Wichita runs on precision. The aerospace plants that earned this city the title Air Capital of the World depend on people who can stay focused through complex, detail-heavy work. Spirit AeroSystems, Textron Aviation, Bombardier Learjet, and Airbus all have significant operations here. Koch Industries and Cargill, two of the largest privately held companies in the country, are headquartered in the region. The manufacturing, energy, and healthcare sectors all demand consistent output from people who show up and deliver. And if you have ADHD, you already know how exhausting it is to meet those expectations day after day when your brain does not cooperate on a predictable schedule.

So you decide to look for support, and you quickly realize that Wichita is not exactly overflowing with ADHD coaching options. This is not New York or Los Angeles where you are overwhelmed by hundreds of results. Here, you get a handful of listings, and it is genuinely hard to tell whether any of them have real ADHD-specific expertise or are general life coaches who added the word ADHD to their website. You find a therapist who mentions coaching as a side offering. You find someone on social media who seems promising but has no listed credentials. Maybe you find one or two people who look legitimate, but now you are staking everything on a single option with no way to compare. That gamble feels heavy when you are already spending energy just keeping your work and personal life on track.

This guide will walk you through what ADHD coaching actually is, which credentials matter, how to evaluate coaching quality, and how to make this decision with confidence rather than letting it sit on your to-do list for another three months.

What makes ADHD coaching different from therapy or psychiatry

Wichita has solid healthcare infrastructure. Wesley Medical Center is the most preferred hospital in Kansas and northern Oklahoma, and Via Christi and Ascension round out a strong regional system. But when you start searching for ADHD-specific help, it helps to understand exactly what type of support you are looking for, because coaching, therapy, and psychiatry do very different things.

ADHD coaching focuses on the present and the future. It is a collaborative partnership where you and your coach develop practical strategies, systems, and habits for reaching your goals. Coaching is about action. You identify what you want to accomplish, figure out what keeps getting in the way, and build personalized tools for handling challenges like time management, prioritization, task initiation, and follow-through. A good ADHD coach works with the way your brain actually functions rather than expecting you to force yourself into systems designed for neurotypical people. Neurotypical is a term that simply means someone whose brain processes attention and information in the way considered standard or typical.

Therapy addresses the emotional and psychological layers underneath. A therapist helps you process past experiences, work through anxiety or depression (both of which frequently show up alongside ADHD), and understand emotional patterns. In a place like Wichita, where the work culture values reliability and steady performance, a lot of adults with ADHD carry years of frustration from feeling like they should be able to keep up but somehow keep falling short. Therapy is the right space for processing that weight. But therapy alone does not always give you the concrete, tactical systems for managing your workload or breaking the cycle of missed deadlines.

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

These three types of support work alongside each other, 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 years, and a coach for building the daily systems that hold your professional and personal life together. In Kansas, therapy and psychiatry may be partially covered by insurance depending on your plan, while coaching generally is not. We will cover cost and workarounds later in this guide.

The essential thing to understand about coaching is that it is forward-looking and tactical. You are not unpacking your past. You are building a concrete plan for how to manage your energy, stop losing track of projects, and follow through on the things that matter to you.

What credentials should an ADHD coach actually have

Here is the single most important thing to know before you start evaluating coaches: the title "ADHD coach" is completely unregulated. Kansas has no licensing requirement, no state board, no required exam, and no minimum training. Anyone can set up a website, list ADHD coaching as a service, and start charging for sessions tomorrow. In a mid-size market like Wichita, where the pool of specialized providers is already small, that makes it even more critical to know what separates qualified coaches from everyone else.

So how do you protect yourself?

PAAC certification is one of the most reliable signals. 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 course or an online module you can finish in a few hours. It represents a serious commitment to 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 as a whole. An ICF-credentialed coach has completed extensive training hours, accumulated a minimum number of client coaching hours, and passed a formal evaluation. ICF credentials alone do not guarantee ADHD expertise, but when you see them paired with ADHD-specific training, you are looking at someone who takes their professional development seriously.

NBC-HWC certification is worth knowing about as well. 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 combined 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 struggles you 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.

Red flags to watch for:

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

• The only stated qualification is personal experience with ADHD

• Promises of guaranteed outcomes like curing procrastination or eliminating distractibility

• No mention of continuing education, supervision, or a defined 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?

• What does support look like between sessions?

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

Why does virtual coaching work well for ADHD in Wichita

Wichita is a mid-size city that covers a lot of ground. The metro area spreads outward, and if you work at one of the aerospace plants on the south side, live in the northeast part of the city, and are trying to squeeze a coaching appointment into a workday that already requires tight scheduling, adding a cross-town drive makes the whole thing feel harder than it should. And the deeper issue in Wichita is not just geography. It is the limited number of specialized ADHD coaches operating locally. If there are only one or two qualified options in town, you are choosing based on availability and proximity rather than fit and expertise.

Virtual coaching changes this equation completely. You are no longer limited to whoever happens to practice within driving distance. Instead, you can work with a coach who has deep experience with your specific type of challenge, whether that is managing executive function demands in aerospace engineering, staying organized while running a small business, or navigating the academic pressures at Wichita State University. The right match based on expertise and coaching style will produce better outcomes than the closest available option almost every time.

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. When your session is a video call you can take from your office, your kitchen table, or 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.

For people in Wichita who work demanding manufacturing or engineering schedules, virtual sessions can fit around shift patterns and production deadlines. You are not locked into office hours at a physical location. And if a coaching match turns out not to be the right fit, pivoting is straightforward. You are not restarting a geographic search in a market with limited local options. You match with someone new and keep moving forward.

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 professional bios, but their approaches might be completely different underneath.

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 reminders," a coach using COM-B helps you identify whether a particular challenge comes 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 project this week," an implementation intention sounds like "When I get back to my desk after lunch, I will open the report 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. 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 fluctuates constantly. Quality coaching includes some form of ongoing connection between sessions, whether that is messaging, quick accountability check-ins, or access to a community. That continuity between calls is often what determines whether a new strategy actually sticks and becomes part of your routine.

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. In Wichita, where there is no dedicated CHADD chapter and in-person ADHD community options are limited, this kind of built-in peer support can be especially valuable.

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 approaches over time. Regular supervision means a qualified professional is reviewing their work, providing feedback, and keeping them accountable to a consistent standard.

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

How much does ADHD coaching typically cost

Cost matters, and it is better to go in with clear expectations than to be caught off guard.

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

The cost of living in Wichita is significantly lower than in coastal metros, which is one of the genuine advantages of living here. But ADHD coaching pricing is set nationally because most specialized coaches work virtually with clients across the country. That means you are generally paying the same rates as someone in New York or San Francisco, even though your housing costs may be half as much. It is worth factoring that into your budget planning.

The instinct to look for the cheapest option makes sense, especially when the price tag feels high relative to local service costs. 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 Kansas 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. Given the number of large employers in Wichita that offer comprehensive benefits packages, including the major aerospace and manufacturing companies, this is worth checking with your HR department.

When evaluating cost, it helps to weigh it against the cost of not getting support. Stalled career momentum because you cannot consistently deliver. 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 Wichita

With a solid understanding of what coaching is, which credentials matter, and what strong methodology looks like, the practical search can begin. Wichita's specific situation creates a distinct set of challenges worth understanding upfront.

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. Wichita does not currently have a dedicated CHADD chapter. CHADD stands for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. While there is no local chapter offering in-person support groups or community connections, CHADD runs virtual meetings and maintains national resources that can still be helpful. The nearest active CHADD communities are likely in the Kansas City metro area, roughly three hours away.

The Wichita-specific challenge:

In a mid-size city, the coaching pool is inherently smaller. Directory searches for Wichita-area ADHD coaches return fewer results than you would see in a major metro, and the results you do get require careful evaluation. Some may be therapists who mention coaching as an add-on service. Others might be general wellness or life coaches who list ADHD among a long list of specialties without having deep training in any one of them. With fewer options to compare, it is tempting to just go with whoever shows up first and seems reasonable. But that gamble gets expensive quickly if the fit or quality is not right.

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.

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

• 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, and after a few sessions, you 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. In a market like Wichita where your local options were limited to begin with, starting over can feel almost impossible. New search. New vetting calls. New financial risk. New decision fatigue. For someone with ADHD, restarting that kind of open-ended research project can be one of the hardest things to do.

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 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.

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 do not just get 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 limited directory results 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 whole search from scratch. You match with someone new and keep building momentum. This alone changes the experience fundamentally compared to the traditional model, where a bad fit in a smaller market like Wichita means repeating a search that barely produced options the first time.

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 vanish between calls. Shimmer includes community access where you connect with other members working through similar challenges. In a city without a local CHADD chapter or a large in-person ADHD community, that built-in peer network fills a real gap. The 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 provide.

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 Wichita is covered equally. Whether you work at one of the aerospace plants on the south side, live near Wichita State University, are based in a home office in Derby or Andover, or work downtown, you get the same quality of coaching without geography being a factor. No rearranging your afternoon around a cross-city drive. Just consistent, expert support that fits into your life where it already is.

Shimmer's coaches work with professionals across every kind of industry and role. Engineers managing cognitive overload in aerospace manufacturing. Business professionals navigating the demands of major corporate operations. Healthcare workers at Wesley or other regional systems balancing detail-heavy responsibilities. Students and researchers at Wichita State. Entrepreneurs building businesses in a market where reliable execution matters. The matching process takes these differences into account so you work with someone who 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 to get help.

How do you get started with ADHD coaching

Taking the first step can feel like a big decision. If you have been researching ADHD coaching for weeks or months without actually committing, you are in very good company. That kind of decision paralysis is one of the most common ADHD patterns, 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 already tried, 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 journey. 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 have been going back and forth about whether to try ADHD coaching, consider that the research phase itself might be the hardest part. Once you actually begin working with someone who gets how your brain operates, the path forward tends to feel a lot clearer than you expected.