From Redundancy to Recognition

Last year I found myself facing something that many people experience at some point in their career – redundancy.  Like many people, I questioned what would come next.  As someone with ADHD, uncertainty can be particularly challenging.  My brain is brilliant at generating possibilities but that can also mean generating worries, worst-case scenarios and endless “what ifs”.

The natural temptation when a door closes is to keep looking at it. To focus on what’s been lost, to wonder whether it could have been prevented, to spend energy trying to reopen something that is no longer there.  What I’ve learned is that sometimes the better question is: What keys am I already holding?

Once my emotions from the initial shock has eased, I started reflecting on what I already had. Years of coaching experience, professional qualifications, experience supporting people through change and challenge.  And although we don’t always identify it, I also had something equally as valuable as my professional experience – lived experience of ADHD.  Not just the challenges but the learning, adaptation, self-discovery and growth that come from understanding how your brain works.

I realised that these weren’t separate pieces of my experience – together they formed a unique key.

Through my role,  I could see a growing need for practical ADHD support.  Many people were receiving diagnoses or waiting for assessment, yet had little support to help them understand what ADHD meant in everyday life.

People weren’t necessarily asking for more information but guidance around:

How do I manage overwhelm?

How do I get started?

Why do I keep struggling with the same things?

How do I stop feeling like I’m failing?

These are coaching conversations.  So I developed a proposal for an ADHD Coaching Support Service within Primary Care.  The idea was simple.  It was to provide practical, strengths-based support that helps people understand their ADHD, develop strategies that work for them and improve their overall wellbeing.

Creating something new is never comfortable.  Presenting an idea to senior stakeholders can feel daunting for anyone.  For someone with ADHD, there can be an extra layer of self-doubt.

Questions such as:

Is this good enough?

What if they don’t see the value?

What if I get it wrong?

Yet ADHD also brings strengths – creativity, problem-solving, passion, ability to see possibilities others may not.  So I leaned into those strengths and developed a service, presented the proposal and hoped the value would be recognised.

Thankfully it was.

Over the last year, I have had the privilege of supporting patients across six GP surgeries.  The stories and outcomes have reinforced why this work matters.  I have seen people move from confusion to understanding, from overwhelm to structure, from self-criticism to self-acceptance and from simply surviving to actively engaging with their lives again.  I have seen people begin to understand how their ADHD impacts them, recognise their strengths and develop strategies that work for them rather than against them.

This is not because coaching “fixes” ADHD but because understanding ourselves changes how we respond to our challenges.  And sometimes that changes everything.

As the initial funding period drew to a close, I was tasked to present the service outcomes to the board.   Alongside the personal outcomes, being achieved for patients, I was able to provide evidence that the service was delivering value for Primary Care by reducing pressure on clinicians and providing practical support that complements existing services.  I am delighted that, following the presentation, all six surgeries agreed to continue funding the service for a further 12 months.

Of course receiving that support feels validating but the funding isn’t the thing I am most proud of.  What I am most proud of is that something born from uncertainty has become something that is helping people every day.

Redundancy was not the plan.  If you’d asked me a year ago whether I wanted that door to close, the answer would have been no.  But looking back, it forced me to notice the keys I was already carrying.  The skills, the experiences, the knowledge, the lived experience, the passion, the courage to ask “What If”.

Sometimes the next chapter doesn’t begin because a new door opens.  Sometimes it begins because we stop staring at the closed one and start looking at the keys already in our hands.