If you have ADHD or AuDHD and you know you need support, the next question arrives quickly. Should this be a coach or a therapist?
It is a genuinely good question, and the honest answer is that they do different jobs. Plenty of people I speak to want a bit of both: coaching to understand their own brain and change how daily life actually runs, and somewhere to take the heavier emotional things. This page will help you work out which job needs doing first, or whether they can run alongside each other.
What therapy does
Therapy looks after your mental health. It works with your emotional history, your relationships and patterns, and it treats clinical conditions like depression, anxiety and trauma. It is delivered by trained clinicians, counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists, and in the UK you can reach it through your GP, NHS talking therapies, or privately.
Therapy tends to look back and inward, to understand and to heal. That work matters, and for some things it is the only right tool.
What ADHD coaching does
Coaching looks forward. In my coaching sessions we take your real life, your work, your home, the pile of unfinished things, and build systems and strategies that work with your brain rather than against it. Executive function, follow-through, planning, boundaries, energy. We work on the blocks that keep stopping you, and on building habits that actually hold.
Coaching often includes psycho-education too, which is simply learning how your ADHD or AuDHD brain actually works. When you understand why starting is harder than doing, the shame drops and the strategies make sense.
A good deal of that is understanding your own executive functioning style. No two ADHD brains are alike. Yours might hold a plan beautifully and fall down at starting, or start anything and lose the thread halfway. Once you can see where you are naturally strong and where things reliably get harder, you stop borrowing other people’s systems and start building ones that suit you.
The same goes for the things that quietly run the day. Boundaries, and what makes them so hard to hold. Rejection sensitivity, and why a small comment can flatten a whole afternoon. Time blindness. Procrastination, which is almost never laziness once you see what is underneath it. Understanding these is often the point where things start to shift.
That is not to say emotions stay outside the door. We are emotional beings, and coaching is not all planners and whiteboards.
When something emotional comes up in a session, we give it the room it needs. The difference is what we do with it: we notice it, learn from it, and turn it towards what happens next.
We do not spend our sessions exploring your past. Coaching is not therapy, it does not create a clinical record, and what we discuss stays between us. It is a practical partnership, one to one, and for adults with ADHD or AuDHD it is often the first support that actually fits how their brain works. I have coached this way since 2000, and I have ADHD myself.
Coaching is unregulated in the UK, so it is worth checking any coach’s training and credentials. I have written a separate guide on how to find a properly qualified ADHD coach.
How to tell which you need
Think about learning to ride a bike as an adult. A therapist helps with what past falls have left behind, and with the fear that stops you getting on at all. A coach runs alongside while you actually ride, asking what would help you keep pedalling. A consultant would hand you a manual about bikes, and a mentor would tell you how they ride theirs.
Coaching is the running-alongside one. That is what I do.
“Linda doesn’t try and offer solutions straight away, instead she has offered […] lines of questioning and prompts that enabled me to arrive at the decisions. […] my unique brain can be a huge positive rather than a negative, when given the right parameters to work from.”
Steve, entrepreneur and founder of Breathe with ADHD
So ask yourself what is heaviest right now.
Coaching is probably the right door if:
- You understand yourself reasonably well but cannot make plans stick
- You start strongly and lose momentum, and it is costing you at work or in your business
- You want practical structure: a regular session to be accountable to, and habits and strategies to experiment with in between
- You are self-identifying or recently diagnosed and want to work with your brain, not fight it
- You are curious about yourself and ready to grow, even when that means stepping outside your comfort zone
Kerry, incidentally, is a counsellor by profession.
“I loved having my ideas on how I should be living challenged […] and instead finding a more flexible, ‘menu’ style that works so much better for me. I also loved that we used trial and error, if it didn’t work that was ok, we just tried something else. […] The biggest achievement was starting Jiu-Jitsu group classes, which was so massively out of my comfort zone […] I genuinely would never have done this without you.”
Kerry, counsellor
Therapy is probably the right door if:
- Low mood, anxiety or panic is the main event most days
- You are carrying trauma, grief or a painful past that needs proper attention
- You feel unsafe, hopeless, or unable to cope. Speak with your GP, and do not wait
If you are not sure, your GP is a sensible first conversation. Coaching can wait a few weeks. It will still be here. And if what you are really weighing up is whether this is burnout or depression, I have written about that separately.
Can you do both at once?
Yes, and many people do. A therapist holds the emotional ground while a coach builds the practical scaffolding. They are different jobs, and they sit comfortably side by side. If I ever think a client needs something coaching cannot give, I say so plainly. That honesty is part of the job.
Still weighing up whether coaching itself is the right step? My guide on whether to get an ADHD coach goes deeper.
Frequently asked questions
Is ADHD coaching the same as therapy?
No. Coaching is forward-looking and practical. We build systems and strategies that work with your brain, rather than exploring the past. It is not therapy and does not create a clinical record.
Do I need a diagnosis to work with a coach?
No. Self-identifying adults are welcome. Coaching works with how your brain actually behaves, not with a piece of paper.
Can coaching help while I wait for an assessment?
Yes. Assessment waits in the UK are long, and the practical difficulties do not pause while you wait. Coaching works on those now.
What does a coach not do?
I do not diagnose, treat or prescribe, and I do not replace therapy where therapy is needed. If that is what your situation calls for, I will tell you.
Considering 1:1 coaching?
If you are seriously considering one-to-one coaching for yourself, a Discovery Session is the place to start. It is a short conversation to see whether we would be a good fit to work together. Twenty minutes on Zoom, free.
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About Linda Fox
Linda Fox is an ICF-ACC credentialled adult ADHD coach (ADHD Life & Business Coach, CALC), coaching since 2000, with lived experience of ADHD herself. She works with entrepreneurs, legal and medical professionals, and others navigating demanding careers, helping them build practical strategies that fit how their brain actually works rather than fighting against it. UK-based, supporting clients with ADHD and AuDHD worldwide on Zoom.
