Evoking Awareness as a Practice with ADHD

04/04/22 • 25 min

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Hosts Shelly and Cam continue on the theme of practice and look at evoking awareness. Evoking Awareness is actually an important coaching competency and is key to the coaching process. Within this category is the all-important aspect of self-knowledge - personal values and strengths, challenges and needs, best practices, and what we like to call the client’s worldview. Also remember that awareness is one of the three barriers of ADHD. It can be hard to create new awareness and keep that awareness once we have it. Today Shelly and Cam discuss practices beyond coaching that can help evoke awareness and build self-knowledge.

Shelly shares a surprising practice of tarot card reading and how it helps her to consider questions in a larger context. Cam shares how inspiration practices help him evoke awareness. The hosts emphasize that the actual tool or practice is secondary to what the practice encourages - curiosity in a specific context. Those of us with ADHD can struggle with overwhelm and with orienting to opportunities and questions worth considering. A good tool is like coaching. It provides a contextual prompt to explore an area with curiosity to evoke new awareness.

Episode links + resources:

For more of the Translating ADHD podcast:

Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode
Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD
Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Episode links + resources:

For more of the Translating ADHD podcast:

Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode
Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD
Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Previous Episode

Cultivating a Self-Care Practice with ADHD

Shelly and Cam discuss the significance of cultivating a self-care practice in this episode and start with distinguishing “should” activities and activities that “fill you up”.They first introduced self-care as a topic back in episode 95. In this episode, they look at self-care through the lens of cultivating a practice. Self-care is something both Shelly and Cam introduce to their ADHD coaching clients because it is the perfect vehicle to identify core values, key needs and practice making space for something that only matters to the client. ADHD can make it very difficult to identify and practice key self-care practices.

Shelly shares her own experience in coaching with Cam and the barrier to honoring and practicing her own self-care practices of attending live concerts. She talks about the brain soothing benefits of practicing self-care activities that really matter to the individual. Cam and Shelly identify barriers to developing new self-care practices, both limiting mindsets and avoidant behaviors that get in the way.

Finally, Cam and Shelly discuss client examples of how three similar activities, like running, are tethering to very different motivators for each client. Shelly and Cam leave listeners with first steps for cultivating a self-care practice.

Episode links + resources:

For more of the Translating ADHD podcast:

Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode
Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD
Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com

Next Episode

The Valuation of Time and Emotion with ADHD

Cam and Shelly go Big-Brain this week tinkering with the very structural elements of their Mt. Rainier Model (episodes 60-63). They introduce a concept not often considered in conventional ADHD conversations - language that often includes terms like interest, regulation, management and attention. The term introduced this week is valuation, and valuation matters because it lives between attention and motivation. Valuation is simply the amount of value we place on something. Cam argues that those of us with ADHD struggle to see the value of something because of the disruptive nature of ADHD. You can’t value what you can’t access. You can’t access what you can’t sense. ADHD impacts our ability to both sense and access concepts like time and emotion.

Cam shares client examples that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Stories of clients challenging conventional takes on concepts like time and emotion. These clients are not just settling for management or regulation. These stories are forcing Cam to rethink the Rainier Cause and Effect model.

Finally, Cam and Shelly share a new process similar to Pause, Disrupt and Pivot. The new process is Sense, Access, Value. Cam and Shelly are just at the beginning with exploring this concept of valuation.

Episode links + resources:

For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: