For neurodivergent young adults, moving forward in life once therapy has ended can be particularly difficult. The clearest path from there to here—confidence, independence, and an essential set of life skills—has been paved by executive functioning coaching (EFC), an accomplishment that it is tempting to attribute to coaching itself.
What will you learn from this blog:
Day-to-day functioning and executive functioning functions
Executive functioning as a part of everyday life has very clear and direct benefits. The coaching of executive functioning provides direct support to people with many varying conditions and with many kinds of struggles.
Benefits of executive functioning coaching:
Lead all kinds of coaching to support clarity, organization, planning, and follow-through
Directly support clarity of thought and direct thought processes
Support planning and organization steps for people that have a hard time with the very basic structure to life that leads to satisfaction and success (not in the sense of making lots of money or being famous)
Understanding executive functions and their genesis at the level of neurobiology can help provide a much clearer picture of why coaching can be so incredibly effective for so many different kinds of people with so many different struggles in life.
Why do coaching and executively function work so well together?
Executive functions are structures for something to work with. If you're not working with what's here and using it, you're not really functioning with it in a very effective way.
What if you coach a system for something that's not working with it?
What if you coach for the kinds of things executive functions support when executive functions are not themselves working? Coachee supports.
Even if I didn't think of doing this for myself, the kinds of things that coachee coaching does for coachees could be thought of as functioning led by the executive functions for the tools that make coachees coheze. (Tools are my word for strategies or steps referring to actions in a sequence.)
Unpacking Executive Functioning
Consider executive functioning to be like your brain's personal planner. It handles the necessities of time, place, and task. For many neurodivergant individuals, these functions don't work quite as flawlessly as they do for most people, and that's why some of us need coaches. Coaches can work wonders with those personal planners of the neurodivergant, helping them function better and get things done.
Benefits You Didn't Know You Needed
Organizational Skills: Picture the scene—a whirlwind of activity, noise, and disorder. And then, suddenly, it quiets and settles into calm. That is what can happen when a person develops organizational skills, not just for themselves but also in helping others find their way to a calmer existence. Even the most disorganized among us can experience moments of organization. These moments can serve as templates for better structures in the future.
Time Management: Imagine a world where procrastination doesn’t exist. That would be a world where we could easily manage our time, using the available portion of it in the most efficient ways we could possibly employ. Coaching helps us reach that ideal through a synchronization of tasks and an unlearning of our former ways of putting things off. The world is really our oyster when it comes to working with time.
Emotional Regulation: With even the most organized external surroundings, life presents hiccups, and those hiccups can lead to a rollercoaster of emotions if we let them take us for a ride. Emotional regulation is kind of like a manual for how to conduct oneself more gracefully through sections of life that are all bumpy and curvy. It’s certainly not a guide to avoid those difficult bits, but it is a set of rules and recommendations for getting through those parts with as little stress as possible. And it’s the “getting through” part that allows us to live and function better.
Coaching: A Personal Journey
Think of coaching as a needs-based roadmap. It is not a singular manual, but a series of personalized guides; not devoid of empathy, but imbued with a continual understanding of your current state and aspirations. If you consider having such a mentor, with you, in your coachee role, you may then mentally blueprint the path of your unique journey.
How to Take the First Step
Inquire within: What domains do I aspire to better? Commence by delineating your ambitions. Securing the optimal coach is of utmost importance. Seek out a person well-versed in neurodiversity and who places a premium on an encouraging, no-judgment stance. Appointing a consultation is an excellent first move on the path to self-empowerment.
Therapy is a good first step, but not the only step. In fact, uncertainty often follows therapy. This is where executive functioning coaching can step in to structure the time after therapy. It can help build scaffolding—breaking tasks down and figuring out how to get things done—so that the things it structures can be thrown away when the mind that therapy has made healthier is ready to pick up the slack.