You have been putting this off for a while now. Maybe you got the ADHD diagnosis six months ago. Maybe you have known for years but never found the right support. Either way, you finally sat down to look for an ADHD coach in Detroit, and what came back was a confusing wall of results. Some coaches list offices in Midtown or downtown near the medical corridor. Others are based out in Troy, Dearborn, or Royal Oak and show up in the same search. A few are clearly therapists who happen to mention coaching somewhere on their website. Others look like general life coaches who recently added ADHD to their list of specialties. Their profiles all use similar language about helping you reach your potential, but nothing tells you who actually understands what it is like to sit at your desk in a Ford or GM office, stare at a project brief, and feel completely unable to start even though you know exactly what needs to happen.

Detroit is a major metro with a massive surrounding suburban footprint, so the search pulls in coaches from across Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. That sounds like a good thing until you realize it just means more tabs open, more profiles that look the same, and more decisions you cannot seem to make. The fact that you are struggling to follow through on finding help for your follow-through problems is a frustration you do not need anyone to explain to you.

This guide is designed to cut through that noise. It covers what ADHD coaching actually is, which credentials are legitimate, how to evaluate methodology, what it costs, and how to make this decision without it turning into another abandoned project sitting in your browser history.

What makes ADHD coaching different from therapy or psychiatry

Detroit has a strong network of health systems. Henry Ford Health, Corewell Health, and the clinics connected to Wayne State University all offer mental health services. If you have started looking into support for ADHD, you have probably already encountered therapists, psychiatrists, and coaches in your search results, sometimes all mixed together with no clear distinction. Understanding what each one does will save you time and money.

ADHD coaching is focused on the present and the future. It is a collaborative partnership where you and your coach develop practical strategies for managing real challenges like time management, task initiation, prioritization, and follow-through. A good ADHD coach works with how your brain actually functions instead of handing you systems built for neurotypical people and expecting you to force-fit yourself into them. Neurotypical is a term that simply means someone whose brain processes attention and executive function in the way considered standard or typical. Coaching is action-oriented. You identify goals, figure out what keeps getting in the way, and build personalized tools to address those specific barriers.

Therapy addresses the emotional and psychological layers underneath. A therapist helps you work through anxiety, depression (both of which commonly show up alongside ADHD), past experiences, and emotional patterns that affect your daily life. In a city like Detroit, where the work culture has historically emphasized toughness and self-reliance, many adults with ADHD carry years of quiet frustration from trying to keep up without understanding why everything felt harder. Therapy is the right space for processing that weight. But therapy alone does not typically give you the concrete, tactical systems for managing your email backlog or breaking the cycle of missed deadlines at work.

Psychiatry handles the medical side. A psychiatrist can formally diagnose ADHD, prescribe and adjust medication, and manage your treatment plan over time. If you are still exploring whether medication might help or need an official diagnosis, a psychiatrist is where to start on the clinical end.

These three types of support work together, not in competition. Many adults with ADHD benefit from a combination. You might see a psychiatrist for medication management, a therapist for processing the emotional weight of living undiagnosed for decades, and a coach for building the daily systems that keep your professional and personal life on track. In Michigan, therapy and psychiatry are often at least partially covered by insurance depending on your plan, while coaching generally is not. We will get into cost and workarounds later in this guide.

The key thing to understand about coaching is that it is forward-looking and tactical. You are not unpacking childhood experiences. You are building a concrete plan for managing your energy, staying on top of projects, and following through on what matters to you.

What credentials should an ADHD coach actually have

Before you evaluate a single coach profile, there is one critical fact you need to know: the title "ADHD coach" is completely unregulated. Michigan has no licensing requirement for coaching, no state board overseeing it, no required exam, and no minimum training hours. Anyone can build a website, list ADHD coaching as a service, and start taking clients tomorrow. In a metro area as large as Detroit, where the wellness and personal development market has grown significantly in recent years, that means the range in quality is enormous. And from the outside, it is nearly impossible to tell who is genuinely qualified just by reading a directory profile.

So how do you protect yourself?

PAAC certification is one of the most reliable signals you can look for. PAAC stands for the Professional Association of ADHD Coaches. Coaches who hold PAAC certification have completed rigorous ADHD-specific training programs, logged supervised coaching hours, and demonstrated genuine competency in working with ADHD-related challenges. This is not a weekend workshop or an online module you can finish in a few hours. It represents a serious, sustained investment in specialized education.

ICF credentials are another strong indicator. The ICF, or International Coaching Federation, is the most widely recognized credentialing body in the coaching profession overall. An ICF-credentialed coach has completed extensive training hours, accumulated a minimum number of client coaching hours, and passed a formal evaluation process. ICF credentials alone do not guarantee ADHD expertise, but when you see them combined with ADHD-specific training, you are looking at someone who takes their professional development seriously.

NBC-HWC certification is also worth knowing about. NBC-HWC stands for National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. This is a board certification that indicates training in evidence-based coaching techniques, and when paired with ADHD specialization, it adds another layer of verified competence.

Lived experience with ADHD can make a coach more intuitive and empathetic. Many excellent coaches have ADHD themselves and bring a personal understanding of the daily struggles their clients face. But lived experience without professional training and a structured methodology is not enough on its own. You want someone who brings both personal understanding and evidence-based frameworks to their practice.

Red flags to watch for:

• No specific credentials or training programs listed on their website

• The only stated qualification is personal experience with ADHD

• Promises of guaranteed results like eliminating procrastination or curing distractibility

• No mention of continuing education, supervision, or a defined coaching methodology

• A vague approach that sounds more like friendly conversation than structured support

Questions to ask any coach you are considering:

• What ADHD-specific training have you completed, and through which program?

• Are you certified through PAAC, ICF, or another recognized body?

• Do you receive regular supervision or participate in peer consultation?

• What methodology or framework guides your coaching sessions?

• How do you track and measure client progress over time?

• What does support between sessions look like?

A qualified coach will welcome every one of these questions. They have invested real time and money in building their expertise and will be glad to walk you through it. If someone gets evasive or defensive when you ask about their training, take that as a serious signal to move on.

Why does virtual coaching work well for ADHD in Detroit

Detroit's geography creates a particular challenge for anyone trying to find in-person services. The city itself has a compact urban core, but the metro area sprawls outward across three counties and dozens of suburbs. Coaches with offices in Midtown are not especially convenient if you live in Sterling Heights. Someone practicing in Royal Oak is a real commitment if you work in Dearborn. The QLine and DDOT bus system exist, but public transit coverage across the metro is limited, which means most people are driving. And anyone who regularly navigates I-75 or I-94 knows that a 15-mile trip can easily become a 45-minute ordeal depending on the time of day and which stretch of highway is under construction this month.

Virtual coaching removes geography from the equation entirely. You can work with your coach from your apartment in Corktown, your home office in Grosse Pointe, your desk at a tech company in the Woodward corridor, or your kitchen table in Canton Township. Sessions fit into the natural flow of your day instead of requiring you to build in extra time for a cross-metro drive on top of the session itself.

But the real advantage goes beyond convenience. When you are no longer limited to coaches who happen to have a physical office within a reasonable drive, you can match based on what actually matters: their experience with your specific type of challenge, their coaching style, and their understanding of your industry or life stage. A coach who specializes in working with engineers navigating executive function challenges at automotive companies might be a dramatically better fit than a generalist who happens to rent space near Campus Martius. Someone with deep experience supporting adults in high-pressure manufacturing or defense roles might be exactly what you need, even if that coach is based in a different state entirely.

Virtual coaching also helps with consistency, which is one of the hardest things to maintain when you have ADHD. Every logistical barrier becomes one more reason to reschedule or cancel. When your session is a video call you can take from wherever you happen to be, the friction drops. You show up more often. The coaching relationship builds momentum. Progress compounds over time instead of stalling out every time your schedule gets complicated or the weather makes a drive feel impossible.

What does a strong ADHD coaching methodology look like

Methodology is the invisible difference between coaching that creates lasting change and coaching that feels like a pleasant conversation you forget about by the next morning. Two coaches can have similar websites, similar pricing, and similar bios, but their actual approaches might be completely different underneath the surface.

Evidence-based frameworks form the backbone of quality coaching. One widely used model is the COM-B framework, which breaks behavior change into three components: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. Rather than giving you generic advice like "just use a planner" or "set more alarms," a coach using COM-B helps you identify whether a particular challenge stems from a skill gap (capability), an environmental barrier (opportunity), or a drive issue (motivation), and then addresses the actual root cause. Another evidence-based tool is implementation intentions, which are specific if/then plans designed to bridge the gap between wanting to do something and actually doing it. Instead of "I will work on my report this week," an implementation intention sounds like "When I sit back down at my desk after my Monday morning meeting, I will open the report document and write for 25 minutes before checking email."

Structured sessions versus open conversation is one of the biggest dividing lines between quality coaching and everything else. In a structured approach, each session follows a framework. Your coach prepares. Goals carry forward from previous conversations. Progress is tracked over time. You are building on a foundation week after week rather than starting over each session with whatever happens to be top of mind. Open-ended conversation can feel supportive in the moment, but without structure, it rarely produces consistent behavior change.

Between-session support matters more than most people realize. ADHD does not pause between your weekly coaching calls. New habits are fragile. Motivation shifts constantly. Quality coaching includes some form of ongoing connection between sessions, whether that is messaging, quick accountability check-ins, or access to a supportive community. That continuity between calls is often what determines whether a new strategy actually sticks and becomes part of your routine or fades away within a few days.

Executive dysfunction-specific design is non-negotiable for ADHD coaching. Executive dysfunction refers to difficulties with the brain's management system: working memory, planning, task initiation, emotional regulation, and time awareness. Generic coaching techniques often assume a baseline level of executive function that people with ADHD do not consistently have. A methodology built specifically for ADHD accounts for these realities and designs systems around them rather than pretending they do not exist.

Peer community and shared learning add something that isolated one-on-one sessions cannot replicate. Connecting with other adults who face similar challenges creates accountability, normalizes the experience, and generates practical strategies you might not discover on your own. Hearing that someone in a similar professional situation found a particular approach helpful carries a different weight than hearing it from a coach alone.

Ongoing coach supervision is something most people never think to ask about, but it is a significant quality indicator. Coaches who practice in isolation with no external oversight can develop blind spots or drift into outdated methods over time. Regular supervision means a qualified professional is reviewing their work, providing feedback, and holding them accountable to a consistent standard of practice.

The frustrating reality is that none of these methodological differences are visible from a website or directory listing. Two profiles can look nearly identical while representing very different levels of rigor underneath. The only way to distinguish them is to ask the right questions during a consultation, and now you know what those questions are.

How much does ADHD coaching typically cost

Cost matters, and going in with clear expectations is better than being caught off guard after your first session.

Nationally, individual ADHD coaching sessions typically range from about $150 to $300 per session. Monthly coaching packages, which usually include regular sessions plus some level of between-session support, tend to fall between $300 and $600 per month. Those ranges vary based on the coach's experience, credentials, session length, and how much support is included between calls.

The instinct to look for the cheapest option is understandable. Detroit's cost of living is lower than many major metros, but that does not mean budgets are loose, especially with the economic shifts happening across the automotive industry as the EV transition reshapes the workforce. But cost and credential depth tend to go together. Coaches who have invested thousands of dollars in ADHD-specific training, ICF certification, supervised hours, and continuing education charge more because their overhead is higher and their expertise runs deeper. That does not mean the most expensive coach is automatically the best, but consistently choosing the lowest price point increases your odds of ending up with someone who has minimal specialized training.

Insurance generally does not cover ADHD coaching. Coaching is not classified as therapy or a medical service under most plans, and Michigan does not currently mandate coaching coverage.

FSA and HSA accounts can often be used for coaching. If your employer offers a Flexible Spending Account or Health Savings Account, ADHD coaching may qualify as an eligible expense. This lets you pay with pre-tax dollars, effectively reducing your real cost by 20 to 30 percent depending on your tax bracket. With major employers like Ford, GM, Stellantis, and the health systems in the area often offering strong benefits packages, this is absolutely worth looking into.

When evaluating cost, it helps to weigh it against the cost of not getting support. Stalled career momentum because you cannot consistently deliver on projects. Strained relationships from forgotten commitments. The mental and emotional weight of feeling like you are underperforming despite knowing you are capable of more. Effective coaching pays for itself when it helps you show up reliably in the areas that matter most to you.

How do you find and evaluate coaches in Detroit

With a solid understanding of what coaching is, which credentials matter, and what strong methodology looks like, the practical search can begin. Detroit's specific situation creates a few distinct challenges worth knowing about before you dive in.

Where to look:

The PAAC directory (Professional Association of ADHD Coaches) is the most targeted starting point. Every coach listed there has met specific ADHD training requirements. The ICF directory is broader but useful for independently verifying credentials. CHADD, which stands for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, does not have a dedicated chapter in Detroit itself, but Southeast Michigan affiliates and statewide groups are accessible, and virtual CHADD meetings are widely available online. While CHADD does not provide coaching directly, connecting with the community can be a good way to get firsthand recommendations from people who have worked with coaches in the metro area.

The Detroit-specific challenge:

Detroit is a metro where the coaching market is smaller and less visible than in cities with a bigger wellness culture presence. That sounds like it should make the search simpler, but it creates a different problem. Fewer coaches means fewer ADHD-specialized options, which means a higher chance that the results you find are generalists who list ADHD as one of many areas they work with. Directory searches pull results from across the tri-county area, mixing credentialed specialists with life coaches, executive coaches, and productivity consultants who all use similar language on their profiles. The automotive and manufacturing culture in the region has historically been less openly focused on mental health support, so there is simply less infrastructure around ADHD coaching compared to cities where wellness services are more established.

The vetting process:

Once you have a shortlist, go beyond what their website says. Verify credentials independently through the PAAC and ICF directories. Schedule consultation calls, which most coaches offer for free or at a reduced rate. Use that conversation to ask the credential and methodology questions outlined earlier in this guide.

During a consultation, pay attention to:

• Whether they ask about your specific challenges or move straight into pitching a package

• How clearly they explain their methodology and coaching structure

• Whether they mention supervision, continuing education, or structured frameworks

• How natural and comfortable the conversation feels

• Whether pricing, session structure, and expectations are transparent from the start

When a match does not work out:

This happens more often than anyone talks about. You go through the whole search, commit to a coach, attend a few sessions, and realize the fit is off. Maybe their approach does not match how you process things. Maybe they lack depth in the specific area where you need the most help. And now you are back at the beginning. New search. New vetting calls. New financial risk. New decision fatigue. For someone with ADHD, restarting that kind of open-ended research project can feel nearly impossible, especially when the pool of local specialists is already small.

Even with the right directories and a thoughtful approach, the full weight of research, vetting, and risk sits on your shoulders. That is a heavy lift for anyone, and it is an especially hard one when the executive function challenges you are trying to get help with are the exact same ones making sustained research feel exhausting.

Why a Shimmer ADHD coach might be the better option

Every frustration described above is exactly why Shimmer exists. We built it because we have been through that same draining search ourselves and knew there had to be a better way for people to get the support they actually need.

The vetting is done before you ever show up. Shimmer coaches go through a selection process with a 4% acceptance rate. Every coach holds ADHD-specific credentials, whether that is PAAC certification or equivalent specialized training. They are not just hired and left on their own. Shimmer coaches receive ongoing supervision and continuing education, which means their practice is consistently held to a high standard. The methodology is grounded in behavioral science frameworks designed specifically for how ADHD brains work, and it is consistent across the entire platform.

Matching is built into the system. Instead of spending weeks scrolling through directories and hoping for the best, Shimmer matches you with a coach based on your specific needs, preferences, and goals. If the match is not right, you switch. No awkward conversation. No penalty. No restarting the entire search from scratch. You match with someone new and keep building momentum. This alone changes the experience compared to the traditional model, where a bad fit means repeating the entire process from the beginning.

The methodology extends beyond your weekly session. Shimmer's coaching approach is rooted in science-backed frameworks for behavior change and executive function support. Sessions are structured, goal-oriented, and connected from one to the next. But the support does not disappear between calls. Shimmer includes community access where you connect with other members working through similar challenges. That combination of expert one-on-one coaching and peer community creates a layer of accountability and shared learning that a single weekly session on its own cannot match.

The financial risk is minimal. Shimmer offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Pricing is transparent and published upfront, so you know exactly what you are committing to before you begin. Compare that to the traditional path where you might spend $300 on a first session with a coach you found through a directory, only to realize after two or three sessions that their approach does not work for your brain, and then face the prospect of spending more money to try again with someone else.

Virtual-first means all of Detroit is covered equally. Whether you live in Midtown, work at an automotive campus in Dearborn, are based in a home office in Troy, or split your time between Corktown and Royal Oak, you get the same quality of coaching without geography being a factor. No fighting traffic on I-75 or I-94. No rearranging your afternoon around a cross-metro drive. Just consistent, expert support that fits into your life where it already is.

Shimmer's coaches work with professionals across the industries that define Detroit's economy. Engineers and program managers navigating cognitive overload at automotive companies going through massive transitions. IT professionals managing detail-heavy responsibilities in a fast-moving sector. Healthcare workers at Henry Ford Health or Corewell Health balancing demanding schedules with their own executive function challenges. Entrepreneurs building something new in Detroit's growing startup scene. Students and researchers at Wayne State University or University of Detroit Mercy. The matching process takes these differences into account so you work with someone who genuinely understands your professional and personal context.

Members consistently describe the difference as significant compared to previous coaching experiences. The structured methodology, the ongoing accountability between sessions, and the ability to switch coaches without friction combine to create something that works with ADHD instead of asking you to power through a broken process just to get help.

How do you get started with ADHD coaching

Taking the first step can feel like a big decision, and if you have been researching ADHD coaching for weeks or months without actually committing, you are in very good company. That pattern of extended research without action is one of the most common ADHD experiences, and there is a real irony in the fact that the challenges you need help with are the same ones making it hard to seek help in the first place.

Getting started is simpler than the research process makes it seem. You sign up, get matched with a coach, and have your first session. That initial conversation is about your coach getting to know you: your goals, your challenges, what you have tried before, and where you want to focus first. You do not need to arrive with a polished list of objectives or a detailed history of your ADHD experience. Your coach is trained to guide that conversation and help you figure out where to begin.

The first few sessions are about building a foundation. You and your coach will identify what matters most to you right now and start developing strategies tailored to how your brain works. Expect it to feel exploratory at first. You are testing approaches, finding out what sticks, and building trust with someone who is going to be in your corner consistently.

Set realistic expectations. Coaching is not an overnight fix. You will not leave your first session with every executive function challenge resolved. What you will have is a structured starting point, a knowledgeable partner who understands ADHD deeply, and a framework for making steady, compounding progress. Most members start noticing meaningful shifts within the first few weeks as new strategies take hold and small wins begin to build on each other.

If you are ready to stop cycling through browser tabs and start working with a vetted, expert ADHD coach who genuinely understands how your brain works, Shimmer is a good place to begin.