Claire Twomey, Ireland’s first ADHD coach with four industry-recognised accreditations, shares how her personal journey with ADHD shapes her strengths-based, empathetic approach at ADHD Connections. Driven by lived experience and a passion for ethical standards, she has founded pioneering initiatives like Divergent Nexus and Ireland’s first ADHD Coaching Collective, aiming to empower neurodivergent individuals, promote best practices, and make high-quality support accessible to all.

1. As Ireland’s first and only ADHD Coach with four industry-recognised accreditations, how has your personal experience with ADHD influenced your coaching approach at ADHD Connections?

My lived experience with ADHD is at the heart of everything I do at ADHD Connections. Being diagnosed in my late 20s was a turning point, after never knowing myself and 10 years of struggling with my mental health.

I understand what it’s like to go through life never feeling like you belong, not reaching your potential, and feeling like you don’t deserve the achievements. A lifetime of shame, self-doubt, and pressure to meet expectations really takes its toll. I also know the power of tailored strategies, compassionate accountability, and having someone in your corner who truly gets it.

Through my own coaching journey, I learned the value of unmasking, authenticity and self-advocacy. At ADHD Connections, my approach is strengths-based and deeply empathetic. I meet every client exactly where they are, helping them reconnect with their own inner wisdom and build systems that work with their brains, not against them.

Ultimately, my journey allows me to show up as both a coach and a guide, someone who walks beside my clients, not in front of them, because I know this isn’t about “fixing” anyone. It’s about unlocking what’s already there. I have been privileged in many ways, and so I want others to have the same opportunities.

2. Can you explain the concept behind Divergent Nexus and how it relates to your work in neurodiversity coaching?

Divergent Nexus is a platform that promotes ethical and effective Coaching, aimed at safeguarding the experiences of neurodivergent individuals seeking coaching and protecting the coaching profession’s reputation. The aim is to educate and inform those seeking out coaching services on best practices, ethical guidelines and realistic expectations.

Coaching is an unregulated profession. In the last few years, we have seen a considerable increase in ADHD awareness and diagnoses, which has created a greater need for services and supports. In the last 2-3 years, we have seen people move to work in the area of ADHD with no training or qualifications, some not even doing the work on themselves first. We are also starting to see inadequate coach training programmes surface.

Members of the community have told us about their experiences with these self-proclaimed coaches, and the impact on individuals has been dire and quite concerning. People are spending their hard-earned money looking for support to reduce their challenges and improve their lives, and they are being taken advantage of.

Coaching is not a doctor-patient or expert-client relationship. It is not about telling someone what to do or offering ‘tips and tricks’. It is a partnership. These lines have been badly blurred by untrained professionals because they have not learned the skill of coaching. Divergent Nexus aims to highlight this difference and encourage clients to make informed decisions when selecting service providers and professionals to work with them. There is also guidance on advocacy and a complaints process.

3. What inspired you to found Ireland’s first ADHD Coaching Collective, and how has it evolved since its inception in 2020?

The simple answer is that there is a huge demand for ethical, effective ADHD coaching, and I can’t provide it on my own. I am also not the right coach for everyone, so I have started to build a team where individuals have a choice. Our ADHD cohort is underserved and underrepresented, and I want to change that. The Collective is a step in the right direction.

The Collective is a platform dedicated to empowering ADHDers to thrive, where individuals can choose the right coach for them. The Collective offers coaching services to children, teens, college students, parents and adults. We also have an access programme to make support more accessible for individuals who may not otherwise be able afford it, ensuring that financial barriers don’t hinder personal growth and improving quality of life.

All the coaches have lived experience, have been coached themselves before they undertook training, and have been adequately professionally trained. We are trying to set a standard for what ADHD support in Ireland should look like, and we have further plans to expand. It is very exciting.

4. How do you tailor your coaching methods to address the unique needs of adults versus teens with ADHD?

Coaching adults and teens with ADHD means meeting two very different sets of needs. The process is the same for both in that coaching is client-led. We always work on what’s most important to the client, and they are part of the creation process, where we build a new way forward together. It’s important to point out that I don’t coach the ADHD diagnosis, I coach the person behind it.

For adults, the work often centres around managing overwhelm, breaking lifelong patterns of self-criticism, and building systems that support work, relationships, and home life. It’s often as much about mindset as it is about structure, helping them unlearn what doesn’t serve them and reconnect with or even discover their strengths.

With teens, the focus is more on enabling them to understand themselves better, accept their differences and survive the education system. We look at concepts of emotional regulation, confidence, and executive function, delivered in a way that feels supportive, not corrective. It’s crucial to build trust with young people and let them know that this partnership is different from every other adult relationship they have. I often work closely with parents to ensure we are all taking the same approach and that the teens’ support system is aligned and consistent.

In both cases, coaching is highly personalised, strengths-based, and grounded in real-life experience, but they will have different priorities. The younger the client is, the easier it is to reduce feelings of shame, brokenness and frustration. When working with young people, we also have an opportunity to impact their outcomes in later life and reduce the challenges and negative experiences they may face.

5. In your experience, what are the most common challenges faced by individuals with ADHD in professional settings, and how do you help them overcome these?

In workplace settings, individuals with ADHD often face a mix of practical and invisible challenges that can seriously impact confidence and performance. Aspects such as productivity, time management, decision making, dysregulation and sensory input can greatly impact how they experience their working environment.

Professionals coming to coaching have more than likely spent a lifetime feeling not good enough. Believe it or not, but many ADHDers are perfectionists, extremely competitive and high achievers, but this comes at a cost. They also experience a concept we call ‘success amnesia’, where ADHDERS forget or discount their past successes, no matter how recent or significant they were. You will frequently hear them minimise and play down anything they have accomplished, and that is just for others’ sake; they actually believe it.

It is most likely linked to the fact that they have had years of masking, criticism, or underachievement can leave them constantly questioning their worth. Working memory, all or nothing thinking and dopamine wearing off will also impact this.

All of this means that they are working four times as hard as a neurotypical, they take on extra work, take work home and work longer hours. It’s exhausting and creeps in on the rest and recovery, and this leads to burnout. ADHDers are in constant survival mode, shifting between hyper-focusing, people-pleasing, and pushing through until eventually they crash.

My role as a coach is to help clients identify how ADHD uniquely shows up in their work life, and then co-create strategies that honour how their brain works. That might mean building better systems, learning how to structure time, getting comfortable with slowing down, increasing self-compassion and reframing their approach to productivity. But it’s also about shifting mindset, replacing shame with self-awareness, and helping them advocate for their needs.

I get great joy in challenging my clients. I love supporting them to step out of comfort zones, and change the way they have always looked at things. Ultimately, I am promoting the idea that success isn’t about forcing themselves to fit a neurotypical mould, it’s about designing a personalised method that plays to their strengths.

6. Can you share a success story of how your coaching has positively impacted a client’s life or career?

You will never hear me say that my coaching positively impacted someone. As I mentioned above, coaching is a partnership. It’s a thought-provoking collaboration in which the client shows up, does the work, and owns the process. I might create the space and put up the challenges, but the client makes the shift happen.

One powerful success story that stands out is from a client who described coaching as a “breakthrough moment” in her ADHD journey. When she came to coaching, she was ready to make a change, she wanted to stop fighting herself and start learning to live with her ADHD in a more peaceful and empowered way.

Throughout our work together, she uncovered a fundamental mindset shift: she moved from seeing ADHD as something she “had”, to understanding it as part of who she is. That change in perspective was the key to unlocking greater self-acceptance. From there, she was able to dismantle long-held internal barriers, gain clarity, and implement real, practical strategies that worked with her specific wiring.

What made the most significant difference wasn’t just the tools we explored or the strategies we developed; it was the transformation in how she viewed herself. She began to relate to herself with acceptance, compassion and confidence.

7. What training or promotion do you do outside of your coaching programmes?

My mission goes far beyond 1:1 or group coaching. Here at ADHD Connections, we are deeply committed to advocacy, education, and changing the narrative around ADHD in Ireland and beyond. Outside of coaching, I regularly engage in a wide range of work to raise awareness, promote neuro-inclusion, and move away from a deficit-first perspective.

I speak at public events, conferences, schools, and panel discussions, sharing both professional insights and lived experience to raise awareness and reduce stigma around ADHD.

I also provide custom workshops and training for organisations, including businesses, schools, and service providers. These sessions are designed to help teams understand ADHD in a real-world context and to create more inclusive, neurodivergent-friendly environments.

As a team, we have recently started exhibiting at fairs, events and conferences. This is an excellent opportunity to meet the community, share resources, engage in real conversations, and increase visibility. It is also a great way to access people who may not know where to start.

We are currently revamping our own community space through peer events, educational webinars, and awareness initiatives, aiming to reduce the isolation people might feel. We’ve got something much bigger quietly taking shape behind the scenes, a vision for a broader support service that’s slowly coming into focus as we explore the right path forward. So stay tuned.

Whether we’re training professionals or speaking to the public, our goal is always to create understanding, build capacity, and make Ireland a more supportive place for people with ADHD.

8. Looking ahead, what developments or changes do you anticipate in the field of neurodiversity coaching, and how are you preparing for them at ADHD Connections?

The field of neurodiversity coaching is evolving rapidly, and we’re excited to be at the forefront of that growth. Research continues to show that ADHD coaching is one of the most impactful supports available, and as awareness rises, so too does the demand. We already see more training pathways, more coaches entering the field, and more individuals seeking support after diagnosis.

At ADHD Connections, we’re preparing for this next chapter by:

• Expanding into niche areas, offering tailored support for teens, parents and professionals.
• Broadening our training lens to include other neurodivergencies beyond ADHD, because we know these experiences often overlap.
• Working to professionalise the field, advocating for ADHD coaching to be recognised and regulated in Ireland and internationally, with clear standards of practice, ethics, and impact.
• Focusing on accessibility, as diagnosis rates continue to rise, we’re committed to making support more affordable, scalable, and widely available, especially across communities who have been historically underserved.

Our hope would be that neurodivergent coaching is fully integrated into mental health, educational systems and workplaces, and recognised as a vital form of care and empowerment.

9. Are there any other people, companies or programmes in the coaching space in Ireland or abroad that you are a big fan of?

ADHD coaching is still a relatively new concept in Ireland. Before I trained in 2019, there was only one ADHD Coach for the entire country. Now we have 30-plus, and there are some incredible individuals doing great work. 

Internationally, I deeply respect the work of PAAC (Professional Association for ADHD Coaches) and the ADHD Coaches Organisation (ACO), both have been instrumental in building ethical, evidence-based communities of practice. Their commitment to quality, research, and ongoing development has set a strong foundation for coaches.

I have recently been appointed to the board of directors for ACO. It’s a great honour because the ACO has been a global leader in shaping the standards and future of ADHD coaching. I now have the opportunity to be part of creating meaningful change, contribute to the growth of the profession, amplify the voices of Irish and international coaches, and help ensure the field remains ethical, inclusive, and impactful. I think it will be a great experience and support my work with Divergent Nexus

I’m also encouraged to see broader coaching bodies like the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council) beginning to incorporate neurodiversity into their policies and frameworks. That’s a huge step forward in recognising the specific needs of neurodivergent clients and in supporting coaches who work in this space.

I’m proud to be part of a growing movement in Ireland. ADHD Connections was created to fill a gap, but it’s been amazing to see the community expand, with more coaches training and becoming accredited. More conversations are happening around the need for neuro-affirming support.

There’s still work to be done, but the momentum is building, and I’m excited to be both contributing to and learning from the wider coaching community.

10. Have you been nominated for or won any awards or accolades recently?

Funny you should ask that! Earlier this year, I found out I’d been nominated, and then named a finalist, for the Women of Vision Awards in two categories: Community Champion and Diversity & Inclusion Advocate. On May 23rd, I travelled to Cork for the ceremony and was honoured to win the Diversity & Inclusion Advocate award. It was such a meaningful recognition of the work we’re doing to make ADHD support more inclusive and accessible.

And the celebrations didn’t stop there! Just a few days later, on May 26th, I spent the day at Google Ireland after being selected as a winner of the You’re The Business award. This award celebrates small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Ireland that have demonstrated a strong commitment to digital innovation and growth. Digital tools are essential to ADHD Connections. We started online, and they continue to help us streamline support, improve accessibility, and reach more people who might otherwise struggle to find the support they need. From automated systems that reduce overwhelm to accessible content and online coaching platforms, technology allows us to meet people where they are, in a way that works for how they work.

These awards are so important because they give ADHD and neurodiversity a seat at the table in mainstream spaces. Recognition like this helps challenge stigma and shows that this work matters, not just to individuals but to communities, businesses, and society as a whole. It’s about visibility, validation, and creating real momentum for change. It’s been a whirlwind, but also an affirming reminder that visibility, advocacy, and lived experience do make a difference.