How Do I Know if I Need a Therapist or an ADHD Coach?
Episode Summary
If you’ve ever wondered whether ADHD coaching, therapy, or both would be most helpful, this episode will help you sort through the differences. I explore what each approach offers, how they can complement each other, and what questions to ask when choosing the support that fits best. It’s a practical guide for understanding your options and making an informed decision.
What You’ll Learn About Choosing ADHD Support:
- the key differences between ADHD coaching and therapy — and where they may overlap
- why executive function challenges sometimes need a different kind of support than mental health issues
- what makes therapy effective for adults with ADHD (even when it’s not ADHD-specific)
- how to assess whether a therapist or coach is the right fit for your current needs
- why it’s okay if your support needs shift over time — and how to adjust your approach accordingly
Transcript: Therapy vs ADHD Coaching
Therapy vs ADHD Coaching
(00:03):
Are you trying to figure out whether therapy A DHD, coaching or both is right for you? So are a lot of other adults with ADHD, you’re listening to Scattered Focused, done re-Imagining Productivity with ADHD, A podcast for ADHD, adults like you who want to get their essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired without trying to do it like everyone else. I’m Marla Cummins, and I’m glad you’re joining me today.
So when learning how to work with your ADHD, there’s certainly no quick fix. So if you’re thinking about therapy or coaching options, whichever you choose, it’s always better if it’s part of a holistic plan that may include things like nutrition, exercise, sleep, mindfulness, and other support. That said, in this podcast, I want to help you decide whether to work with a therapist, a coach, or maybe both.
Do I Need Therapy or ADHD Coaching?
(01:02):
So let’s get into it. Recently I came across a post on LinkedIn where the person said that therapy is past focused. It helps people process emotional struggles, heal trauma, and manage mental health. So far so good. And then he goes on to say, and therapy is meant to take people from dysfunctional level zero to two out of 10, to a functional one, four to six out of 10. This I found a little bit problematic, whereas coaching he goes on to say is future focused and it helps people achieve goals, improve performance, and create meaningful change.
And coaching, he says, takes them from a functional one four to six out of 10 to an exceptional one, eight to 10 out of 10. So reading this prompted me to revisit the topic of A DHD coaching versus therapy because I know many people who come to me are curious whether they should do therapy or coaching or both.
What Is ADHD Coaching?
(02:09):
Some had tried therapy and were disappointed when they weren’t able to make meaningful changes in managing their ADHD symptoms, so they arrived on my doorstep. It’s not necessarily that the therapist was not effective, it was just a mismatch with expectations. They may have received a great deal of help dealing with their mental health challenges, just not their ADHD symptoms. I will say no doubt, both ADHD coaching and therapy are useful for adults with ADHD, including those who are highly functional.
When it comes to ADHD symptoms, our mental health challenges can exacerbate our ADHD and our ADHD can exacerbate our mental health challenges. So it’s not either or. It’s more a matter of what do you need in this season of your life. So what is ADHD coaching? ADHD coaching, at least the way I practice it, is a partnership with each client to help them accomplish professional and personal goals.
(03:18):
A big part of that work is helping you strengthen your executive function skills, things like time management, task initiation, prioritization, and follow through as well as your associated emotions and mindsets. And we do this by using your current context, your real life responsibilities, goals, and challenges as the foundation for building these skills. Well, we certainly are exploring what has worked and not worked in the past.
Our focus is primarily future oriented. We are in a lab together designing experiments that take into consideration your personal preferences and skill level. Our ultimate goal is to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to get to. What makes ADHD coaching different than other types of coaching or therapy is that part of the process is learning more about your ADHD brain, how it functions and how to best work with it.
(04:22):
To do this, we lean into also self-acceptance and self-compassion of where you are right now while still working toward change. The long-term goal is to work toward a point where you are able to apply what you learn in coaching to other contexts in your life down the road. That is ultimately the most important goal rather than just changing your current context. And the way we do this is steeped in deep ADHD knowledge, of course, that is you’re learning how you operate best with your ADHD.
What Types of Therapy Help Adults with ADHD?
So then what is therapy and what is the best therapy for ADHD adults distilled down to its most salient feature therapy is designed to help you with your mental health. But since there are many types of therapies, it’s difficult to pin down exactly how you might do this. But generally speaking, therapy is designed to help you understand your current emotional landscape, how it may be rooted in your past, and how you can heal from it so you can live more fully in the present.
(05:30):
Well, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy is often recommended for adults. With ADHD. You are of course more than your ADHD, so depending on your needs, you might also explore therapies such as trauma-informed therapy, which helps you process past traumas in a safe, supportive way or maybe internal family systems IFS where you explore different parts of yourself to understand and heal inner conflicts. Then there’s acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, where it helps you act on your values even when feelings are uncomfortable.
And the last one that I’ll share, dialectical behavioral therapy, DBT teaches more concrete skills for managing emotions and relationships. Of course, there are many other types of therapies that you might want to explore for your current needs. And I bring this up in this podcast because for some of you though, you may have challenges with your ADHD, you may also need specialized help to treat any mental health issues you may be facing, not only for the sake of your overall mental health, of course, but also as a means of treating your ADHD because as I said before, mental health challenges can exacerbate your ADHD.
Why Is CBT Recommended for Adults with ADHD?
(06:54):
So then why is CBT recommended for adults with ADHD CBT was originally designed to treat depression and anxiety, but it’s since been adapted to support people with a variety of challenges, including ADHD. The goal is to help you recognize unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors, understand how they affect your emotions and actions, and then learn how to shift them into a healthier direction. That means it can sometimes overlap with ADHD coaching, like when it comes to breaking down tasks or thinking more flexibly.
But at its core, CBT is still a form of mental health treatment for adults with ADHD CBT can help challenging negative self-talk and shame, managing emotional reactivity and anxiety, building realistic expectations and more flexible thinking and developing coping strategies that support long-term wellbeing to generalize where coaching is focused on building proactive skills to help you do better. CBT is often more focused on helping you feel better so you can start doing things differently.
What Kind of Therapist Is Best for ADHD?
(08:10):
So then you may be wondering, so what kind of therapist is best for ADHD once you’ve decided what kind of modality you need right now in terms of therapy, the next step is to find a therapist that has some foundational understanding of ADHD. And I say foundational because in my experience of working with adults with ADHD, I know that it is very difficult to find a therapist that has a deep understanding and expertise in ADHD.
At the same time, in order for a therapist to help you, they must at least be able to into consideration as Kathleen Nadeau, a well-respected expert on ADHD notes, the neurological nature of ADHD and the issues that result from living with it over time. So then if both of these things are true, that most therapists don’t have expertise in ADHD and it’s important for them to be able to help you to have some understanding, what do you do?
(09:12):
There’s no perfect answer, but ideally, you want someone who understands A DHD and its impact well enough, even if they’re not offering ADHD specific tools to help you assess this. When you’re interviewing the therapists, ask them questions like, how much experience do you have working with adults who have ADHD? How do you see ADHD affecting the issues that I want to work on? Do you see A DHD as something that shapes a person’s behavior and responses or something to fix?
I’ve also included an article on my website with the podcast about how to interview therapist. And if you’re working with an ADHD coach, you can ask them if they’d be willing to talk to your therapist. I do this all the time and find it incredibly valuable as I get to learn more about my clients. And I also share my A DHD expertise with a therapist.
Can You Do Therapy and ADHD Coaching at the Same Time?
(10:09):
That brings us to the next question that many people have, which is, can you do therapy and coaching at the same time? The answer is yes, and some people do. What you decide to do will of course depend on your capacity in terms of time, energy, and money, as well as what you currently need. And you shouldn’t be surprised if you cover some of the same topics. Sometimes a client will say to me,
I don’t need to talk about this because I’m working on it in therapy. And for sure, there are topics that are clearly the domain of therapy, but some topics overlap. For example, we might talk about coaching about how your depression affects your ability to follow through on task or what productivity looks like when you’re feeling low, as well as what you can do to keep moving forward, even if it’s not at the same pace that you’d like.
Which Is Better for ADHD: Therapy or Coaching?
(11:01):
And then at the same time, your therapist might work with you on understanding the roots of your depression and how to treat it, or you might talk in couples therapy about what it looks like to be a more equal partner. Well, in coaching, we focus on how you can take the concrete steps to be able to do that. I’ve discovered that the synergy between therapy and ADHD coaching for my clients can be really powerful in helping them move forward.
So then, which is better for helping you work with your ADHD symptoms therapy or ADHD coaching? You might think I would say ADHD coaching, but that’s not necessarily always true for everyone. The question that you’ll need to answer is, what kind of help do I need right now? Let me illustrate this with two examples from two former clients. One client knew that she was struggling with executive function challenges and anxiety.
(12:02):
When we started working together, she thought if she could learn how to operate better with her ADHD, then her anxiety might significantly decrease. And while we made great strides together when we completed our work, she realized her anxiety was still there. And so after our work, she started working with a therapist to really target her anxiety. In another case, I worked with a client who had depression and also thought that the strength of her depression was, at least in part, due to her executive function, challenges her ADHD. What we discovered together though is that she had depression to such a degree that she was really not able to take the proactive steps needed in coaching.
So we pivoted to finding resources that were better suited for her at that moment, which were a therapist, a psychiatrist, and a couple’s therapist, while at the same time leaving the door open to resume coaching in the future if it made sense. And since between 60 to 80% of adults with ADHD have comorbid conditions, it’s not unusual and even common for my clients to have ADHD in some other condition. So if this is true for you, the question to ask yourself, is your condition, your other condition manage well enough for you to be able to be proactive? Or do you need to address that first or concurrent with a more proactive approach, such as ADHD coaching?
How to Choose Between ADHD Coaching and Therapy
(13:38):
So what if you’re just not sure right now whether to choose between a DHD coaching or therapy even after listening to this? One way to get clear about this is to interview therapists and ADHD coaches and explain what’s going on for you right now and tell them about your challenges in deciding what kind of support you think you might need right now. Ask them further thoughts. The truth is, it’s not always a linear process.
You might try coaching and realize therapy would be helpful too. You might be given therapy and discover that ADHD is driving more of the challenges than you realized, and you need targeted support around that. And if you’re considering both, but feeling overwhelmed, you don’t have to do both at full strength. Some clients will reduce the frequency of therapy while they’re coaching, then increase their sessions after we’re done coaching.
(14:39):
Bottom line, there’s no definitive answer, and that’s okay. You’ll figure this out as long as you’re asking the right questions and seeking out answers from people who might be able to support you. That’s it. I really appreciate that you joined me today, and if today’s episode hit home, I’d love to send you something to help you take the next step. It’s a free guide I created called Six Common Planning Mistakes with ADHD Adults Make and How to Avoid Them.
Just go to marlacummins.com/planning to get your copy, and that’s M-A-R-L-A-C-U-M-M-I-N-S.com/planning. And when you sign up, you’ll also get ongoing A DHD friendly strategies and resources from me straight to your inbox. And if you know someone else who’s trying to make the decision whether to engage a therapist or an A DHD coach, feel free to forward this to them. And until next time, this has been Scattered Focus Done Re-Imagining Productivity with ADHD. I’m Marla Cummins, and I’m glad you’re here doing the work. Keep going. You’ve got this.
