Luke S.
Great service with some minor flaws
I've had two experiences with this service so far, one with group coaching and one with solo coaching. Overall, both were helpful, but I personally think that my issues might not have been a great fit for the service. I have ADHD, and mainly I was looking to find some other people to share experiences with (I didn't really have friends to talk to) and feel like I had some more agency in my life. With group coaching, at the time I was on a very low dose of medication which I didn't realize wasn't helping my symptoms. During most of the sessions I found it hard to concentrate, and by the time I had organized my thoughts enough to contribute to the conversation, it had already moved on. I'm aware that it can be hard to organize people into groups due to everyone having unique issues and different availabilities, but I felt like maybe I misreported what I was struggling with when I signed up, because everyone else seemed to have specific issues with family/friend relationships or self-confidence, while I struggled more with motivation and feeling stuck in life due to my ADHD. I listened to the group members vent their frustrations about friends and family and I kind of had to just nod and act engaged while I had Twitter open on my other monitor or something. That being said, the conversations we did have were good and I did get some insight into setting boundaries and making your feelings known to others. Fast forward to 2023 and I decided to do solo coaching as I was once again feeling stuck in life and frustrated with living with my family at 25 years old. My coach did a great job at validating my feelings and providing genuine support and advice for some of my issues, but I still found it hard to concentrate at times and would often unintentionally ramble about a topic until I forgot what my actual goals for the session were. Part of the blame is on me for that, but I also felt like sometimes my coach would lead the conversation he felt was important when it was really a minor issue for me, and I would feel internally frustrated that we never got to address my real problems. In the final few months I was doing a lot of trial and error with my medication (I just recently found a dose that seems to work, yay!) and soon the sessions just became about my experiences and frustrations with that and I could tell my coach was getting a little tired of it. At a certain point it felt like we started to disagree about how important medication is for me and how much I should actually expect it to "fix" my life, and it almost felt like my subjective experience was being invalidated. I got the typical advice of limiting distractions, improving nutrition, and making general lifestyle changes. I tried my best to explain how I've tried a bunch of lifestyle changes and still find it incredibly hard to get anything done, and how vitally important I felt it was for me to find the right medication. I renewed my plan for a few weeks but after that I decided that maybe an ADHD-specializing psychiatrist or therapist would be better. I don't think these criticisms I have are necessarily a fault of the program and I think it's not a one-size-fits-all thing. I think if you have a legitimate mental condition like me, coaching might be worth it to try before you jump straight into therapy, but don't expect it to be 100% effective at solving your problems. And no matter what you're struggling with, you still have to put in the effort to follow your coach's advice and make meaningful change or else you'll be talking about how you've made no progress week after week.