Why Coaching is a Perfect Fit for the AD/HD Brain
AD/HD coaching is a dynamic methodology that aims to nurture your ability to self-initiate change in your daily life. It is a supportive, practical, concrete process in which you and your coach work together to identify and pursue your goals. Coaching helps individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) to develop the structures necessary to function effectively and to learn practical approaches to the challenges of daily life.
At the heart of the AD/HD coaching model is the aim to help clients to self-initiate change in their daily lives. This goal is ultimately accomplished by using strength-based strategies and the client’s own innate creativity to solve problems. The coach provides structure, feedback and encouragement to keep the learning process a dynamic one. This is done until the client increases self-awareness, builds an arsenal of strategies from which to draw from, and develops the confidence in his/her own ability to self manage.
Nancy’s AD/HD coaching model is built on three core principles — Partnership, Structure, and Process — that enable the coaching process to take form and shape, as illustrated by the following diagram:
By co-engineering the coaching PARTNERSHIP, you take charge of the process, customize the service to meet your needs, and develop a user-friendly partnership to motivate and move you forward. Co-engineering enables you to figure out exactly what you need from coaching and how to get it. Your job will be to tell the coach where you need help and then to mold and shape the dynamics of the partnership.
Coaching establishes STRUCTURES, both internal and external, to improve your focus and to channel your abilities to function at your best and achieve your goals. Structuring takes you repeatedly through the steps of attending to details, planning, organizing, and prioritizing, until you’ve paved a path in your brain with boundaries to keep you from straying off course.
Through a PROCESS of inquiry, the coach guides you in self-exploration and learning. The non-judgmental questions asked by the coach assist you to analyze the situation at hand and work toward an achievable resolution. The focus is on problem-solving through guided discussion, so the language the coach uses is for the purpose of drawing solutions from you. Because you come up with your own solutions, you become empowered and can more readily take ownership and control of your actions.
Nancy’s coaching model is a uniquely effective approach because it takes into consideration the effects of the client with AD/HD’s neurobiology. Exciting discoveries made by neuroscientists suggest that the brain is flexible in its ability to learn continually. Research provides evidence of physical and chemical changes that occur in the brain when it is challenged or when new encounters are experienced. Rehearsing actions actually help to forge new neural pathways in the brain, allowing it to develop competencies in areas that historically have been deficient. This is how new habits are learned. Coaching paves the pathway for this learning to occur.