About
My Story
Finding my direction by understanding my own mind.
There are moments in life when someone asks you a question that quietly changes everything.
For me, those questions came through ADHD coaching.
Before that, I had already tried psychotherapy. I had explored Gestalt therapy. I'd spoken with psychiatrists. Each helped me in different ways, but something still felt incomplete. I understood many things about myself, yet I kept finding myself caught in the same patterns—self-criticism, frustration, overwhelm and the feeling that I simply wasn't living up to my own potential.
Then I began working with an ADHD coach.
At first, I thought coaching would be about strategies and productivity. Instead, it invited me to look at myself differently.
Not, “How do I manage ADHD?”
But, “Who have I become because of the way I've experienced ADHD?”
That question changed everything.
Understanding before judgement
Anger
For as long as I can remember, anger was something I carried with me.
As a teenager I punched doors hard enough to break them.
I took up kickboxing and other contact sports, hoping I could channel the frustration into something useful.
Sometimes it helped.
Sometimes it didn't.
What I never really understood was where that anger came from.
Coaching didn't make the anger disappear.
It helped me understand it.
And understanding something gives you choices that simply reacting never can.
I wasn't learning to become somebody else.
My coach didn't give me easy answers.
Sometimes the questions were uncomfortable.
Sometimes they forced me to look honestly at the way I spoke to myself, the expectations I placed upon myself, and the stories I had repeated for years without ever questioning them.
I wasn't learning to become somebody else.
I was learning to understand the person I'd been all along.
Coaching changed my life. Not because it solved every problem. But because it taught me to understand myself with curiosity rather than criticism.
Relationships
Nobody thrives alone
One of the hardest realisations was recognising that ADHD doesn't only affect the person living with it. It affects the people who love them too.
Even when Sara understood that my frustration wasn't directed at her, she still experienced its consequences because she cared about me.
Watching someone you love struggle is its own kind of pain. Learning to regulate my emotions wasn't only something I wanted for myself. It was something I wanted for the people I loved.
Understanding before judgement
One of the reasons I became an ADHD coach is because I know what it feels like to spend years wondering why life seems harder than it should.
Living with ADHD, autism and dyscalculia has shaped the way I experience the world, but it has also shaped the way I work with people.
I don't see ADHD as something to be “fixed.”
Neither do I believe success comes from pushing yourself harder or pretending your challenges don't exist.
Instead, I believe meaningful change begins with understanding how your own mind works.
When we understand ourselves with curiosity instead of criticism, we can stop fighting against our brains and begin working alongside them.
That is the foundation of every coaching conversation I have.
A different perspective
Anthropology taught me to ask better questions
Long before I trained as an ADHD coach, I was fascinated by people.
As an anthropologist, I spent years exploring how culture, environment and lived experience shape the way we think, behave and relate to the world around us.
That perspective still guides my coaching today.
Rather than asking, “What's wrong with you?” I prefer to ask, “What has shaped the way you experience the world?”
Those are very different questions.
The answers often lead to greater understanding, self-compassion and lasting change.
Discovering mindfulness
If someone had told me years ago that mindfulness would become part of my daily life, I probably wouldn't have believed them.
In fact, my first reaction was resistance.
Like many people with ADHD, I assumed mindfulness meant sitting still, emptying my mind and somehow stopping my thoughts. It felt unrealistic, uncomfortable and completely unlike me. After trying it briefly, I walked away convinced it simply wasn't for me.
About a year later, someone encouraged me to approach it differently.
They suggested I listen to Jon Kabat-Zinn's guided meditations rather than trying to work everything out by myself.
This time I stayed with it.
Slowly.
A few minutes became ten.
Ten minutes became a daily routine.
What surprised me wasn't that my mind became quiet.
It didn't.
What changed was my relationship with my thoughts.
I became less reactive, more aware and more compassionate towards myself.
As my own practice developed, I began introducing short mindfulness exercises to the students I mentor. I watched anxious students become calmer, more focused and better able to engage with learning after just a few minutes of grounding practice.
Seeing those changes inspired me to train as a Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Practitioner.
Today my approach combines personal experience with evidence-informed practice, drawing on the work of pioneers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dr Lydia Zylowska, whose research into mindfulness and adult ADHD continues to influence the way I coach.
For me, mindfulness isn't about emptying the mind.
It's about learning to notice it with kindness.
Sometimes I wonder how different life might have been if someone had asked me those questions twenty years earlier.
Perhaps there would have been less shame.
Less frustration.
Less wasted time trying to force myself into systems that simply weren't built for the way my mind worked.
I'll never know.
What I do know is this.
Coaching changed my life.
Not because it solved every problem.
But because it taught me to understand myself with curiosity rather than criticism.
That experience led me to train as an ADHD coach.
Today my hope is simple.
To offer other people the understanding, practical support and honest conversations that once changed mine.
The name
Why Good Wolf Coaching?
The name Good Wolf Coaching comes from a story that has stayed with me for many years.
It tells of two wolves that exist within each of us.
One is driven by fear, shame, anger and self-doubt.
The other grows through curiosity, courage, compassion and hope.
The wolf that becomes strongest is the one we choose to feed.
Living with ADHD often means that the first wolf has had plenty of opportunities to grow. Years of misunderstanding, criticism and comparison can leave us believing stories about ourselves that simply aren't true.
Coaching cannot erase the past.
But it can help us choose which story we continue to strengthen.
Every conversation, every small step and every moment of self-understanding is another opportunity to feed the good wolf.
And you don't have to make that journey alone.
The Good Wolf story isn’t about taming the wolf. It’s about choosing which wolf you feed.
Professional background
My background and training
Alongside my coaching practice, I have spent many years working in higher education, supporting students, mentoring neurodivergent learners and teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
My work combines lived experience with professional training in ADHD coaching, anthropology, mindfulness and higher education.