Sitting with Feelings

A client with ADHD who is a director of operations describes conflicts with his leadership team as problems to solve before the conversation about them has finished. He arrives at coaching sessions with action plans built on situations he described for less than two minutes. His manager has given him feedback that he 'doesn't let things land' - that decisions feel rushed and collaboration feels bypassed. He is aware of this pattern intellectually but cannot locate what he is moving away from. The coaching focus is slowing the gap between noticing an emotional state and activating the problem-solving machinery.

Frame this as a sequencing issue, not an emotional avoidance pathology: 'Your problem-solving is excellent. The issue is that it is activating before you have the information it needs to work with. The six steps here are about getting that information first.' The guide's context page describes exactly his pattern - a pivot to action before the emotion has been examined. Walk through Step 4 (Locate It in Your Body) with a current low-stakes example during the session: ask him to recall a moment of frustration from the last week and locate where he felt it physically before he moved to fix it. That exercise, done in session, is more useful than assigning the guide as homework without a frame.

Watch for the client intellectualizing Steps 1-3 and skipping Steps 4-5 entirely. He will identify and name the emotion quickly (Step 2), skip the 'bad/not bad' reframe (Step 3), and arrive at the action plan. Steps 4 and 5 - locating the sensation and staying with it - are the ones the ADHD brain works hardest to bypass because they require tolerating without acting. If he cannot stay at Step 4 for more than thirty seconds in session, that is the data. Also watch for him rating emotions on a competence scale - describing anger as a 'failure of regulation' rather than information.

Start with Step 5: 'The 90-second window is the pivot point in the guide. When did you last sit with a feeling for 90 seconds without doing something about it?' The answer usually reveals the emotional state he most consistently bypasses. Then ask the post-tool prompt directly: 'Think of a recent work conflict where you moved to action quickly. If you had paused at Step 4, what might you have noticed about the feeling that the action plan skipped?' The counterfactual is more productive than reviewing what he actually did.

A client with ADHD who is a senior product manager knows her emotional reactivity is a leadership problem. She has received 360 feedback describing her as 'reactive' and 'hard to read in difficult conversations.' She understands the concept of staying with discomfort before responding but reports that in the moment, the pressure to act or speak feels physical - she cannot access any interval between feeling and responding. The coaching focus is building an interrupt between the ADHD urgency signal and the behavioral response.

Name the ADHD mechanism before introducing the tool: 'ADHD urgency is not the same as the actual urgency of the situation. Your brain generates an emergency signal that demands immediate action, and the signal is often wrong about the timeline. This framework gives you a procedure to run between the signal and the response.' The six steps function as a cognitive protocol that creates the gap. The key for her is Steps 4 and 5 - the physical sensation focus and the 90-second breath - because they give the urgency signal something specific to do other than drive a behavioral response. In session, practice Step 4 with a mild current frustration so she has experienced the protocol once before using it under real pressure.

Watch for the client reporting that she tried the six steps 'but it didn't work' after a high-stakes conversation. Ask what happened at Step 4: did she attempt to locate a physical sensation or skip directly to thinking about what to say next? The most common failure is that the urgency bypasses the physical sensation step entirely - the protocol collapses at the exact point where it is most needed. Rebuild the protocol starting at Step 4 and practice it with lower-stakes emotional activations before returning it to high-stakes contexts. Also watch for her judging herself for not being able to hold the protocol under pressure - the shame about the failure interrupts the learning.

Ask about one specific moment from the week where she felt the urgency signal: 'Walk me through what happened between when you felt it and when you responded.' Map the actual sequence against the six-step sequence. Identify the step where the protocol collapsed. Then build a specific version of that step for that type of situation: not 'breathe' as a general instruction but 'when I feel my chest tighten in a meeting, I will say [specific phrase] and look at my hands for 90 seconds before I speak.' The more specific the protocol, the more accessible it is under pressure.

A client with ADHD who is a chief of staff at a nonprofit received feedback from her executive director that she 'came across as defensive' in a board presentation. She has been carrying the feedback for three days without processing it - telling herself she is fine, then finding herself returning to the conversation in loops, drafting defensive responses in her head, and being short with her team. She has not named to herself that she is hurt. The coaching conversation is the first time she is examining the feeling directly.

Do not start by asking what she thinks about the feedback. Start with the framework's Step 1 and 2: 'Before we talk about what happened in the room, let's look at what's been happening for you since then. Can you name what you are feeling right now when you think about what your ED said?' The framework's value here is that it slows down the entry into the conversation. She has been in cognitive loops for three days; the guide creates a different kind of engagement with the material. Step 3 (Resist Labeling It as Bad) may be the most relevant - she is treating the hurt as a weakness to be managed rather than information about what the feedback touched.

Watch for the client dismissing the emotion quickly once she has named it - 'yes, I was hurt, anyway what should I do about the feedback?' The pivot from Step 2 to action is where the six-step sequence is most likely to collapse for ADHD clients. Also watch for the loops she has been running becoming the coaching conversation - she replays the presentation in detail, defending her behavior. Redirect to the feeling rather than the event: 'We can review what happened in the room. First, what is happening for you right now, in this moment, when you sit with what she said?'

After working through Steps 1-5, ask the post-tool prompt: 'Which of the six steps is the one you're most likely to skip?' For this client, it is almost certainly Step 4 - the physical sensation location - because she has been in her head about this for three days. Close the session by asking: 'If you had done this process on the day you got the feedback rather than today, what might have been different about how you spent the last three days?' That question anchors the framework to a concrete cost and makes it worth returning to next time.