ADHD Counselling
What is ADHD Counselling? Surely all counselling is the same, right?
Yes and No—let’s get into it. Hi, I’m Amy. I’m an ADHD Counsellor based in Salford, Manchester. I use a person-centred modality with a lived experience in ADHD to help you navigate life's difficulties and find relief in understanding your ADHD and who you are underneath all those layers of masking that you’ve been maintaining your whole life.
What is ADHD?
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (also known as ADHD) is a condition that is defined by a pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity. With symptoms typically showing up in childhood, those with ADHD often struggle to concentrate for long periods. While the condition is more commonly diagnosed in younger people, more people are receiving a diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood.
Adult ADHD and a ‘late’ diagnosis.
Being diagnosed with ADHD, either medically or self-diagnosed (all are valid) as an adult and later in life, presents its own challenges. Even just recognising you might have ADHD can be hard because each time you are faced with a challenge or misunderstanding in society, you create layers of masking and ways to cope.
Understanding that your struggles are real, that you aren't just lazy, forgetful, or clumsy, is just the first step. Accepting that you're neuro-diverse and how to approach the neurotypical world with this new focus is an undertaking, especially without support. That's what I want to help provide: support and sincerity to let you not just accept yourself but grow, learn, and love yourself fully for who you are.
How ADHD counselling can help:
Reduce Symptoms:
ADHD isnt something that needs to be fixed, but that doesnt mean that we can’t work to help you manage better in a neurotypical world. By exploring things such as mindfulness, reasonable everyday adjustments to thinking and doing, and ADHD friendly ways of working we can together help you through the harder parts of ADHD.
Improve Executive Functioning:
Counselling can help you understand the problems with executive function that comes with ADHD. Together we can help you realise that it isn’t laziness, that you arent broken, but sometimes just need a little help to get going, and how to maintain that momentum to become unstoppable.
Boost Self-Esteem:
Counselling can help individuals develop a more positive self-image and cope with the challenges of living with ADHD. Rejection sensitivity disorder is one of the lesser talked about downsides to ADHD, that deep overwhelming feeling of being left out, unseen, and rejected. Through counselling you can develop systems to allow yourself to feel your eotions without becoming consumed by them, and acknowledge that things arent as bad as they feel.
Enhance Relationships:
Counselling can also help you learn to communicate more effectivelyin your relationships with family, friends, and colleagues, fostering a sense of connection and support. Sometimes just knowing what it is your feeling, and being able to articulate those feelings, can be a significant help.
Counselling isn’t something that is designed to fix you or cure you of ADHD, because you don’t need fixing, and you don’t need curing. Instead, we can work together to allow you to just be you, your best unapologetic self, armed with the tools to tackle a neurotypical world in style. I’m here to help, in lots of ways but most important of all, I want you to feel seen, heard and understood in our sessions.