Neurodivergent & Life Coaching
The Holisitic Coaching Philosophy
When I founded this practice, my focus was primarily on movement as a regulator. However, experience has shown that movement alone is too narrow. A neurodivergent brain doesn't exist in a vacuum; it operates within a complex web of executive functions, emotional regulation, and daily life demands.
Today, my practice is a holistic, person-centered **Neurodivergent & Life Coaching** service. While I hold a Graduate Certificate in Leadership and Coaching, my deepest passion is partnering with neurodivergent (ADHD, Autistic, AuDHD, Aphantasic) and neurotypical adults to design lives that work with their unique brains rather than against them. I position myself as a holistic Life Coach, helping you navigate career transitions, personal growth, routine building, and self-acceptance.
Our Two-Pronged Approach:
1. Top-Down: Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC)
CBC is the gold standard core for ADHD and executive function coaching. We work together to identify cognitive blocks (like shame spirals or all-or-nothing thinking), restructure internalized unhelpful narratives (like "I'm just lazy"), and build customized external scaffolding for planning, memory, and time management.
2. Bottom-Up: Sensory & Movement Regulation
We use physical movement and sensory-friendly environmental tweaks to regulate your nervous system. By treating movement as a biological "hack" rather than a chore, we reset the nervous system to help you overcome task initiation paralysis.
You can read my article about running and neurodiversity for some real-world examples of how physical movement and self-awareness work together.
Client Intake Limits: To ensure deep, personalized focus for every client, I only partner with a limited number of individuals concurrently. If current capacity is reached, priority waitlisting applies.
Who I Partner With
My service is explicitly geared towards assisting **neurodivergent adults** (ADHD, Autism, AuDHD, Learning Differences) who are struggling with executive function, burnout, or life transitions. However, I am a fully qualified **Life Coach** and partner with **neurotypical individuals** who are seeking structural support, career development, or holistic life coaching. All brains are welcome here.
What to Expect
Obligation-Free Initial Chat: It is critical that we have a strong mutual connection. We start with a free, no-obligation vibe check. We'll have a casual chat about your goals and challenges. If we both feel excited to partner, we proceed with a formal coaching plan.
The Coaching Agreement: A formal agreement that sets clear boundaries, responsibilities, and expectations for both of us, protecting your safety and investment before our formal sessions begin.
Your First Session: We map out what your customized scaffolding looks like. We identify your sensory triggers, core cognitive friction points, and life goals. By the end of this session, we have a concrete behavioral experiment to test.
Duration & Rhythm: Standard engagements last 3 months. This typically includes fortnightly online chats, which aligns perfectly with the cognitive pace required to build lasting habits.
Proactive Accountability: I provide 2–3 short, encouraging check-in messages each week. If you've committed to a specific behavioral experiment (like a walk or a planning block), I'll check in to see how it went. There is zero pressure to reply—it's simply there to keep your "brakes" engaged and remind you that you have an ally.
Integrating Cognitive & Physical Regulation
We build strategies across whatever domains of your life need scaffolding. Here are common areas we partner on:
- Executive Scaffolding: Breaking massive, ambiguous tasks into tiny physical movements to bypass ADHD paralysis.
- Cognitive Restructuring: Noticing "should" thoughts and converting them into neutral, actionable choices.
- Sensory Audit: Identifying environmental triggers in your home or workplace and introducing noise filtering (like Loops) or sensory-breaks.
- Daily Movement: Finding physical movements that you actually enjoy (stretching, walking, gym, swimming, or yoga) to regulate your nervous system and improve body-mind connection.
Fictional Coaching Transcript: Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC) in Action
To give you a clear window into how Cognitive Behavioural Coaching addresses ADHD, executive dysfunction, and negative thought loops, expand the section below to read a transcript of a typical second coaching session.
View Transcript: "Deconstructing the Shame Loop & Transition Blocks"
Context: Alex is an ADHD client who established a goal of doing a 15-minute walk on Tuesday and Thursday morning as a baseline dopamine regulator.
Coach: Hi Alex. Great to see you. Before we dive into how the week went, how are you feeling in your body right now as we sit down to chat?
Client: Honestly? Pretty tense. I feel like I'm back in the school principal’s office because I didn't hit the target we talked about. I feel like I failed.
Coach: I hear that tension, and I appreciate your honesty. In Cognitive Behavioural Coaching, we don't treat goals as tests—they are experiments. If we take the "principal's office" feeling off the table for a second, what did the actual experiment on Tuesday look like?
Client: Well, Tuesday actually went great! I got up, did the walk, and felt incredibly focused for the next three hours. But on Thursday, it completely fell apart. I sat on the couch with my running shoes next to me for two hours, telling myself to get up, but I just… couldn't move. I felt frozen.
Coach: This is an amazing data point. You had a highly successful Tuesday, and a "frozen" Thursday. When you were on the couch on Thursday, what was the internal dialogue running in your mind?
Client: It was just an endless loop: “You should get up. It’s only 15 minutes. If you can’t even do 15 minutes of walking, you’re never going to get healthy. You’re just being lazy and making excuses.”
Coach: That is a heavy, critical voice to carry. Let's look at that thought: “If I can’t do 15 minutes, I’m lazy and making excuses.” When that thought hit your brain, what happened to your physical energy level in that exact second?
Client: (Pause) It plummeted. I felt heavier, actually. The more I told myself I was lazy, the more the couch felt like a magnet.
Coach: Right. So notice the cognitive loop: your brain was using a critical "should" label to generate motivation, but the biological impact was that it triggered a shame response, which left you feeling physically drained and made movement even harder. The thought "I am lazy" actively reinforced the paralysis.
Client: Wow. I never thought about it like that. It felt like I was just stating a fact. But it was actually a trap.
Coach: Exactly. It’s a classic ADHD cognitive loop. If we separate the facts of your brain's ADHD wiring from the "lazy" label, what is actually happening? If a computer freezes, do we say it is "lazy"? Or do we say there is a transition block in its code?
Client: A transition block. It’s like the gears aren't catching because the cognitive load of shifting from 'resting' to 'active' is too high.
Coach: That is a perfect, neuro-affirming description. If we treat Thursday as a "gear-slipping glitch" instead of a character flaw, we can use a CBC strategy called a **behavioral experiment** or a **manual override**. Next time the gears slip, what is low friction a micro-step that you can do?
Client: Maybe I could just put my shoes on. Not even leave the couch, just tie my shoes and stay on the couch.
Coach: I love that. If you tie your shoes and stay on the couch, the experiment is a success because you broke the transition paralysis. It lowers the bar so your brain’s "brakes" can disengage. How does that sound for this coming week’s experiment?
Client: It feels much lighter. Like I’m allowed to be a work in progress rather than needing to be perfect.
Coach: You are absolutely allowed to be a work in progress. Let's design our next experiment around that "manual override" and see what the data tells us!
Fees
As a side gig passion, money is not my motivation, helping people is. However, if something is free, it has no value. To give the coaching value, the standard fee is $400 for a 3-month coaching plan (payable upon mutual agreement to proceed following our initial free session).