ADD, ADHD and Executive Functioning Coaching Moment…The Always Right Client

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I love helping people with ADD, ADHD and Executive Functioning achieve success. It doesn’t get old seeing my clients get results. It does take effort and the desire to want to improve performance. This cannot be done by force.

Not every client does it exactly the way I would like (I understand the world isn’t fair). But some of my clients when we discuss things that are presenting a challenge, they have a difficult time seeing the bigger picture. They’ll resist help by always being right. Seeing things from another point of view isn’t in the cards. That doesn’t mean they don’t want help, it means that there’s resistance to help.

I’ve been working with Jill for around four months. Jill’s a bubbly teenager with many things going for her…except she doesn’t like hearing anything that doesn’t totally agree with her thought process. Everyone else is always wrong when they’re not in the same page with her. This is one of the best guards I’ve seen in my work.

So you might ask how I help Jill? Let’s start with the basics…I do not let her off the hook. I call her on her defense strategy. She doesn’t always like it, but she trusts me enough to let me do it. She will hear what I have to say and digest it. It helps her that I’ll call her out when she’s wrong and offer her solutions. The key here is to not call out the behavior, but the reason for the behavior.

This attitude and behavior is a defense strategy pure and simple. It helps us (I do this too) deal with our areas of poor self-esteem and not hear why we’re perceived as bad. Even though it helps us grow, it isn’t what we want to hear. As I tell Jill and every other client that uses this strategy, the world doesn’t always pat us on the back and ignore our shortcomings. We need to learn from our successes and failures and listen to others. That’s how we grow.

For more information on my ADD, ADHD and Executive Functioning coaching, please visit www.adhdefcoach.com. In addition to working with clients in-person, I also work with clients all over the United States and World online, please visit www.onlineadhdcoach.com for more information. To learn more about my other services, please visit www.carrolleducationalgroup.com & www.iepexperts.com. I can be found on Twitter at ADHDGuru. You can also find me on Facebook, Google Plus and Tumblr. Feel free to email me at [email protected] or call 877.398.ADHD (2343) with any additional questions.

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