It can feel defeating to struggle with things like motivation, concentration, and task completion. A helpful step in EF Coaching is assessing and understanding your key areas of struggle, contributing factors and impacts on daily functioning. Examples of common struggle areas include focus, memory, planning, procrastination, frustration tolerance, and time management, among others. Your rain works differently - and that’s okay! If we can meet you where you are at with compassion and curiosity, we can also work towards lasting change.

Those who struggle with executive dysfunction often get labeled, or label themselves, as “lazy”, “flighty”, or “a failure.” (Which is so far from the truth!) It is important in this process to assess your strengths in addition to areas of weakness. What DOES motivate you? What do you value? When do you NOT procrastinate? Let’s look at the skills and abilities that might be hiding behind your struggle with executive functioning skills.

Once we identify key strengths and key struggles, we can work toward a plan of action, instilling specific systems and skills that will help you feel empowered to pursue goals. These plans are catered to the individual and are both creative and solution-focused in nature. These plans are also scaffolded, or broken down Into manageable steps, to prevent anxiety or overwhelm.

Having a coach who is in your corner and who can hold you accountable, but who also holds you with unconditional positive regard is a valuable part of this process. In follow-up meetings, we will check in on goals and skill attempts. We will look at what worked and what didn’t work. And we will approach unmet goals with compassion and curiosity rather than shame or guilt to help prevent further avoidance. Accountability can also mean identifying reward systems as well as use of “body doubling” (aka parallel working) meetings to help with task initiation.

A foundational piece of executive dysfunction that is often overlooked is the role of emotions. Here we seek to improve upon frustration tolerance, perfectionistic tendencies, stress management, impulsivity, self-confidence, and motivation. This forms the foundation for behavioral changes to occur.

Collaboration with psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, administrators, and other supportive specialists can be a helpful part of this process. If you’d like to sign a release, we can team up together to help keep everyone in the know. Additionally, outside referrals can be made if psychological testing or medical supports are deemed to be helpful steps for diagnosis and treatment.