San Francisco has more coaches per capita than probably any city its size in the country. Search "ADHD coaching San Francisco" and you'll land in a sea of wellness practitioners, executive performance consultants, mindset coaches, life coaches with ADHD bolt-ons, and a handful of people who actually specialize in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The city's wellness scene is deep and broad. That is mostly a good thing. But when you need someone who truly understands ADHD at a clinical and practical level, the volume of options becomes a problem in itself. Everyone is using the same language on their websites. Everyone mentions neurodivergence. Sorting signal from noise takes a kind of sustained focus and research stamina that, honestly, ADHD makes really difficult.

And the context you're living in makes it worse. San Francisco runs on tech culture. Hyperfocus is rewarded. Novelty-seeking is practically a job requirement. The startup world celebrates the exact traits that overlap with ADHD, right up until the other side of those traits shows up: missed deadlines, forgotten Slack threads, a pile of half-finished projects, burnout that hits like a wall. A lot of people in the Bay Area don't realize they're dealing with ADHD until performance suddenly drops or a relationship starts cracking. At that point, you're scrambling for support in one of the most saturated and confusing wellness markets in the country.

Layer on the cost of living. Median home prices above $1.3 million, rent that eats half a paycheck or more. You're already under financial stress, which puts executive function under even more pressure, and then you're trying to evaluate coaches who charge widely different rates with no clear way to compare what you're getting.

This guide breaks down what ADHD coaching actually is, what credentials to look for, what separates real methodology from friendly conversation, and how to find legitimate help without spending weeks lost in browser tabs you keep meaning to come back to.

What is the difference between ADHD coaching, therapy, and psychiatry

These three types of support get mixed together constantly, and in San Francisco, where therapy culture and self-optimization culture overlap more than almost anywhere, the distinctions matter.

ADHD coaching is focused on the present and the near future. You work with a coach to build practical strategies and systems for the things that trip you up every day. Time management. Task initiation. Prioritization. Following through on the plan you made on Monday by the time Wednesday arrives. Coaching is about what you want to accomplish and what is getting in the way right now. Your coach helps you develop approaches built for how your ADHD brain actually functions, instead of forcing neurotypical productivity frameworks that were never designed for you. Think of it as working with someone who helps you build the scaffolding your executive function needs to operate reliably.

Therapy goes deeper into the emotional and psychological layers. A therapist helps you process past experiences, work through anxiety or depression that frequently co-occur with ADHD, and untangle the emotional patterns that shape your daily life. San Francisco has an extremely strong therapy culture, and a lot of people start there. That makes sense. But therapy alone doesn't always give you the hands-on tactical tools for managing executive dysfunction, which is the clinical term for difficulty with planning, organizing, starting tasks, and regulating attention. Therapy helps you understand the emotional weight of living with ADHD. Coaching helps you build the systems and habits that keep your work and life functioning.

Psychiatry is the medical component. A psychiatrist can formally diagnose ADHD, prescribe and manage medication, and monitor your treatment over time. UCSF has a well-regarded ADHD clinic that handles diagnostic evaluations and medication management, so San Francisco residents have strong access to this piece of the puzzle.

Many adults with ADHD benefit from a combination of all three. You might see a psychiatrist for medication, a therapist for processing the frustration and shame of going undiagnosed for decades, and a coach for the day-to-day systems that keep you on track at work and at home. In California, therapy and psychiatry visits may be partially covered by insurance depending on your plan, while coaching generally is not. More on cost later.

The core distinction with coaching is that it is practical and present-focused. You are not analyzing your childhood. You are building the systems that help you stop missing deadlines, follow through on commitments, and manage the demands of your actual life.

What credentials should a real ADHD coach have

This is where things get tricky in a city like San Francisco. The Bay Area's wellness and coaching market is enormous. It attracts talented practitioners, but it also attracts people who saw an opportunity and spun up a website. The title "ADHD coach" is not protected by any state license or regulation in California. No board exam. No minimum training hours. No certification requirement. Anyone can start calling themselves an ADHD coach today and list their services on Psychology Today or a personal website by tomorrow afternoon.

That does not mean there are no standards. It means the standards are voluntary, and it is on you to know what to look for.

PAAC certification is one of the strongest credentials in the field. PAAC stands for the Professional Association of ADHD Coaches. Coaches with PAAC certification have completed ADHD-specific training programs that meet rigorous standards, including supervised coaching hours and demonstrated competency working with the specific challenges ADHD creates. This is not a weekend seminar or a self-paced online module you can finish in a few days. It represents a significant investment in specialized knowledge that goes well beyond general coaching skills.

ICF credentials add another layer of legitimacy. The ICF, or International Coaching Federation, is the most widely recognized accrediting body for coaching professionals overall. An ICF-credentialed coach has completed extensive training hours, logged required coaching hours with actual clients, and passed a formal evaluation process. ICF credentials on their own don't guarantee ADHD-specific expertise, but combined with ADHD-focused training, they indicate a coach who takes both their general practice and their ADHD specialization seriously.

The nbc-hwc credential (National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching) is another recognized certification you may encounter. It signals formal training in health behavior change, which can complement ADHD coaching when a coach holds ADHD-specific training alongside it.

Lived experience with ADHD can be a genuine asset. A coach who navigates ADHD personally may bring a more intuitive understanding to sessions. But lived experience without professional training and supervision is not enough on its own. You want both: personal understanding paired with structured, evidence-based coaching skills.

Red flags to watch for in the Bay Area market:

• No specific ADHD training or credentials listed anywhere on their website

• The only stated qualification is personal experience with ADHD

• Promises of specific outcomes like "I'll fix your productivity in 30 days"

• No mention of supervision, continuing education, or a structured methodology

• Language that sounds more like life hacking or optimization tips than professional coaching

• A practice that appeared very recently and leans heavily on social media presence over credentials

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 credentialing body?

• Do you receive regular supervision or peer consultation on your coaching practice?

• What methodology or framework guides your sessions?

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

• What does support look like between sessions?

These questions are self-advocacy, not confrontation. A coach who has genuinely invested in their training will be happy to walk through their credentials and approach. If someone gets vague, deflects, or becomes defensive when you ask, that tells you what you need to know.

Does virtual coaching make sense for people in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the most geographically compact major cities in the US at just 46.9 square miles, so the distance argument for virtual coaching is less obvious here than it would be in a sprawling metro like LA. You can physically get to most neighborhoods in the city within a reasonable amount of time, especially if you're near a BART or Muni line. That said, virtual coaching still offers real advantages that go beyond simple geography.

The first is scheduling flexibility. San Francisco's tech and startup culture runs on unpredictable schedules. Sprint cycles, product launches, investor meetings that get moved three times before lunch. If your work life shifts week to week, locking in a standing in-person appointment at a specific location on a specific day gets difficult fast. Virtual sessions let you show up from wherever you happen to be: your apartment in the Sunset, a conference room at your office in SoMa, or a quiet spot while you're working from a coffee shop in the Mission. The flexibility to adapt your session to the reality of your week, rather than rearranging your week around a session, makes it significantly easier to stay consistent. And consistency is what makes coaching actually work.

The second, and more important, advantage is access to specialized coaches. San Francisco's coaching market is large, but the number of coaches with deep ADHD-specific credentials, structured methodology, and professional supervision is much smaller than the overall wellness practitioner pool suggests. When you remove the geographic constraint entirely, you can match with a coach based on what actually matters: their expertise, their communication style, their experience with your specific challenges. A coach in another city who has spent years working with tech professionals managing ADHD and burnout may be a far better fit than a generalist practitioner who happens to live in your neighborhood.

Virtual coaching also lowers the friction of switching coaches if the first match is not right. There is no new neighborhood to search, no new shortlist to build from scratch. You connect with someone new and keep the momentum going.

For people who split time between San Francisco and other locations, which is increasingly common in the Bay Area's remote and hybrid work landscape, virtual coaching offers continuity that a location-dependent arrangement simply cannot.

What does quality ADHD coaching methodology actually look like

The gap between structured, evidence-based ADHD coaching and an unstructured weekly conversation with someone who means well is significant. Methodology is where that gap lives, and it matters more than most people realize when choosing a coach.

Evidence-based frameworks form the foundation of quality coaching. One widely used approach is the COM-B model, a behavioral science framework that identifies three factors driving any behavior change: Capability (do you have the skills and knowledge), Opportunity (does your environment support the change), and Motivation (do you have the internal and external drive). Instead of generic advice like "just use a planner" or "try time blocking," a coach working from this framework helps you figure out whether the real barrier is that you don't know how to break tasks down effectively (capability), that your workspace is designed in a way that invites distraction (opportunity), or that the task doesn't connect to anything meaningful to you (motivation). Then they target the actual bottleneck rather than giving surface-level tips. Another research-backed tool is implementation intentions, which are specific if/then plans that connect a behavior to a concrete cue. Rather than "I need to exercise more," an implementation intention looks like "When I close my laptop at 6pm on Tuesday, I will change into running shoes before I do anything else." These work because they reduce the number of decisions required in the moment, which is exactly where ADHD makes things fall apart.

Structured sessions versus open-ended conversation is one of the clearest dividing lines between quality coaching and everything else. In structured coaching, sessions follow a framework. There is a clear thread connecting one session to the next. Goals are tracked over time. Progress gets measured. You build on previous work rather than starting fresh every week. Open-ended sessions can feel comfortable in the moment, but they tend to drift. And drift is something most of us with ADHD get more than enough of already.

Between-session support is where a lot of coaching engagements either succeed or quietly fail. ADHD does not pause between your weekly sessions. The strategies you discussed on Tuesday can feel completely disconnected from your life by Friday if nothing bridges that gap. Quality coaching includes some form of ongoing check-in or support between sessions: messaging, community access, or structured accountability touchpoints. This continuity helps new approaches actually take root instead of fading within days.

Executive dysfunction-specific approaches are non-negotiable. Generic coaching techniques often assume a baseline level of executive function that people with ADHD do not reliably have. Executive dysfunction means difficulty with working memory, time perception (sometimes called time blindness), task initiation, and emotional regulation around tasks. A methodology built for ADHD accounts for all of these realities and builds systems around them, rather than treating them as personal failings to push past.

Community and peer support brings something that isolated one-on-one coaching cannot. Connecting with other adults working through similar challenges creates shared accountability, normalization, and practical learning from people who genuinely understand the experience. Hearing that someone in a similar situation tried a strategy and it actually worked carries a weight that theoretical advice simply does not match.

Coach supervision and ongoing training is the piece most people never think to ask about, but it is critical. Coaches who work in isolation with no oversight can develop blind spots, fall behind on current research, or drift into patterns that don't serve their clients well. Regular supervision means a qualified professional reviews their work, provides feedback, and ensures quality stays consistently high. Most independent coaches have no such system in place.

From the outside, two coaches can have nearly identical websites and similar pricing. One is using a rigorous, structured methodology with professional oversight. The other is improvising based on personal experience. Knowing what to ask is the only way to tell them apart.

How much does ADHD coaching cost

Money matters, especially in a city where the cost of everything is already stretched, so let's be direct about the numbers.

Nationally, individual ADHD coaching sessions typically fall between $150 and $300 per session. Monthly coaching arrangements generally range from $300 to $600 per month, depending on session frequency, duration, and the coach's experience level. In San Francisco, pricing tends to land at the higher end of those ranges. The city's cost of living, the density of the wellness market, and the concentration of high-earning tech professionals all push prices upward.

The instinct to find the most affordable option makes complete sense when you're already paying San Francisco rent. But the lowest-cost coaches tend to be the least experienced, with fewer credentials and less structured approaches. Coaches who have invested significantly in ADHD-specific training, ICF certification, and ongoing supervision typically charge more because their expertise and operational costs are both higher. Expensive does not automatically mean good, but pricing that seems surprisingly low is worth questioning.

Insurance typically does not cover coaching. This is true across most states, including California. Coaching is not classified as therapy or a medical service, and most insurance plans do not recognize it as a covered benefit. If you have employer-provided health benefits through a Bay Area tech company, check your plan details carefully. Some larger employers have expanded their mental health and wellness coverage in recent years, and coaching may fall under supplemental wellness benefits.

FSA and HSA funds can often be used for coaching. If your employer offers a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA), ADHD coaching may qualify as an eligible expense. Paying with pre-tax dollars effectively reduces the cost by 20 to 30 percent depending on your tax bracket. This is worth checking, especially given how common these accounts are in the Bay Area tech industry.

When evaluating the investment, consider what it costs to keep going without support. Missed deadlines at work. Promotions that passed you by because you couldn't consistently demonstrate follow-through. Relationships strained by forgotten commitments. The mental and emotional toll of feeling like you're constantly underperforming relative to what you know you're capable of. Effective coaching pays for itself when it helps you show up reliably in the areas of your life that matter most.

How do you find and vet coaches in San Francisco

With a clear picture of what coaching is, what credentials matter, and what quality methodology involves, the actual search begins. And in San Francisco's saturated wellness market, the process is genuinely tedious.

Where to start looking:

The PAAC directory (Professional Association of ADHD Coaches) is the most targeted resource. Every coach listed has met specific ADHD training requirements. The ICF directory is broader but useful for independently verifying coaching credentials. The San Francisco Bay Area CHADD chapter is an active local resource. CHADD stands for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and the Bay Area chapter serves the greater San Francisco region with monthly meetings, support groups, and educational programming for adults with ADHD. The Bay Area has one of the more active CHADD communities in the western US, and these groups are valuable not just for peer support but for getting firsthand recommendations from people who have actually worked with local coaches.

Beyond CHADD, San Francisco has a broader neurodivergent community presence through various meetup groups and organizations. UCSF's ADHD clinic is another resource worth knowing about, primarily for the diagnostic and clinical side, but clinicians there can sometimes point toward coaching referrals as well.

The specific challenge in San Francisco:

The city's tech-forward, self-optimization culture means there is an enormous number of people offering some version of coaching. Performance coaching, executive coaching, wellness coaching, mindfulness coaching, productivity coaching. Many of these practitioners are skilled in their domain. But general performance optimization and ADHD-specific coaching are fundamentally different things. ADHD coaching requires understanding of neurological differences in executive function, not just a set of productivity tips applied to ambitious people who want to get more done. The vetting burden falls on you to distinguish coaches with deep ADHD expertise and structured methodology from the much larger pool of coaches and consultants who have folded ADHD language into their existing offerings.

The vetting process:

Once you have a shortlist, you will need to review websites, verify credentials independently (do not simply take a website's word for certifications), schedule consultation calls, and evaluate fit. Most coaches offer a free or low-cost initial conversation.

During a consultation, pay attention to whether the coach:

• Asks about your specific challenges before describing their program

• Can clearly articulate their methodology and framework

• Mentions supervision, continuing education, or structured quality processes

• Communicates in a way that feels natural and comfortable for you

• Is transparent about pricing, session format, and what to expect

When it doesn't work out:

If you go through this entire process, start working with a coach, and realize after several sessions that the fit is off, you're essentially starting over. New research. New calls. New consultations. A new financial commitment. For anyone dealing with the executive function challenges that brought you to this search in the first place, restarting that cycle is exhausting. Even with good resources like CHADD and the professional directories, the entire burden of researching, verifying, assessing fit, and starting over if needed sits on your shoulders.

Why did we build Shimmer

That exhausting cycle of searching, vetting, guessing, and starting over when it doesn't work out is exactly why Shimmer exists. We built it because we've been through that same process and knew there had to be something better.

The quality problem is handled before you ever show up. Shimmer's 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. And they are not hired and then left to operate on their own. Shimmer coaches receive ongoing supervision and continuing education, which means quality is consistently maintained over time. The methodology is consistent across the platform, grounded in behavioral science frameworks designed specifically for how ADHD brains work. You are not gambling on whether a coach happens to use a good approach. The approach is built into the system.

Matching is part of the experience, not something you do yourself. Instead of spending weeks browsing coach profiles and hoping for the best, Shimmer matches you with a coach based on your specific challenges, preferences, and goals. And if the match doesn't feel right, you switch. No awkward conversation. No restarting the search from scratch. No financial penalty. You connect with someone new and keep moving. That alone is a fundamental change from the traditional model where a bad match means opening a new browser tab and beginning the entire process again.

The methodology goes beyond a weekly session. Shimmer's coaching framework is rooted in science-backed approaches to behavior change and executive function support. Sessions are structured, goal-oriented, and connected to each other over time. But the support does not disappear between sessions. 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 accountability and support that a single weekly call, no matter how good, cannot replicate on its own.

The risk is minimal. Shimmer offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Pricing is transparent and straightforward, with no hidden fees or surprise costs. You know exactly what you are getting and what it costs before you commit. Compare that to the traditional path: spending $250 or more on an initial session with a coach you found through a search engine, then realizing several sessions later that their approach does not work for the way your brain operates.

Virtual-first means all of the Bay Area is covered. Whether you live in Pacific Heights or the Outer Sunset, whether you work from a SoMa office or from home in Noe Valley, whether you sometimes work from Oakland or take BART down to the South Bay, you get the same access to quality coaching. No commute to add to your day. No geographic limitations. Consistent, expert support that fits into your life wherever you are. For a city where many people's routines span multiple Bay Area locations, this continuity matters.

Shimmer's coaches work with adults across the industries and life situations that define San Francisco. Tech workers managing the intensity of startup culture and performance pressure. Engineers dealing with context-switching across multiple complex projects. Founders building companies while their own executive function goes unsupported. Remote workers who lost the external structure of an office and are struggling to create their own. Parents balancing demanding careers with family life while their own ADHD needs go unaddressed. The matching process accounts for these differences so you work with someone who understands your specific situation, not just ADHD in general.

How do you get started with ADHD coaching

Taking this step can feel like a big deal, and that feeling is completely normal. If you've been reading about ADHD coaching for weeks or months and haven't moved forward yet, you're in very familiar company. The irony of executive function challenges getting in the way of seeking help for executive function challenges is not lost on any of us.

Getting started is simpler than the research process probably made 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've tried before, and what hasn't worked. You do not need to show up with a perfectly organized list of objectives or a complete history of every productivity system you've attempted. Your coach is trained to guide the conversation and help you identify where to focus first.

Early sessions build the foundation. You and your coach will figure out what matters most to you right now and start developing strategies that are designed for how your brain actually works. Expect the first few weeks to feel exploratory. You're testing approaches, seeing what sticks, and building a working relationship with someone who is genuinely invested in your progress.

Set realistic expectations. Coaching is not a quick fix. You will not walk away from your first session with every challenge resolved. What you will have is a structured starting point, a coach who understands ADHD deeply, and a framework for building consistent progress over time. Most members start noticing meaningful shifts within the first few weeks as new strategies and habits begin to take hold.

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