ADHD Coaching - A Testimonial
Many people come to ADHD coaching looking for help with the basics, such as cleaning, cooking, and exercise. It can be an incredibly vulnerable thing to reach out for help with the things society tells us ‘should’ be easy, but this beautiful client testimonial shows how life-changing it can be.
I imagine most people with ADHD finally seek a coach when things finally become unmanageable and you are at a low ebb. That's where I was anyway when I decided to embark on a coaching journey with Leanne.
I have lots of letters after my name. Three university qualifications in English Literature, all from well respected universities; all completed in sporadic, terrifying, almost heart stopping last minute 6 week blocks of 24/7 hyper-focus, caffeine, pot noodles, and a laundry littered floor. I subsequently taught for many years in a high achieving, high pressure grammar school; where my pupils achieved the entrance grades they needed for very prestigious universities. However, my career amounts to a miserable blur of last minute lesson preparations and too many unmarked home works. Each year, I would end up arranging annual guilt driven fabulous Easter holiday revision classes, where I repaid the debt I knew I owed my students at the price of my own health.
Looking back at university and my career, somehow I got letters after my name which earned me a decent living, and so do many of those I taught. When I gave up teaching, I gave a speech, got a present, a bouquet of flowers and a smiling relaxed photograph on the school website, which was definitely a keeper. I left with immense relief for what I was certain would be a lovely life of calm and order that would finally enable me to do the things I could never do all my adult life because nothing else was ever done.
However, after everything else, I just couldn't manage to pull off what seemed to be the basics. ADHD are my real letters and for all the superpowers they may possess - they also make life so very difficult. By the time I met Leanne my entire domestic existence had descended in disorganised chaos, which was having an increasingly unfair impact on my family. I didn't do enough for my family and did nothing meaningful for me, because nothing else was ever done. But through a journey of support sessions with Leanne, text messages, emails, worksheets, reminders, prodding, before and after photographs, trips to charity shops and a few good laughs, I made it. Room by room, I finally achieved what actually turned out to be hardest, most ADHD tortuously boring, but ultimately most significant achievement of my life. I had a tidy, organised house. I had a home.
Will it stay that way? Well, lets be realistic - I have ADHD. But through Leanne, I am no longer paralysed by the time that vanished and left behind endless mounting undone chores. She helped to get me the entrance grades I needed to set me on my way back to what should have been essence of those university degrees and of my career. There is enough done now for me to finally be able to return to the too many unread letters that are stored behind the letters after my name. I'll read books, I might even write a story.
This is what ADHD Coaching with the ADHD Advocate did for me personally - it helped me to write my own story as ‘ADHD: an A to Z’. It’s incredibly rewarding to now be doing the same for other people with the same organisation!
ADHD Coaching is empowering someone to learn how to survive, not doing it for them. It’s designed to break through the barriers that are keeping you stuck, to live your life how you want to be living it, working with your brain rather than against it.
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