I have worked with many people with ADHD, ADD from a life-coaching and health coaching perspective and it's often not what people think. . .

I was working with someone with ADHD who had taken stress leave at work, was referred to a counsellor who then referred her to a psychiatrist who changed the diagnosis to ADD and prescribed her Ritalin. She was supposed to take this medication and continue this as part of her agreement to receive short term disability insurance (STD insurance) which would eventually become long term disability insurance (LTD insurance) on stress leave from work.

When I initially sat down with her, she hadn't started taking Ritalin yet (and hesitant) and came to me more from a medical perspective wondering what sort of diet and natural supplements she could take to "treat" the ADD (as she knew that I also did a lot of dietary work and work with natural medicines in addition to the life coaching I do.

As I always do, I took the time to find out what was going in her life and was curious about her work as a physiotherapist. What surprised me was that her counsellor hadn't really taken much time to find out what was going on with her work situation before referring her to the psychiatrist.

It turned out she was a straight A student in school and had been a top employee at the clinic she was employed at. However, she told me her clients were driving her nuts. They weren't taking any responsibility for their own health and her treatments weren't working because the clients weren't doing the exercises she recommended (going back to the same old habits again and again). The clients would only use the money they had from extended medical health care insurance benefits through their work (which their employer was paying for) and as soon as that money ran out, even though they might need more treatments to get better, they would just stop coming in. It was a hugely unsatisfying situation for her to be in. . .I ask if she could change her clientele, try some different techniques to have more compliance and she'd already done all that with another coach and none of it had worked. She had been having a harder and harder time focusing on anything in her work and the stress was having her in complete overwhelm.

I then asked her if she'd considered changing jobs or careers and she was like a deer in the headlights - and paralyzed with fear. . .we were now starting to get somewhere.

We looked at her options whereby "she could either go along with the diagnosis and play that out in life and follow that rabbit hole where you take the medicine, everyone in your family and community relates to you like you have this condition / label - and gradually she find a way to get better from it or not - something that might take her the rest of her life to play out (and she was in her late 20s). The other option was to look at the possibility that the symptoms of the condition were trying to tell her something. . .that she may have a "sense" or "hunch" about it was learning to trust and follow your intuition with things" (and sometimes following intuition can be scary but we went into how things tend to get worked out and supported in life when that happens).

She needed the money from STD and LTD insurance to survive and I told her that it was ok to use that money to discover other viable alternatives. . .she had a huge guilt complex over this and thought that for her to get the insurance money she was supposed to follow the directives of the psychiatrist and felt like a prisoner of her circumstances. . .she thought she had to take the medication and go through treatments and also worried about what her family would think about her wanting to change careers - but I worked with her in a way she worked through her fears. She was able to relax when she learned that there would be no one checking her blood work to see if she was taking the medication and she could "play along with psychiatrist" to make it look as if she was doing things to get better - and use the insurance money to go and explore what other things she'd like to do - which she did.

She discovered another alternative healing modality she absolutely loved, retrained in it and started an independent practice and within a year had a full clientele (not needing the insurance anymore). . .the symptoms of ADD completely disappeared during that time and she never had to take Ritalin.

Anyhow. . .things aren't always what they seem with ADHD / ADD and often there are hidden opportunities in disguise to have life go a different direction for anyone looking to explore other ways of looking at the situation. . .