I thought I'd done a lot of the work on myself. Then nine days of NLP training showed me there were still stories I was telling myself that I hadn't even realised were there.
If you're wondering what NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) actually is, at its simplest, it's about noticing how your mind talks to itself. Once you can hear that conversation clearly, you can start to change it, and the outcomes that follow from it.
That landed hard for me. Like a lot of late-diagnosed ADHD adults, I spent years in a fast-paced senior role, running a story that I was lazy, disorganised or somehow not enough. I didn’t even realise it was a story, because it just felt like the truth.
What I’ve come away with is the understanding that even the version of that story I’m still sometimes telling myself today, the subtle one I hadn’t noticed, can be shifted.
There was a moment on about day two or three of the training when I started to panic because we were going to start live coaching practice with all the new things we’d learned. The panic wasn’t because I didn’t think I could do it, I’m an experienced coach - rather that I ran the old “I can’t remember anything” story, because I have ADHD and that means I have a bad memory. I didn’t even know it was a belief, it was so ingrained, I always just assumed I’d forget everything.
My coach helped me challenge that old belief and work with a new one: "I remember everything I need." This absolutely changed the way I went into that coaching practice, because I’d taken the pressure of myself . And even when as a first-timer trying the new techniques I had to check my notes, I was fine with that. I was able to give myself some grace, and that meant a lot.
One of the biggest things I realised after the training was that I'd been treating some of the limitations I associated with my ADHD as fixed limitations on what I was capable of.
Whilst I can't change the underlying wiring of my brain, I can change how I understand it, how I work with it and, importantly, the beliefs I've developed about myself because of it.
Our ADHD brains can affect executive functioning in different ways, but repeated thought patterns can also become familiar and reinforced. Learning new ways of thinking and responding can help us develop different patterns over time.
This doesn't mean eliminating the challenges of ADHD, but it does mean we don't have to keep accepting every negative belief we've developed about ourselves as the truth.
Think of it this way, if we created the “I’m not enough”,“ I’m lazy” , “I can never finish anything”, “I just need to try harder” beliefs through repeatedly telling ourselves these things, or hearing them from other people, then we can reverse or reframe them as well. We certainly weren’t born with that mean little voice inside our heads.
Think about the difference between telling yourself "I'm lazy" and recognising "I'm struggling to initiate this task, and I need to understand what's getting in the way." Or replacing "I never finish anything" with "I might need a different way of managing tasks that works with my brain."
One of the central presuppositions of NLP is that people are not their behaviours. The things we see on the surface of ADHD are behaviours, or traits, like distraction or impulsivity, but it’s what we tell ourselves about those behaviours that can really do damage.
So much of how we respond to the world is influenced by our experiences, memories, values and beliefs. And if we never stop to question some of those filters, we can find ourselves repeating the same responses and behaviours over and over again.
The challenges are real. But the conclusions we draw about ourselves because of those challenges are open to examination and change, are they not?
This is why I believe we need to work on both levels. Practical strategies can make everyday life easier, but we also need to look at the beliefs that influence how we see ourselves, what we think we're capable of and how we respond when things don't go to plan.
What if some of the things you've spent years believing about yourself aren't actually truths about who you are, but stories you've learned to tell yourself?
Warmly,
Sally
