christalwang

Thanks for this comment—you've nailed it. The service we're providing in it's very nature is not medical and instead encompasses support functions like accountability, celebration of the member, helping the member feel "seen and heard", etc. Many of our members have not got that from their doctors, nor do they expect it given the doctors role. We advocate for layering the services you need together (e.g. I have a doctor, psychiatrist, coach, right now.) and our coaches work hard to communicate the role of a coach and the boundaries.

We definitely are not trying to pass as a medical service. However, we do our due diligence to make sure we have medical staff on board to advise us on our protocols, services, train our staff, supervise our staff, and to stand in if there is any escalation needed. We hope it's clear Dr. Anil himself is not coaching and very happy to make things more clear by adding his title to the front of the card.

Definitely, and we hear you. We're excited for our upcoming pilot with more rigorous study. Also, as mentioned in a different thread, we're definitely not a medical service nor replacement for medical service. If members are looking to "save money" from an alternative, the alternative this person would be comparing us to would be another ADHD coaching service (likely an individual or small group of coaches)—in this case, that service likely will not have pilot data at scale either.

We love Focusmate!!

Yes! There are tons online, many great quality ones too. For us, we offer robust and reliable service with coaches who we have vetted, are supervised, and are accessing professional development opportunities on regular basis. In addition, our coaching philocosophy and practice has solid foundations in evidence-based practices. Individual providers of ADHD coaching may not have these checks and balances in place, unfortunately. We also have an app that supports growth and accountability throughout the week, which can be a challenge for individual coaches who use email/google docs, etc. And lastly, quite practically we can offer at a lower rate per face-minute because we handle all the "back-end" tasks for them (e.g. advertising, tech, customer service, billing, etc.). Especially for coaches who have ADHD themselves, us handling all the "other stuff" can be a gamechanger. Happy to jam offline on specific coaches or your specific situation! chris@shimmer.care

Oh, duh. Yes. My bad. I guess an assistant of some sort? Or task swapping with someone else? My roommate cooks and I clean, so at least it's only 1 out of 2 things I don't like to do that's covered.

Hi yes, I am still here. (1) We currently only have self reported symptom reduction (83% state symptom reduction within 6 weeks) that we've been using as a proxy so far, but we know we need more. (2) We are actually in the process of designing a more formal pilot with our Clinical Advisor Dr. Anil Chacko. We will launch this in the next 2 months, which we're very excited by. We're just tying up the loose ends in terms of setting up the logistical infrastructure for data collection, etc., and making sure the process is designed to not be overly burdensome for people with ADHD.

Thank you for pinpointing this. I re-read many times, and I agree with you. I've just re-written the whole section with our Lead Coaching Psychologist, Xenia.

Resonate.

In essence, practicing positive psychology, to us, means that we focus on the positive attributes and strengths of an individual - not on their pathology as in "traditional" approaches. It also means that we focus on helping our members achieve higher levels of well-being and personal growth as oppose to focusing solely on the symptoms relief.

Our key approach has been providing a mix of psychoeducational coaching interventions to enhance positive attributes in combination with other help our members can obtain - and not on short-term prescribed psychotherapies or medication as a sole mode of intervention.

I laughed out loud at the end. That's a good idea. https://www.understood.org/ actually has a good example of this (reduce-motion mode)

We'll look into this for sure—I'd love a confetti mode.

Thank you for explaining more. Positive Psychology as a field is very wide, with different schools of thought within it; the most important aspect to us being that we focus on the Strength-Based vs. Disability Model of Neurodiversity. The school of thought we are part of is equally applicable to other allied fields which help those with ADHD achieve a better quality of life - psychiatry, clinical and psychotherapeutic services.

Shimmer is NOT clinical and we do NOT provide licensed medical services. We are most definitely not trying to substitute a real doctor. Full stop. We hope that is clear in all of our communications and website, and do NOT try to obscure that.

However, we do a lot of work to work with the right experts (which include clinicians, psychiatrists, etc.) to ensure what we do it safe, follows best practice, is science-backed, and is effective. And we definitely want to highlight this work that has been done and the importance of it.

We will update the language to better reflect this immediately.

Thanks for this perspective. I generally try to make it at least not distracting for most people, even though I know no 1 style will work for everyone.

Yes, I hear your point on neutral tone as well, I'm a bit dramatic at times.

I am the same with brackets. I use brackets so often-I type them then delete them (or at least reduce them to a "normal" amount) before hitting send, usually.

My savior! Thank you!

100%

It really depends on the person. It's the case for some folks but definitely not all (not myself) and in that case, it's important to address the root cause. Our team actually advocates for mixed treatment when relevant (while acknowledging the provider shortage, differences in means/access to quality healthcare) - this usually includes working with psychiatric, clinical, counseling and psychotherapy practitioners (and/or coaches). These treatment protocols may include medication, therapy, and more. Doesn't need to be done all at once, but drawing on these tools as needed.

It sounds like you're maybe looking for a virtual assistant of some sort? I recently heard of a company Athena (more geared towards founders) and "The Doers" (more geared towards women business owners, I always get their ads on IG) but I think you can find a VA in many places. Not an expert in this space though!

Appreciate the feedback! I'm the author here (Christal)...unfortunately I definitely have ADHD!

Many of our members and team need the emojis for the visual relation but I definitely see your point. I will tone down the emojis and make the newsletter show up only at the end of the article. I'll also send this to a content editor for the confusing wordings, etc.! If there are any specific examples, don't hesitate to let me know.

Can you expand more on your perspective on positive psychology?

Coaching works best for those who are ready for forward movement: unlike most types of therapy, coaching is goal-oriented / solution-oriented and requires the member to be in a good enough space to want to look into the future & put in the work. Often members use therapy / medication in tandem with coaching.

Coaching works least effectively for those with severe comorbidities like depression/anxiety/bi-polar that are not concurrently being treated or at least do not significantly impair their day-to-day functions.

We have really extensive testimonials on our homepage (you can load more as well) but a few of my favorites are: (1) a 45-50 y/o man who got promoted after thinkng he would not ever get promoted again—now he is director level and manages dozens of reports and has a renewed sense of confidence in himself; (2) and 24-34 grad student who was able to find her dream job post-MBA after burning herself out at almost every other job she's had before and never feeling like she "fit"; her Shimmer coach helped her look at jobs that fit her unique ADHD, find ways to approach the job hunting process in a way that fit her brain, and then eventually secure that job.

Appreciate this; curious your perspective on best-in-class solutions (aside from stimulant drugs) for insufficient brain energy? I'm always looking for holistic solution sets.

Also some of our members (for various reasons) can't or won't take medication (which is a whole other conversation) so any behavioral or natural solutions I love to be aware of.

Appreciate this question, it's one we've gotten a lot and quite frankly I agree we haven't nailed the best way to articulate it. To answer a few of your questions... - We don't use psychologists or psychotherapists as the front-line helper because there is a severe shortage of them and our main goal is accessibility. There is a provider shortage (psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, etc.) in the US and most places in the world - Depending on someone's severity, helpers can include parents/teachers, peer support specialists, mentors, coaches, therapists, psychiatrists, the list goes on (I tried to broadly categorize from least to most intensive); our service does not aim to support the most severe. Anyone who screens with high degree of Mh impairment is not suggested to use Shimmer (and we have screening in the onboarding process) - Frankly, depending who you ask, you'll get a different answer for "are coaches respectable". Coaching is a modality that is "up and coming" because of (1) the need for more providers and subclinical support services, and (2) the credentialing / reimbursement models are evolving... see next point: - We align our model most closely to Health & Wellness Coaching, which is estimated to be reimbursed by next year: https://www.wellcoachesschool.com/post/medicare-moves-advanc...

Overall though, we use PhDs/psychiatrists/master-level coaches to supervise, create protocols, trainings, etc. and use coaches to deliver. (Not AI). Our coaches are either credentialed by ICF (International Coaching Federation) like BetterUp or Ginger or Lyra's coaches, NB-HWC (National Board - Health & Wellness Coaching), or have masters-level psych degree and go through our training.

Happy to expand on any of the above!

Updated! Now you can cmd+F and find it. Thanks for this suggestion.

Thank you for this comment and the text. I'm also curious about where this text comes from, I'd love to read the rest of it.

And yes, I agree. ADHD is not a "mental" problem, and cannot be "coached" away. ADHD Coaching is one part of a greater pie (e.g. I personally use both medication and ADHD coaching, and a mix of productivity tools). What ADHD Coaching uniquely offers, is to work with what you have, create systems around you and your life, and to get support from someone who gets it.

However, as you mentioned, it doesn't "solve" ADHD or "coach it away", that is not the purpose for sure!

I can personally (and our members too) attest to the fact that there definitely are benefits, perhaps not for every single person and every single coach out there. For me, I've become more productive as I work to manage my energy, align my days with my circadian rhythm, I've learned new techniques around time blocking, my coach has kept me accountable to things that are hard for me to pull through on, and my general quality of life has improved. Could I have gotten this a different way, on my own? Sure, most definitely. Tons of alternatives including self learning and experimentation! That route was just personally very hard for me.

Oh, this is a good idea re: "pricing"; right now it's on the homepage under the section "Flexible plans built for every brain". Thank you for this—will be adding today.

Hm, I'm not able to replicate the blank screen. For now you can bypass this section by going to app.shimmer.care and creating an account directly, but let me check in with my co-founder on the blank screen issue.

And awesome, glad you resonated! Let me know if I can help with finding the right coach! chris@shimmer.care

Thank you for sharing!

I've done these 2 of Russell Barkley's free courses: http://www.continuingedcourses.net/active/courses/course109.... http://www.continuingedcourses.net/active/courses/course109....

I took notes on the former (here: https://shimmercare.notion.site/ADHD-in-Adults-Diagnosis-Imp...) but didn't get around to the latter.

Thank you for your comment.

I am the 'entrepreneur' in question here (who also uses our ADHD coaching), and definitely do not want to profit from anyone's disability. I hope that comes through at some level! We are definitely in the process of engaging with health service providers but the unfortunate nature here is to get something innovative and tech-enabled out there, we first need to prove that it is helpful to folks (which is our mission anyway! By providing at-cost services while compensating our coaches, our main goal right now is to prove that we can help people with ADHD, like me!)

The also unfortunate reality is that there aren't enough therapists out there with ADHD specialization, especially once you filter for an individual's state/insurance. We know we're not the be all end all, but hopefully a useful stop to help gain some skills and routines for people with ADHD.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience.

The cliche "pills don't teach skills".

A mix of (or at least experimenting with) meds, skills, routines, potentially therapy... all good starting points but the key is to figure out what works for you. And we'll take all the help we can get! Each neurodiverse person is different and will likely respond to a different mix of solutions.

Definitely agree ADHD medication has been proven to be most effective. Thank you for this comment!

Most of members use coaching as a tool in conjunction with medication or other forms of treatment. Our service is not marketed as treatment, but simply another tool (for guidance, support, accountability, skill discovery) you use like to do lists, education blogs, body doubling, etc.

Our methods, on the other hand, stand on the shoulders of giants and are based on evidence-based approaches and methods. We put a lot of effort & care to conferring with the medical/clinical, coaching, and other helping professions to ensure what we're building is based on evidence-based approaches. Happy to share more over if helpful! hi@shimmer.care