
Making other people happy is a great thing. I’m sure you’re good at it.
But at some point, we have forgotten that is different to doing things out of a fear of disappointing others.
Turning it around without throwing it out the window
Fear is what has drained you – or anger, or any of the other manifestations that play out in your nervous system.
But if ‘getting things done’ comes at the cost of destroying yourself, some sort of reckoning needs to happen.
Looking at your life from a new perspective does not mean starting from scratch, or aiming to rebuild things the same as before.
Working with an ADHD Coach means understanding the things that really drive you3 – your values, your interests, the things that satisfy you – and looking at how you can move towards them, without destroying yourself in the process.
The idea of thriving is not selfish, but it doesn’t have to be an endgame. If we research, experiment, pursue and seek what gives us inner peace, to me that kind of feels like the same.
References in this post
- The Neurodivergent Woman Podcast – The Female Hormone Cycle ↩︎
- How to ADHD / Jessica McCabe – 5 ways people try to help someone with ADHD that aren’t actually helpful ↩︎
- Dr Megan Anna Neff – Interest-Based Nervous System: Understanding ADHD and Motivation ↩︎