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Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

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Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#251

Post by hirvi74 »

chrgy wrote: post #217

ADHD Management Guide For individuals with ADHD, leading a balanced life can be a challenge, but with the right strategies, it can be achieved. Here are some essential tips to help manage ADHD effectively: 1. Diet: Lower Carbs & Sugar: Reducing carbohydrate and sugar intake can positively impact focus and energy levels. 2. Physical Activity: Regular Exercise: Engage in at least 1 hour of exercise daily to boost cogni…

If you can successfully do all of the first 6 items on your list then you probably do not have ADHD, so no wonder they work so well.

Not saying they are not good habits to develop, but come on...

That's like telling someone in a wheelchair that they can climb stairs by putting one foot in front of the other.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#252

Post by seanthemon »

hirvi74 wrote: post #247
christalwang wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them are our own in-house certifications. We haven't designed that yet, however we are considering it. Not meant to replace incoming certifications in the short- or medium-term, but to reward coaches for their learning and work and for common language. Example credentials of our coaches are: ICF, NB-HWC, MSW, PhD, EMCC, PsyD, LCSW, LMFT. Not all coaches have all of those credentials—it'll differ by coach.

> Not all coaches have all of those credentials—it'll differ by coach. What decides who gets what coach? Is it a triage based on symptom severity or first-come-first-serve?

Or highest paid best coach..

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#254

Post by pxc »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #94
christalwang wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's absurd to claim that you're not trying to pass as a medical service when you're offering coaching for a neurological condition. You can argue medical vs healthcare or whatever semantics you want but if it quacks like a duck it's a duck.

It's a totally coherent position to hold that the name 'ADHD' gestures at a real thing, but also reject the medicalization of that thing (or, more weakly, that that thing can/should be addressed solely medically). The predominance of the 'medical lens' in addressing cognitive differences is reflected in the language available for naming and describing those things, whether you actually agree with it or not.

The notion that ADHD 'really is' a neurological disorder and 'really isn't' anything else misunderstands the purpose of psychiatric diagnostic categories like ADHD in the first place. Psychiatrists and psychologists aren't in the business of ontology, and clinicians especially aren't.

Take it from someone who has it: this is a stupidly narrow way to think about ADHD.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#255

Post by rendx »

mollybee wrote: post #233
lazyasciiart wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they do imply different root causes. PTSD requires a root cause of experiencing trauma. ADHD is not PTSD because it is not caused by trauma, and therefore therapy to deal with childhood trauma will not benefit people with ADHD. It is, however, very true that they can look the same. I work with kids who have been through trauma and it is only on the order of years since people started recognizing that in these ki…

Therapy to deal with childhood trauma can absolutely benefit people with ADHD. Having ADHD doesn't magically make you immune to PTSD or other impacts of childhood trauma. It just means you also have ADHD. I know this because I have both ADHD and C-PTSD, and the ADHD was very, very present by the time the trauma started. Trauma symptoms exacerbate ADHD symptoms, and often vice versa. Both need to be treated. If kids'…

I'd go further and claim anyone benefits from trauma therapy, which is basically about healthy boundaries between you and the world, how nobody but you yourself are responsible for your feelings, how to regulate and enjoy every emotion, how to accept and welcome death, nonviolent communication, trauma-sensitive awareness of your own thoughts and (re)actions, how to tune your own belief systems more towards your own enjoyment and the benefit of those around you, the power of stories you tell yourself about the world and the power of rituals, etc.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#256

Post by offbrands »

“ Shimmer was born from my personal frustration when I was diagnosed last year & wasn’t able to find an affordable, quality ADHD coach. True hyperfocus mode,”

Having a diagnosis that you have a recognized mental health disorder and then being able to, in less than a year, have a full platform launched and ready to go should make anyone who struggles with ADHD pause and ask how and question everything.

I’ve had ADHD my whole life and was diagnosed 10ish years ago. I couldn’t, medicated or not, accomplish anything of this magnitude in that amount of time if my life depended on it.

Nor anyone I know who has ADHD.

I can’t even think how your first thought would be to find a “coach” and then the idea you have is a coach platform and decided to run with it and attempt to build a whole ass platform instead of adapting to your new diagnosis.

Also why look for a coach? Not a therapist? Coach’s are known to be a morally grey area.

Further more, hyperfocus doesn’t work like this and putting it in the cheeky “true hyperfocus mode” sounds disingenuous and unempathetic to your intended clients struggles.

Finishing stuff is HARD for ADHD people. How is this already done?

This reeks of trying to profit off the ADHD boom of the last couple years.

I hope I’m wrong about my suspicions and I hate that this is my first comment on this site, but seriously this is concerning.

I normally want to lift people up and commend them on their accomplishments yet I can’t for the life of me understand the thought process here. It’s the most neurotypical/grifty answer to a diagnosis I’ve ever heard.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#257

Post by pxc »

thenerdhead wrote: post #138

I see a hundred of these companies that apparently "specialize in ADHD". I see them all in the same light unfortunately of profiteering in various ways around the incompetent medical system the US has. Is this a better price than a licensed therapist? Yes Is this a more practical solution than what you might get? Yes But it just feels ethically wrong to promote your services to people who are "undiagnosed" or "think…

> But it just feels ethically wrong to promote your services to people who are "undiagnosed" or "think they have" ADHD.

You don't have to 'actually have' ADHD (whatever that means!) to benefit from advice, habits, or practices typically leveraged by ADHDers. You just have to have a similar enough struggle that works in a similar enough way that those techniques help you somewhat. Whether you have ADHD matters way less than whether those things help you.

That said, idk how to really evaluate for-profit companies orienting themselves around the ADHD label to provide services along those lines as opposed to freely associating online communities or whatever.

But the truth is that just like with an actual therapist (or medication) you actually have to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment for yourself. There actually isn't a formula for treating ADHD, and it's not something you can just hand off to someone else. In that respect, services like this are no different from their more authoritative counterparts in psychiatry or psychology.

> This is exactly what social media is doing today in the sense of trying to convince you have something because you happen to engage in said content.

Not quite, imo. The TikTok phenomenon is decidedly less practical (that is, less about doing anything) and more identitarian. It's about asserting membership in an informal group and differentiating yourself from others. It's 'finding yourself' like teens and young adults have always done laden so heavily with (sloppy use of) medicalizing language and a tendency to essentialize, run a bit amok. It's also innocent stuff, like in-jokes about the catharsis of finding a suitable label, of discovering that your struggles aren't totally idiosyncratic but 'a thing'.

But 'if you think you might have ADHD, check this thing out' isn't at all the same thing as 'if you laughed at this meme, you have ADHD'.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#258

Post by rendx »

mollybee wrote: post #226
rendx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I merely asked a question about the team's position on it. To pick a random study of many: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29086104/ "Children with ADHD were more likely than controls to have ever experienced a traumatic event (27 vs 16%; OR: 1.99; 95% CI 1.21, 3.27). This difference remained significant in the adjusted model (OR: 1.76, 95% CI 1.03, 3.01) accounting for child factors (age and gender) and family socio…

"Correlation" is the key word here. I think it's really important to keep in mind that a lot of people with ADHD have childhood trauma because of how adults responded to their ADHD symptoms. In my case, I have plenty of trauma, almost all of which was the direct results of adults shaming and criticizing me for traits that turned out to be due to ADHD. If your ADHD makes it impossible for you to focus in school, and t…

I really hope this doesn't come across as an attack against you or your environment because I don't mean it that way: My fairly recent understanding is that "shaming and criticizing" is something that can hurt or even traumatize you only when your caregivers didn't show you how to maintain healthy boundaries and regulate your own emotions (mostly by living it) - a.k.a. "self worth". I have learned this the hard way, and it sounds like you too.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#259

Post by pxc »

geoelectric wrote: post #211

I feel like a lot of people in the thread don’t realize ADHD Coaching is an established thing that’s more like a specialization of life or organizational coaching than like therapy. It’s a certified practice, but not like being a doctor. Pretty sure I was paying around $100/hr when I did it years ago, so those prices aren’t insane. The dude coaching was someone with obvious ADHD who (like a lot of us) probably had an…

> The dude coaching was someone with obvious ADHD who (like a lot of us) probably had an easier time communicating what should be done than doing it himself. He definitely was no therapist.

I just wanna add to this: ADHD is fundamentally about subjectivity. The trouble with ADHD lives in what it's like to be someone who has it. And medical doctors, scientists, and even psychologists, who don't have ADHD often attend so much to the objective facts that are known about ADHD or particular treatments for it that they neglect, discount, and basically fail to grok virtually anything about what having ADHD is like, what taking stimulant medication is like, and so on.

As a result I've consistently gotten way better care from 'less qualified' clinicians who themselves have ADHD than from 'more qualified' ones who don't. I would (and you should, too) expect a psychiatric nurse or nurse practitioner who has ADHD to do a better job with ADHD patients than a PhD-MD who doesn't. And it's totally reasonable that some random coach who has ADHD but only minimal training could be genuinely helpful.

Re: Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

#260

Post by [deleted] »

christalwang wrote: post #42
Apreche wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you haven't found a way to articulate it. You should articulate it exactly the way you do in this comment. You are not providing licensed medical services. Just come out and say it, since it's true. Yes, saying that will cause people to distrust you, and well it should. You are right about there being a shortage, but there is no substitute for a real doctor. That said, being upfront about it instead of trying…

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-backe…

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