I Thought It Was Me. The me behind ADHD Coaching.

For a very long time, I thought I was the problem.

Not that my brain worked differently.

Not that I processed things differently.

Not that I needed different things in order to learn, organise myself, communicate, regulate or feel safe.

I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

And when you’ve spent years watching other people seemingly manage things that feel ridiculously difficult for you, that belief can get pretty bloody convincing.

Why can’t I just do it?

Why am I so sensitive?

Why do I forget things I genuinely care about?

Why can I remember some random thing someone said twelve years ago, yet have absolutely no idea where I put something five minutes ago?

Why can I cope brilliantly with a crisis and then become completely overwhelmed by an email?

Why does rejection hurt so much?

Why can’t I be more organised?

Why can’t I be more like everyone else?

Eventually, “Why can’t I?” can become “What’s wrong with me?”

And that’s where shame gets in.

When different starts to feel defective

I learned to try to fit.

To mask.

To watch other people and work out what I was apparently supposed to be doing.

To work harder.

Try harder.

Be quieter in some places and more acceptable in others.

To hide the bits of myself that seemed too much.

And when you spend enough years doing that, you can become incredibly disconnected from yourself.

You know how to read the room.

You know how to adapt.

You know how to perform “I’m fine.”

You might not have a fucking clue what you actually need.

And for me, there were times I drank on those feelings.

Alcohol could quieten things temporarily. It could soften the edges. It could make things feel easier until, of course, it didn’t.

It didn’t heal the shame underneath.

It didn’t answer the question:

Why does being me seem so much harder than it appears to be for everybody else?

I didn’t need fixing.

I needed understanding.

And I wish I’d known that sooner.

Then you start understanding your brain

Learning about ADHD didn’t suddenly make every difficult thing disappear.

It gave me something enormously important:

context.

Suddenly there were things I could look at differently.

Instead of:

“Why the fuck am I like this?”

I could start asking:

“What does my brain need here?”

That’s a completely different conversation.

And this isn’t only about ADHD.

Many of the people I work with are dyslexic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, diagnosed later in life, self-identifying, questioning whether they’re neurodivergent, or simply discovering that the way they’ve spent decades forcing themselves to function isn’t actually working for them.

And underneath the labels, I hear so many versions of the same thing:

“I thought it was me.”

Finding your person matters

This is the bit I feel really strongly about.

Whether you’re looking for therapy, ADHD coaching, supervision or another kind of support:

Please find your person.

Not necessarily me.

Seriously.

This isn’t a blog trying to convince you that I’m the magical answer to your ADHD. I’m not.

I’m not the right therapist, coach or supervisor for everybody.

Nobody is.

I want you to find the person you can sit with and eventually think:

“I don’t have to perform here.”

Someone you can tell the embarrassing thing to.

The thing you’re ashamed of.

The thing that doesn’t make sense.

The thing you’ve never admitted to anybody.

The thing you’re frightened will make them think differently about you.

The thing that sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud.

You need someone you can say:

“I don’t understand.”

“That doesn’t work for my brain.”

“Can you explain that differently?”

“I haven’t done the thing we talked about.”

“I don’t know why I keep doing this.”

“Actually, I think you’ve got that wrong.”

And ideally…

“Louise, my brain absolutely fucking hates this.”

Fine.

Let’s find another way.

Because if you’re spending the entire session trying to get therapy or coaching “right”, we’ve probably got something important to talk about.

I work with the person, not my idea of the person

I work with people in their twenties and thirties.

Mums.

Dads.

Professionals.

Retired people.

People in very responsible jobs.

People in the public eye.

People whose lives look incredibly successful from the outside.

People who are barely holding things together behind closed doors.

People who have spent decades masking.

People who have collected diagnoses.

People who don’t want a diagnosis.

People who’ve spent their entire lives believing they were lazy, difficult, chaotic, oversensitive, stupid, too much or not enough.

And I don’t assume they all need the same thing because they happen to share a diagnosis.

That’s really bloody important.

Two people with ADHD aren’t the same person.

Two autistic people aren’t the same person.

Two people with trauma aren’t the same person.

A label might help us understand something about you. It doesn’t tell me who you are.

So I ask.

What helps?

What makes things harder?

How do you learn?

Do you want me to challenge you?

Do you need things written down?

Do you need visual stuff?

Do you need to move?

Do you need humour?

Do you want directness?

Do you need me to slow down?

Do you need to understand why before we talk about how?

And if we try something and it doesn’t work?

We haven’t discovered that you’ve failed.

We’ve discovered something that doesn’t work for you.

That’s useful information.

You don’t need another person to make you feel inadequate

This is probably one of the reasons I’m so passionate about this work.

If you’ve spent your life feeling like you’re getting something wrong, the last thing you need is another professional relationship where you feel you’re failing.

You don’t need someone sitting opposite you thinking:

“If only they’d try harder.”

You’ve probably tried fucking hard enough.

What you might need is curiosity.

Understanding.

Accountability without shame.

Challenge without humiliation.

Someone willing to say, “Okay, that didn’t work. What happened?” rather than, “Why didn’t you do it?”

And sometimes someone who genuinely believes in you while you’re still figuring out how to believe in yourself.

I’ve watched what can happen when someone finds their person

There are people who have chosen me to be that person for a part of their lives.

That is a privilege I don’t take lightly.

I’ve watched people begin understanding themselves instead of constantly attacking themselves.

I’ve seen relationships change.

Boundaries appear.

Shame loosen.

People begin asking for what they need.

People stop apologising for existing.

People recognise that the strategies which helped them survive aren’t necessarily the strategies they want to keep using.

And sometimes I’ve watched someone realise:

“Maybe I wasn’t broken after all.”

I don’t take credit for somebody else’s change.

They’re the one doing the bloody work.

My job is to walk alongside them, bring what I know, challenge when appropriate, remain curious and create a relationship where there’s enough trust for us to look at the difficult stuff together.

And sometimes we laugh a lot along the way.

So this isn’t an advert for me

Well, technically it’s on my therapy website, so let’s not pretend I’m entirely innocent. 😂

But the message I actually want you to take from this is bigger than my practice.

Find your person.

If you’ve tried therapy before and thought it was shit, that doesn’t necessarily mean therapy isn’t for you.

If coaching felt patronising, find somebody different.

If somebody’s communication style doesn’t work for your brain, say so.

If you need something, ask.

If they can’t provide it, that doesn’t necessarily make them a bad practitioner.

And it doesn’t make you a difficult client.

It might simply mean they’re not your person.

Finding the right therapeutic relationship can take time.

You’re allowed to be selective about who gets access to the vulnerable parts of you.

You’re allowed to ask questions.

You’re allowed to have needs.

You’re allowed to say something isn’t working.

You’re allowed to be different.

Because perhaps the question was never:

“How do I become better at being like everybody else?”

Perhaps it’s:

“What happens when I finally understand how to be me?”

And bloody hell, that’s a much more interesting journey.

Reach out if you want a laid back chat to find out more.

Take gentle care,

Louise x

Louise Malyan
Psychotherapist Counsellor | ADHD Coaching | Creative Supervision
Wildfire Counselling & Therapy
Brenchley, Kent & Online
07540 843 727
wildfirecounsellingtherapy.co.uk