ADHDharma — Dean Shiels | Neurodivergent-focused coaching rooted in buddhism & philosophy

In a nutshell:

My coaching is practical, honest, and collaborative. We figure out where the real friction is, build a toolkit that is adapted to work with your brain, life, and values rather than a generic productivity template.
I’m interested in working with things as everyday as keeping the fridge stocked week-in week-out and as philosophical as what it means to live a truly worthwhile life. Most of all – how they fit together …I mean, after all, what are you keeping the fridge stocked for?

I can’t help you become neurotypical.
I can help you stop being disordered by your own standards, and examine those standards.

I will encourage you to see the work as more than just managing your condition – though that is a worthy and difficult enough aim.
Ultimately, I aim to teach you the skills so you can take primary ownership of your own thriving without intensive – and, let’s be honest, expensive – support.

In more detail:

ADHDharma’s approach has a fundamental distinction at its core: neurodivergence and disorder are not the same thing. The situations and circumstances that make up our life can be so out of alignment with who we are at the core of our being to be incredibly painful and a source of deep shame.

Sadly, many of us come to believe – often because we are, directly and indirectly, told – that it is who we are at the core of our being that needs to change to remove that suffering. That we need to align ourselves with the way the world is… with ‘normal’.
If you are here, looking for support, I suspect you have tried that, maybe still are trying that.

All relationships are give and take, even our relationship to the world. If our circumstances and situations don’t meet us some of the way, that relationship will grind us down until we no longer want to be a part of it.

I’ve been there, and, with help, made it back and, in ways that still surprise me, am increasingly enjoying a healthier, more joyful and creative, give and take relationship with life. Whether you’re looking for the way out of disorder, or beyond that and towards something that could be legitimately called thriving, the core of what I have to offer to support that is this:

Your differences aren’t the problem — the intensity of suffering, the vicious cycles, the limiting beliefs and self-narratives built from years of struggling because of the mismatch between the way you are and the way the world around you is — that is disorder. To stop being disordered? Reduce the mismatch, reduce the suffering, get to a ‘normal’ level of messy misalignment with reality… not become a ‘normal’ person (what would that even mean!?).

Interestingly, it doesn’t stop there. Keep increasing the alignment between the way you and the world are and… well, where that leads has been called many things – Enlightenment (Buddhism), Eudaimonia (Aristotelian ethics), Self-actualisation (Maslow), Integration (Jung), Congruence (Rogers), Flow State (Csikszentmihalyi), and the whole journey from the disorder to alignment is arguably the archetypical heroes’ journey (Campbell).

This overarching goal, which definitely is rooted in my own philosophical and Buddhist beliefs and practice, is a real and tangible influence in my approach. I’ve been practising Buddhism and studying Philosophy for ten years which has shaped how I think about attention, reactivity, the mind/self, and how living well relates to all that.

Whether Buddhism and Philosophy becomes active content in our sessions or stays in the background is entirely up to you, and what actually helps. If we’re just talking abstract philosophy session after session… I’m going to budge us back to your everyday challenges. If we are just grinding through ‘optimising your life’ session after session, I might invite us to slow down a little to explore what we’re actually optimising for.

If you’ve read this far, I’d love to host a free call for you and hear how all this lands, answer any questions, and hear about your experiences so far figuring all this out. Life’s hard, but when we have the capacity and resources to meet that difficulty, it’s also interesting, rewarding, and – sometimes – even fun! No harm in having a brew together, eh?

What we could work with:

– Anything not on this list that is causing friction in your life
+ These are just ideas and prompts – not an exhaustive list.
– Making sense of late diagnosis
+ Identity — separating who you are from what you’ve been told you were
— How do you relate to terms like neurodivergent, impairment, disability
— When does it matter which terms you use? (i.e. legally versus personally)
— What’s ADHD and what’s me?
+ Diagnosis grief
– What if I’d have known earlier?
+ Internalised ableism
— I’m lazy/stupid/chaotic/ignorant/selfish/etc
— I just need to be more disciplined/try harder
–I can’t do X, Y, and Z
– Neurodivergent Education
+ Understanding ADHD and/or Autism
— What is rejection sensitivity disorder, and is it showing up in your life?
— Interoception and self-care: ‘Ohhh, that’s why I’m always dehydrated!’
— Stimulation – Why focus is either all consuming or non-existent?
– Managing Neurodivergent Dynamics
+ Burnout, emotional regulation, sustainable productivity rhythms, etc
+ Executive function deficits and practical, personal strategies to manage
+ Leveraging tools and building systems
— Timers, timers, and more timers
— Scheduling – Restrictive, vague, or just right? …and why this varies over time
— To Ai or not to Ai? …digital support worker or brainrot?
– Neurodivergent admin
+ Routes to diagnosis and treatment, into the ADHD community, etc
+ Accessing funding: Access to Work, small business, and coaching funding
– Neurodivergence and work
+ Should you tell work, and if so, when and what should you say?
+ How can you find work that meets your needs …what even are your needs?

Background:

– Neurodiversity Training Academy
+ Accredited Practitioner – April 2026
+ Accredited Coach – July 2026
+ Accredited Advanced Coach – December 2026
– BA Hons Philosophy, First Class – University of Bristol
– Buddhist practitioner
+ 10 years of personal practise
+ Training for Ordination with Triratna
– Lived experience
+ late diagnosed ADHD – self-identifying from age of 29 – 2021, diagnosed 2023
+ Autistic – self-identified (2023), not seeking diagnosis