What Is ADHD Coaching — And How Do You Know If It's Right For You?
It All Begins Here
I produce and edit ADHD FM, a podcast hosted by Elianna Friedman about discovering what it really means to be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. For the Season 1 finale, Elianna turned the mic on me — her coach — and we had a conversation I really enjoyed. We covered what coaching actually is, how it's different from therapy, what to look for in a coach, and some of the somatic tools I use with clients. I'm sharing the highlights here for anyone who's curious.
Coaching vs. Therapy: What's the Difference?
This comes up constantly, so let me be direct: coaching is not therapy.
The most common way to put it is that therapy explores your past, while coaching is about designing your future. As a coach, my focus is on the present and where you want to go — not processing trauma or diagnosing anything. If deeper therapeutic work comes up in a session, my job is to acknowledge it and encourage you to find the right support for that.
That said, coaching and therapy aren't opposites. A lot of my clients work with both a therapist and a coach at the same time. They serve different purposes and can complement each other really well.
Coaching is also not advice. I'm not going to hand you a 10-step plan that worked for someone else and tell you to follow it. That's not coaching — and it's definitely not how ADHD brains work.
How Do You Know If You're Ready for Coaching?
The word I hear most often from people who are ready for coaching is stuck.
Maybe you know what you want to change but can't seem to take the steps. Maybe you've tried every productivity system out there and none of them have clicked. Maybe you just got diagnosed with ADHD — at 35, at 42, at 50 — and you have a new understanding of yourself but no idea what to do with it.
That feeling of wanting to do things differently, and being ready to actually explore what that looks like — that's the moment coaching tends to be most valuable.
What Actually Happens in a Coaching Session?
A session usually starts with setting the agenda: what do you want to focus on today, and where do you want to land by the end? Sometimes clients come with something specific that happened that week. Other times we're working toward a longer-term goal and picking up where we left off.
From there, it's mostly conversation — me asking questions, you following your own thinking somewhere new. I might introduce an exercise if it fits. We close with accountability: what do you want to try before we meet again?
I also like to open sessions with a short grounding practice, especially if a client is coming in scattered or unsure what they need. Something as simple as a few minutes of intentional breathing or a body scan can settle the nervous system and make it a lot easier to access what's actually going on.
How should you feel leaving a session? That's partly up to you. But I hope for: clearer, heard, more settled in your body, and with a concrete sense of what comes next. Not every session will feel easy — sometimes you'll leave knowing you have a hard thing to do. But you'll know what it is and why it matters.
Somatic Tools and the Body-Brain Connection
My background is in documentary filmmaking — I directed This Might Hurt, a film about mind-body approaches to chronic pain — and that work deeply shaped how I think about coaching. The body holds a lot of information that the thinking mind can't always access.
Some of the tools I use with clients draw on somatic practices: grounding exercises, bilateral stimulation, breathwork, visualization. One I come back to a lot is a simple energy-reclaiming practice — calling your attention back to yourself when you've been spread thin across too many people and demands. Another is a shielding visualization for days when you know you're walking into something that's going to cost you.
These aren't woo. They're practical tools for regulation, and they work especially well for ADHD brains that are often running on overstimulation and depletion.
How to Find an ADHD Coach
If you're looking for a coach, here's where I'd start:
- CHADD (chadd.org) and ADDitude (additudemag.com) both have coach directories
- The International Coaching Federation (ICF) lets you search by specialty, location, and credential level
- Your coach's own website — if they've written about their approach, you'll get a real sense of whether it resonates before you ever speak. Here’s my coaching page, what do you like about it? What bothers you? What questions do you still have after reading it? http://marioncunningham.com/adhdcoaching
When you reach out, treat the discovery call as an interview. Notice whether the coach seems genuinely curious about you. Do you feel heard? Do they ask good questions, or are they mostly pitching? Do you feel like you could say no to them?
A few other things I think matter: coaches who list their prices openly (so you're not blindsided at the end of a call), coaches who don't require you to commit to a large package upfront before you've had a chance to see how you work together, and coaches who hold the session around your needs — not their agenda.
And if a coach isn't the right fit? It's okay to move on. Even five sessions in. Your time, money, and energy are precious — especially with ADHD.
Ready to Explore Coaching?
If any of this resonated with you, I'd love to connect. I work with adults navigating ADHD, creative professionals, and people who are ready to understand themselves more deeply and build lives that actually fit.
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Listen to the full episode on [ADHD FM — Season 1, Episode 6]