How to Not Lose Money on Coaching
(and Stop Ghosting Your Coach)
As a coach, I care about your progress. I also care about your money.
Too often, what I hear afterwards is how much money got lost along the way. Sessions booked and never used. A package, paid for with good intentions, then quietly left to expire. Not because the coaching wasn't working. Usually because something got in the way of just showing up, and by the time anyone noticed, the money was already gone.
Sounds familiar? It's the same pattern as the gym membership you're still paying for, or the hobby kit gathering dust in a cupboard. There's a name for it in the ADHD community: the ADHD tax, the accumulated extra cost, financial and otherwise, of executive function challenges playing out in daily life.¹
Here's the bit nobody tells you upfront: if you have ADHD and you're starting coaching, you will probably want to disappear at some point. Not because coaching isn't working. Often because it is. It's not about discipline. It's often about the gap between intention and action.
Below is more on why coaching can be hard to stick with in the first place, and what actually helps make it stick.
Here is a short guide to help you prepare for it, and deal with it if it happens: click here to download PDF
Why some poeple go quiet?
Shame. A lot of ADHD adults experience something called rejection sensitive dysphoria, an intense emotional reaction to perceived criticism, failure, or falling short. Dr William Dodson, the psychiatrist who popularised the term, found that many of his patients recognised this pattern instantly and often carried real shame about it.² Miss a session, and that shame can make it easier to disappear than to face what happened.
Progress anxiety. Success can be genuinely destabilising, not just uncomfortable. Abraham Maslow called this the Jonah complex, the fear of one's own potential, because succeeding demands a new identity and new expectations.³ Self-handicapping research describes something similar: people sometimes create their own obstacles specifically when a part of their identity feels like it's about to be tested.⁴ Going quiet right when things start working isn't a coincidence, it's often the moment change starts to feel real.
Task initiation. Task initiation, the ability to begin a task without excessive delay, is one of the executive functions most consistently found to be impaired in ADHD.⁵ It isn't about willpower. An unscheduled session, something left undone for the session, these build a small wall of overwhelm, and avoiding it starts to feel easier than starting it.
None of these three are character flaws. They're predictable patterns, which is exactly why they're worth naming rather than just pushing through.
What keeps people in the room?
If the "why" above is about what pulls people away, this is about what keeps people in the room.
The biggest lever here is excitement, not effort. It's how ADHD motivation actually works. Dr Dodson calls it an interest-based nervous system: you don't follow through because something is important or good for you, you follow through because something has genuinely caught your interest. A coaching relationship that feels engaging tends to carry itself forward almost without trying. One that runs purely on "I should keep doing this" tends to fade, quietly, the same way a New Year's resolution does.⁶
So it helps to tell your coach early, ideally in your very first session, that you might go quiet at some point. Not as a confession, just as a heads-up. That way, if it happens, there's already an agreed plan sitting there waiting, instead of you having to invent one from scratch while also feeling bad about needing it.
A couple of other things make a real difference too. When something goes well, say so immediately, while it's still fresh enough that you actually want to tell someone about it. Waiting until the next scheduled session means the excitement has usually faded into a flat "yeah, that went fine." And if a strategy worked, use it again straight away rather than treating it as something that needs to be re-tested or proven twice. Second-guessing a working strategy is often just another way of stalling.
Underneath all of this is one more thing worth saying plainly: this works best when it's built on what you're already good at, not on what's supposedly wrong with you. Strength-based coaching starts from the assumption that you already have real capabilities, curiosity, humour, creativity, whatever yours happen to be, and asks how to put more of those to work, rather than starting from a list of deficits to correct. It's a different starting point, and it tends to be a much easier one to stay engaged with.
What pulls someone away and what keeps them in the room turn out to be the same mechanism, just running in opposite directions. The things that make people disappear (shame, identity threat, overwhelm) are quietened by the same things that make coaching stick (naming it early, leaning on strengths, keeping it genuinely engaging). Neither side is solved by trying harder. Both are solved by designing the coaching relationship around how your brain actually works, not how you wish it worked.
Sources
1. Stimpunks Foundation, ["ADHD Tax"](https://stimpunks.org/glossary/adhd-tax/)
2. CHADD, ["Rejection Can Be More Painful with ADHD"](https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/rejection-can-more-painful-with-adhd/); Neurodivergent Insights, ["History of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria"](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/history-of-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria/)
3. Maslow's "Jonah complex," as discussed in [Psychology Today, "4 Signs You're Self-Sabotaging Your Joy"](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202601/4-signs-youre-self-sabotaging-your-joy)
4. Funkhouser & Hallam (2022), "Self-handicapping and self-deception: A two-way street," Philosophical Psychology, as summarised in [Oxford Review, "Fear of Failure and Self-sabotage, Self-handicapping and Self-deception"](https://oxford-review.com/fear-of-failure-and-self-sabotage-self-handicapping-and-self-deception/)
5. Willcutt et al. (2005), meta-analytic findings on executive function impairment in ADHD, as summarised in [Centennial Park Counseling, "ADHD and Procrastination"](https://centennialparkcounseling.com/adhd-and-procrastination-why-you-wait-until-the-last-minute-even-when-you-care/); Barkley (2012) on task initiation and self-regulation deficits in ADHD
6. Dr William Dodson's concept of the interest-based nervous system, as summarised in [Neurodivergent Insights, "Interest-Based Nervous System and ADHD Motivation"](https://neurodivergentinsights.com/interest-based-nervous-system/)