Flashback: Can This ADDer Be Saved? – Part 2

Katy Moves Forward

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

This week let’s take a look at some of the background details of the story begun in Part-one of this 4-part article, posted last Monday.

Click HERE to read PART 1 of this story

This part of the story outlines the steps Katy took to locate her support structures, leading up to her decision to hire Donna as her coach. Throughout this story I will continue to use “ADD” instead of the DSM-5 “ADHD.”  Click HERE to find out why.

 

A few Coaching Results from Clients themselves found HERE

You GO Girl!

After that fateful day when Katy Nolan finally “hit the wall,” she did something that is still rather unusual in the ADD universe: she began looking for a Coach immediately.

Since she was intimately aware of every little detail of her best friend and next door neighbor Barb Sitwell’s coaching sessions, Katy knew right away that she, too, wanted that kind of help.

Those first couple of years after diagnosis had been extremely frustrating for Barb, and both women could really see the difference in Barb’s life since she and Larry could finally afford to have Barb begin working with her Coach.

Katy believed she had all the ADD-info she needed

After all, she had been listening to Barb process every step since diagnosis, and they both had seen Barb’s many challenges for years before that, even though they only recently understood the reasons behind them.

Since she and her best friend were so very different, Katy wasn’t at all convinced
that it would turn out that she herself had ADD.

Still, she liked the idea of having some kind of guide to help her step through the process, identifying and prioritizing each of her own inevitable next steps following what Barb called Katy’s recent Boggle – no matter what the reason behind it turned out to be.

Whatever was going on, she was sure she didn’t have time to agonize over how to proceed without upsetting the tenuous control she exerted over the responsibilities she was already juggling.

Unlike their friends the Sitwells, the Nolans were a two-income family. They didn’t have to wait for a raise or a promotion to be able to hire the services Katy needed and wanted, and Katy couldn’t fathom finding the time or energy to add self-education to a schedule that was already jam-packed.

But which coach?

Although she trusted Barb’s Coach Donna already, and it was obvious from her work with Barb that Donna had a lot of information about ADD under her belt, Katy was initially concerned that the sessions would take place over the telephone.

She also wondered if hiring an ADD Coach before she
knew for sure if she even had ADD might be premature.

She was dubious of any advice to hire a Coach and a therapist, and more than a little ambivalent about the possibility of medication.  Still, she was more than ready to embrace any diagnosis that would offer an explanation for her feeling that she was always “swimming against the current,” swept backwards every time she missed a single stroke!

After quickly mulling it over, she decided that placing a call for an appointment to check out her considerations and assumptions with Donna might be wise.

Besides, at this point, she didn’t know what else she might try.

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Fact Finding: Katy’s preliminary call with ADDCoach Donna

Donna acknowledged Katy’s concerns, and congratulated her for having the courage to confront them from the very beginning.

She assured her that it wasn’t necessary to actually have ADD to benefit from the brain-based, systems development focus of a comprehensively trained ADD Coach.

However, it could prove to be extremely important to work with a coach who had specialized ADD-specific training if it turned out she did.

She underscored the reality that nobody could medicate her against her will, and that Katy wasn’t even eligible for medication until she had a formal diagnosis.  She advised her to hold the worry until she had more information.

She encouraged Katy to investigate some other Coaches for comparison, especially those who worked in a different format.  

She advised her to attend the very next CH.A.D.D. meeting to ask people she met there for the names of their ADD doctors, coaches and therapists.

Finally, she gave her a web address with some pointers on what questions to ask to find qualified ADD professionals who were a good “fit”.

Describing the Concept of FIT

Donna explained that finding the right doctor, therapist, or Coach depended on many things besides training, information and appropriate level of skill, which were, of course, essential.

Found HERE

She compared the process of locating the best professionals for her to the one Katy used deciding to marry Paul.

If she thought about it objectively, Donna suggested, she would realize that, sexual chemistry aside, there had been nothing seriously wrong with most of her other boyfriends.

Paul just seemed a much better match for Katy’s personality, communication style, and interests.  He just fit.

“Coaching and therapy are two different tools,” Donna went on to say.  “While not everyone finds they need both, it is probable that identifying and managing a possible ADD diagnosis will bring up a lot of psychological issues to untangle.”

She explained that additional issues frequently develop as a result of years of living without the diagnosis of any condition that warranted one. 

A therapist could also help her work through a great many family-of-origin issues, especially helpful if she did turn out to have ADD that was not discovered in childhood — issues resulting from undiagnosed ADD, but not necessarily ‘ADD issues,’ per se.

“You don’t have to be an emotional train wreck to benefit from therapy,”
Donna reminded Katy.

In explaining the differences, she told Katy that:

• Together, she and her ADD Coach would focus on action as they expanded her knowledge of her particular “flavor” of ADD (or anything else).  They would develop a blueprint for accomplishment, taking into account her particular challenges, and step through it weekly.
• Katy’s therapist would support further exploration of psychological issues, and would help her to develop a new world-view that encouraged her to incorporate her diagnosis without becoming defined by it. 

As their call concluded, she left Katy with the suggestion to call her boss the moment she hung up the phone to discuss the possibility of extending her report deadline.

KATY GETS INTO ACTION

Found HERE

Katy was unusual in another way — she took the coaching!
She began taking action steps immediately.

Her boss surprised her by being extremely reasonable about extending the deadline until the following Monday.

She actually commended Katy’s professionalism in giving her sufficient time to reschedule her own priorities and action-items.

By the end of the day, Katy had interviewed another coach who worked over the phone, emailed a “CyberCoach” who did coaching by email, scheduled an appointment to meet a Coach who worked face-to-face, and set up an appointment with Barb’s doctor to check out the possibility that she, too, might warrant an ADD diagnosis.  

(She did, of course, or that would be the end of our story!)

She told Paul to plan to take care of the kids so that she could attend the upcoming CH.A.D.D. meeting. She even found time to begin a rough draft of her report, despite little Mary’s constant requests for attention, quite unhappy with having to stay in bed with the measles.

She was surprised to realize that, once she felt the gun was out of her back, she actually enjoyed the process of putting together the report she delivered on the following Monday.

Katy was a woman on fire!

By the end of the weekend she had the names of several other doctors and therapists, and had decided to hire Donna.

THE EARLY STEPS

She quickly ruled out the CyberCoach. Work email was more than she wanted to have to handle!

Of the Coaches she interviewed, Katy felt that Donna was the best match for her own personality and communication style.  “Fit,” Donna called it.  She and Donna had a similar sense of humor, seemed to understand each other without a lot of explanation, and Katy felt comfortable opening up to her.

She took a deep breath, dialed Donna’s number, and told her she had decided follow her instincts, even though it entailed a weekly long-distance call.  The elimination of travel time and the easy availability of after-work appointment times were pluses, and she felt confident that Donna’s processing tips would make phone coaching workable.

She was also painfully aware that she was half afraid that she could have gone on interviewing coaches forever, which probably would make the process of choosing one to work with all the more difficult.

Anyway, she reasoned, she much preferred to spend that time gettin’ ON with it!

Katy learned a lot more about ADD and her own particular “flavor” in the six weeks it took her to create her preliminary action plan.

During that time she was a dervish.

Found HERE on Pixabay

She started a Coaching Notebook immediately, and set it up as Donna suggested, purchasing a 3 ring binder, several sets of tabbed dividers and a pack of her favorite kind of 3-hole paper with lines (NO hole punching!)

She was religious about keeping everything related to their Coaching sessions in her Notebook and having it in front of her for every call.

While Katy didn’t completely understand everything Donna was telling her about modalities and brain-based ADD-style processing at first, she noticed that more things made sense every week.

Barb laughed with Katy at Donna’s description of ADDers as “ahistoric” —

“Win the lottery on Monday, fall in love on Tuesday, get a new car on Wednesday, have to work overtime on Thursday and get stuck in a major traffic jam on Friday.”

Saturday: ‘How was your week?’
TERRIBLE!

Unless, of course, we have a record of the details in black and white (or a good friend like Kate to remind us, Barb always added).

You don’t think BARB took time to track, do you?

Katy began to hear a voice in her head that sounded a lot like Donna’s, reminding her to remember to practice square breathing whenever she felt the return of her frazzled pre-coaching self.  She was beginning to feel more in control every week too – less reactive to Boggle-Bait, as Donna called it. And she was finding new uses for her Coaching Notebook all the time.

Stay tuned for more of Katy’s story, along with the difference in Barb’s MUCH more erratic – yet highly successful – progress. (links to the next articles in their original format below, for anyone who can’t wait)

Can this ADDer be Saved?
(The entire coaching story, illustrating how coaching works in narrative format)

• Flashback: Can This ADDer be Saved – Part 1
• Flashback: Can This ADDer be Saved – Part 2
• Flashback: “Can This ADDer be Saved” – Part 3
• Flashback: Can This ADDer be Saved – Part 4

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COACHING LINKS at end of all posts

• Brain-based Coaching with Madelyn Griffith-Haynie
• Brain-based Coaching Fees & Formats
• The Group Coaching LinkList – explaining how this format works

Assorted articles about ADD and ADDCoach Concepts:

• A Bunch of Words about FIT (#1 of 5)
• Distinctions: Coaching vs.Therapy
• ADDerWorld – Folks Like US!
• ABOUT Boggle
• ABOUT Black & White Thinking
• Reframing: Escaping the Frame changes the VIEW
• ADD Overview 101 (#1 of 5)
• Top Ten Question to ask to find a Grrr-e-a-t! ADD Doc

A few Articles in the Attention series:

• A Little ADD Lens™ Background
• The Link between Attention and Action
• The Dynamics of Attending
• Symptoms of Attentional Struggles
• Distinguishing Distractibility

More from the ADD Coaching series:

• The ADD-ADHD Coachability Index™
• What to Talk About in Your Coaching Call
• Until they believe they can, they can’t
• ADD-flavored Coaching
• Key Tasks for ADD Coaching
• 10 Essential ADD Coaching Concepts
• Ten Basic Coaching Skills used most often with ADDers
• 10-Step ADD Coaching
• Brain-based Coaching Paradigms

Related articles ’round the ‘net

• Different Kinds of ADHD, Different Kinds of Coaches (psychologytoday.com)
• Scratching the “itch” (thelovelyaddict.com)
• Coaching, out where the ADHD rubber meets the road of reality (Dr. Charles Parker’s corepsych blog)
• Teens turn to life coaches to cope with pressures (seattletimes.nwsource.com)