In this personal and instructional podcast episode, the host—who has lived experience with adult ADHD—shares how unmanaged ADHD nearly derailed his career and self‑esteem. He outlines three recurring barriers that adults with ADHD encounter: (1) inconsistent follow‑through, where knowledge does not translate into sustained action; (2) mental and emotional overload, where constant background noise of overthinking and everyday frustrations drains energy; and (3) overcompensating, where masking and excessive willpower lead to burnout. The host illustrates these challenges through a detailed case study of a client named Mark, a high‑functioning professional in his early 40s whose ADHD manifests as forgetfulness, fragmented attention, and excessive effort to maintain quality at work and in his marriage. The episode differentiates coaching from therapy, emphasizing that coaching provides structure, forward‑focused support, and rhythm without attempting to “fix” ADHD. The host describes his own coaching experience, the evolution of his program, and the specific design of the "Built Different" monthly coaching model: three focused coaching sessions plus one reflective session each month, built around energy‑first routines, flexible systems, and pattern awareness. He explains how this structure creates sustainable momentum, improves communication, and reduces shame. Finally, he invites listeners to explore the program at www.stanshurecoaching.com, offering discovery calls and emphasizing that the course may be the right fit for those who recognize ADHD patterns in themselves or loved ones.
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Hey, this episode I'm really excited about, and a lot of it's because this one's very personal for me, and it's, it's something that Had I not grabbed control of it, would have completely ruined my life. And I think, I really believe that what I'm going to talk about today is going to change a lot of people's perspectives and it's going to change a lot of people's lives. And that's why I think this one's really important. I'm not— I'm actually not feeling well today. I've had a lot of chest congestion. So, so pardon if I don't sound— if I don't sound like me, and I have to mute quite a bit and turn the mic off so I can cough. But I've waited a couple of days to put this one out. So let me get this set up. Let me kind of pre-frame it for you here. You know, this episode is for adults who either have ADHD or recognize ADHD. See, I told you. Or recognize that they have ADHD-like patterns in their lives and they want to understand how it impacts relationships, careers, and daily functioning. Now, let me tell you what, about 5, 6 years ago, I— so I've always struggled with focus. I've been that guy. That I feel great. If I put this into baseball terms, right, as a baseball pitcher, which I'm not, but you've got those pitchers and they're good for like the first 6 or 7 innings, and after that they're toast. And that's really how I had described myself. Now I can take it on into the 9th inning, but man, getting things to the finish line has always, always been really tough for me. Coming out of the blocks, man, Any, you know, 4, 5, I'm at my peak. 6, I'm starting to trail off. But man, 7, 8, 9 wasn't going so well. And it was impacting my work. It was impacting my relationships. It was impacting my passion projects. So I had to take a step back and really understand it. And fortunately, I had a coach that started working with me. At about that, about that, that time frame. So I'm not a, I'm not a counselor. I'm not a therapist. I tell you all that all the time. I'm not going to sit here and diagnose. But if you've either been diagnosed or you recognize that you've got those patterns, those ADHD-like patterns in your lives, or you have someone in your life that is like that, this podcast is for you. Because I'm going to talk about how it impacts relationships, and I'm going to talk about how it impacts daily functioning. I'm going to share a story with permission. I've got a client. His name is Mark. We've been walking through this process for quite some time. So I'm going to share Mark's story with you. But I want to help identify common barriers of what can happen when ADHD isn't well managed and explain how coaching helps adults build momentum and doing it without shame or pressure to change who they are. And by the end, I'm going to share with you about opportunities to work with me for yourself or for someone that you love that you see struggling with this. And, you know, and we make a joke about it sometimes. It's like, oh yeah, you know, you know, someone's got ADHD and things like that, right? Or that was my ADHD kicking in. And it's a real thing. It's super detrimental. It can stifle careers, if not end careers. For me, it almost ended my career. I had never ever been on a performance management plan. And I found myself on one. And I was, as I was sitting there listening to what was going on, I mean, I was just, because I thought I was a great performer. I thought I was at the top of my game. And when my boss at that time really started lining those things out for me, not only was it impacting me from a career standpoint, but man, it killed my self-esteem. And as I look, as I look back at my childhood, I can see And after I worked with a coach and then later on, I actually started going to a therapist about it through the VA. And man, when I tested for ADHD, it was crazy high. And as we looked back over patterns of my childhood or looked back over behaviors of my childhood, it was definitely present. Man, I don't know how I didn't just drive my parents nuts. And maybe I did. They're just being really nice about it, right? Yeah. ADHD doesn't disappear when we become adults. As a matter of fact, if you have it as an adult, you had it as a kid and vice versa. What changes though is how it shows up and honestly how often it goes unrecognized. And man, if you're a Gen Xer, there's a good chance you never got diagnosed with it. For a lot of adults, ADHD It's not about chaos or hyperactivity. It's about the effort that you have to put in. See, even though I was getting things done, and by the way, I'm not talking about the job where I got put on a performance plan, but every other job I look back in life, it's not that I wasn't getting things done. In fact, I was known for a guy getting a lot of things done. But it was the effort, is all that extra effort I was having to put into it. And the energy just to keep it all going. So with Mark, that's the client I've been working with. I've actually been working with several clients who have ADHD. I spent the past 8 months studying this intently, working with, with another coach on building out a program. But my client Mark, he's in his early 40s. He has a solid career, a family. He's got a reputation of being capable. He's got a reputation of being dependable. On paper, things look great, but internally, Mark feels like he's constantly behind. Not because he doesn't care, not because he's a slacker, not because he's not trying, not because he's just mailing it in, but because his brain never seems to slow down. And at home, ADHD's shown up in different ways. He forgets small things, things that take place in conversations, or feeling— or, you know, his wife feeling like he's checked out. And details that matter to his wife are, you know, she feels like that they're getting blown off. And even though he's present physically, mentally he's juggling some kind of unfinished task or future worries or replaying past mistakes. He's told me that his wife feels like he's distracted or emotionally unavailable. Her words, emotionally retarded. And even though he feels deeply invested in the relationship, there's fragmentation there. And over time, that disconnect creates a lot of frustration, not just for her, but also for Mark. And it's not because of any lack of love, but it's because good intentions and follow-through, they don't always match. At work, Mark's ADHD, it doesn't limit his intelligence or his creativity. In fact, he's often the one who sees connections that other people miss. But his challenge is on execution. It's on managing priorities and details and transitions and deadlines, all the admin tasks that takes a lot more effort than he likes to do. And it actually takes— Mark's told me that it takes a lot more effort for him than it does his peers. And he's known as the guy who doesn't see the details. And so as a consequence, he puts in a lot more hours because he finds he has to go back and check and check and check and check again just so he doesn't make those mistakes. He also sees that his energy levels for a project, they fluctuate. And this is so common for adults with ADHD, especially for those of us who are diagnosed later in life and we've never had a language for what we're experiencing. We haven't had that growing up in it. If you get diagnosed as a kid, it's a lot different than getting diagnosed as an adult because as a kid, now they find ways to work with you through that. And I'm not sure that management is still there. I think a lot of it's medication. And I'm not a clinician, so I'm not going to talk about medications or anything. But I think a lot of it is managed through different education programs they can put you through or waivers that they can put you through. I know that my own daughter, we had to do that with her and it made a huge difference. We changed schools and changed the teaching style and everything. But if you get diagnosed as an adult, you didn't have that growing up. And you don't have a language to work with. When it's happening in adults and it's not well managed, there's 3 barriers that tend to show up consistently. And we found this in all the folks that we've been working with in the past 7 or 8 months. And as I took that information and I researched out and I asked other people who were not part of this program, These were the 3 commonalities. The first one, inconsistent follow-through. Adults with ADHD often know exactly what needs to be done, and the gap isn't knowledge. It's initiation. It's sustained focus. It's completion. And not only does that lead to criticism from others, but it also leads to self-criticism and a false belief that they're lazy or that they're undisciplined. The second thing that we found is mental and emotional overload. You see, ADHD brains don't just process information differently. They process emotion, the emotional part of it differently as well. Overthinking, frustration, feeling overwhelmed, all those become background noise. So something I'm really bad about, and I've found ways to manage this because I deal with ADHD, I lose my wallet, I misplace my keys. I can be out on a dive trip in a foreign country, and as I'm packing up, I misplaced something, right? Or I left it somewhere. And not only does that create frustration, but it also takes up time. I can't tell you how many times I've had to go look for my keys for 20 or 30 minutes. Or I've misplaced my wallet. So I've had to come up with ways to manage that component of it, right? Because the other part is I hate being late somewhere. So now I find out that I'm in a rush, and then if I can't find my wallet, can't find my keys, Brooks gets upset with me. Little things become irritable. I mean, my whole day can be thrown off because I didn't properly manage or use the tools to effectively manage my ADHD. And in talking with Mark and talking with others— Or we find ourselves overthinking. We find ourselves overwhelmed. And that all becomes background noise and everything in life can be great, but we're mentally exhausted. The third thing we found that was common was overcompensating. Adults with ADHD survive by masking, by pushing harder, or relying just on sheer willpower to get through. They have to build complex systems to stay afloat, and eventually that constant effort catches up, leading to burnout, leads to resentment, disengagement. And that can be in hobbies, communities, work, relationships. And you see, that's where coaching comes in. And I want to make sure I'm crystal clear on this. It's coaching and not therapy. I actually had both. I was fortunate that a coach walked this process with me. And I'm still using many of those tools. But I also had a therapist, actually a counselor. It was a VA counselor that I was working with. Coaching is not a substitute for medical or mental health care. But I'll tell you what, I actually, for me, I got a lot more out of it from my coach. Now, there's some things I'm going to do differently in this program that my coach didn't do. My coach did a fantastic job. It's just that when I was doing my research and working with different people and seeing what made some differences, that's where I made the changes in this program. Because something I found true is that coaching offers structure. It offers reflection and forward-focused support. The way I set this program up, It was critical that we did this on a monthly basis, that we had 3 solid coaching meetings and then 1 meeting on reflection. So you're meeting 4 times a month. What I found in my own coaching and what I found when coaching others that were like, all right, I'm going to schedule a session here and then I'm going to schedule a session there, man, that plays into the ADHD in a very negative way. Because it doesn't set up that consistency. It doesn't set up those rhythms. So when I built the program, I specifically set it up so it offered that structure, offered that forward-focused support. And then at the end of the month, do a reflection, do some goals, And then you get into the next month. See, in coaching, I don't try to fix ADHD. What I do is I work with you, and together we work with how the brain actually functions. We focus on energy before time. We build routines that flex instead of collapse. And we create awareness around patterns. What drains energy, what restores it, and where things tend to break down. And man, for people like Mark, what I found is it provided— well, actually, we found it provided consistent rhythm. It was a place to slow down. It was a place to reflect, adjust, do some course corrections instead of just white-knuckling things through life. They begin to build momentum that's sustainable. The other thing is that coaching also helps translate intention into action, and it does it without guilt, does it without shame. It supports clearer communication and relationships, stronger boundaries at work, and more confidence in daily decision-making. Because let's face it, if you have been diagnosed with ADHD or you feel like you've got ADHD patterns, you don't need more pressure. What you need is understanding. You need structure. You need support that fits real life. Hey, if you recognize yourself in this, or if you recognize a loved one in this, whether there's been a diagnosis or simply seeing the patterns and looking for practical, respectful support, I want you to go out to www.stanshurecoaching.com. Click on My Offerings. Scroll down towards the bottom. And there's a, there's a monthly ADHD course down there. It's called Built Different. If this resonated with you, I really want to have deeper conversations. And if you're not, you know, if you go down, you look at that course, you're not really sure, set up a discovery call. Let's just have a conversation. Let's just talk about it. All right, and see what's right for you. That course may not be right for you. Then again, this may be the thing that you really, really need. Hey, that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you for being so graceful with, uh, with my voice. And I'm out. I'll talk to you later.
