Hi, I'm Kristen Carder
and I have ADHD...
I am a wife, mother of 3 boys, successful podcaster, speaker, writer, and a mindset coach for adults with ADHD.
You heard it correctly: mindset coach.
The most important thing you need to know about me is that I am not an accountability coach. I’m not going to check in on you. I won’t nag you about your to-do list. I won’t follow up to see if you’ve done the thing you said you were going to do.
That sh*t doesn’t work long-term anyway.
As a certified life coach, I practice causal coaching. Causal coaching gets to the root of the problem and empowers you to find your own solutions to solve issues from the inside out.
This makes “being held accountable” obsolete and gives you the power to overcome your difficulties with strategies and tools that work in real time.
experience
I bring 10 years of ADHD expertise
I teach my clients evidence-based techniques for self-acceptance, overcoming procrastination, prioritizing and planning, emotional regulation, and the most crucial skill EVER when it comes to thriving with ADHD: mindset management.
As an internationally recognized coach for adults with ADHD, I have spent the last three years growing and nurturing a coaching program, FOCUSED, in which I have taught, loved, and served thousands of ADHDers with an approach that you won’t find anywhere else.
If you want to coach with me, be ready to hear the truth.
My clients often tell me that they feel like I am reading their mind and that I’m the first person to truly “get” them.
Clients express shock at the transformations they make through coaching with me because no other approach has ever prompted lasting change for them…until now.
The shifts made within the FOCUSED coaching program are no less than miraculous.
I get you
professional
I have studied ADHD for 10 years.
That’s 10 years of book reading, lecture-attending, researching, studying, and learning from leading experts in the ADHD industry.
Many of these students had ADHD and this is where I began to research and learn about ADHD in an effort to help our clientele.
I implemented focus strategies, executive functioning techniques, and coaching tools to help students manage their ADHD and learn to thrive with it.
The more I learned about ADHD, the more obsessed I became.
In 2020 I transitioned to full-time podcaster and coach for adults with ADHD.
Since then I have had the privilege of speaking with and learning from some of the most prominent names in the ADHD industry.
- Dr. Russell Barkley (Taking Charge of Adult ADHD)
- Sari Solden (Women with ADHD)
- Dr. Russell Ramsay (Rethinking Adult ADHD)
- Dr. Patricia Quinn (100 Questions and Answers about ADHD in Women and Girls)
- Dr. Ari Tuckman (More Attention, Less Deficit and ADHD After Dark)
- Dr. Ned Hallowell (Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, and ADHD 2.0)
- Neuroscientist Dr. Amishi Jha (Peak Mind)
Most recently, I have studied the work of and taken classes with Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), Gabor Mate (The Wisdom of Trauma), and Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) in an effort to become even more trauma informed.
Being a trauma-informed coach is crucial to my work with ADHD adults because many ADHDers have experienced repeated trauma (even simply the trauma of living with ADHD in a neurotypical world), and need to be held in a very safe space in order to have the freedom to make true transformation.
My Story
I have transformed my own life in a way that is nearly unrecognizable.
Growing up, I was the fun girl in school who pretended not to care about dull things like grades and responsibilities…but deep down I truly did care.
I couldn’t figure out why my friends could keep planners and do their homework and I couldn’t. My grades ranged between D’s and A’s and I often heard that if I only applied myself, I could be really successful.
In college, I nearly drowned in a double major that I didn’t really enjoy. I suffered from binge eating, depression, anxiety, and the inability to follow through on pretty much everything.
Then I was diagnosed with ADHD.
I eagerly went on medication, and for the first time, my grades hung on the fridge. It was my own fridge in my college apartment and I put them there myself, but still it was the proudest moment of my life to that point.
Everything made so much more sense. I felt validated. I was able to get so much more done than I ever had before.
I thought I was cured…dang, was I wrong.
I spent the next 10 years floundering. I was medicated, but I didn’t have the support I needed to succeed. I didn’t know anything about ADHD or how it impacted every area of my life.
I got married and spent a year trying to make myself write thank-you notes…I never did finish them.
I started an in-home music studio but spent most of my time watching daytime TV and avoiding any real work.
I looked forward to being a mom my whole life, but when the time came, the season of pregnancy, nursing, and raising toddlers was the hardest period of my life.
I was unmedicated and unsupported. I didn’t have any scaffolding in place for myself.
I felt like such a failure. I was frustrated and full of shame. I didn’t know at the time that ADHDers need and deserve a lot of help, and so I tried to do everything myself.
Finally. FINALLY. I reached my rock bottom when I noticed that I was day-drinking because I couldn’t handle my life. My kids were loud, the house was a disaster, I couldn’t make myself work consistently in my business, I was overwhelmed, and I was often reaching for alcohol to soothe the spin cycle that was my ADHD brain…at 2pm…on a Tuesday. Not cool.
Something had to change. I realized I hadn’t been medicated for ADHD since I got pregnant with my first son. That was nearly 10 years prior.
I went back on ADHD medication and started looking for resources. I researched ADHD extensively and learned that most of the obnoxious things that I hated about myself like being late, interrupting people, being disorganized, being emotionally explosive, etc, were actually symptoms of ADHD.
By this time I had started a tutoring business and was working with many ADHD students, so everything I learned I was able to apply to my work with them.
The more ADHD-related info I devoured, the more relief I felt... but I soon realized that medication alone was not enough. Coaching was a much needed addition to my toolkit.
turning point
My ENTIRE life changed when I joined a group coaching program. For 2 years I devoured coaching materials. I took classes. I completed workbooks. I listened to replays of group coaching calls and saw myself in every single human being coached even though most of them were neurotypical.
Even with medication and everything I had learned about ADHD, nothing made such an immediate impact as coaching.
This group coaching program is what helped me to have the courage to start the I Have ADHD Podcast. It allowed me to learn to process overwhelm and frustration so that I wasn’t screaming at my kids anymore, it helped me to develop more self-awareness and improve my relationship with my husband. And it helped me to grow my tutoring company to a multiple 6-figure business.
I was far less triggered, far more productive, and much MUCH more fulfilled. All from a $297/month coaching program.
This is why I’m very serious about sharing the benefits of getting support within a group coaching setting, especially if you’re an adult with ADHD.
During this time, I went looking for a podcast to help me with my ADHD. I wanted something fun and concise that combined coaching tools and ADHD strategies. After a year or two of being frustrated that such a podcast didn’t exist, I decided that I needed to be the one to fill this void.
The I Have ADHD podcast resonated deeply with ADHDers who were looking for mindset tools beyond the typical tips and tricks to manage symptoms.
This organically led to my listeners reaching out and asking me to coach them. That was in the Spring of 2019, and I have been coaching adults with ADHD ever since.
A year later, I made the decision to sell my tutoring company and I went into coaching full-time. It turned out that the demand for my coaching services greatly exceeded my capacity to fulfill the requests (not a terrible problem to have!).
This is when I created my group, FOCUSED. I wanted to help as many people as possible and make coaching more accessible to those who couldn’t afford 1:1 fees (often thousands of dollars).
I modeled FOCUSED after the coaching program I got so much out of, and tailored it to the impulsive, distracted, inconsistent ADHD brain.
Since starting FOCUSED, I’ve coached, served, and loved over a thousand ADHD adults.
It has been the greatest honor of my life to walk ADHDers through the process of self-acceptance, establishing a life that is compatible with their ADHD brain, discovering within themselves the ability to accomplish their goals.
This might sound like the end of the story, but it’s not.
I am just getting started. And my guess is, so are you.
