Coaching for teenagers and young adults

With you, not about you

A great deal gets said about neurodivergent teenagers — in consulting rooms, at parents’ evenings, in school meetings. Here it works the other way round. You are the person being worked with, and your goals are what count.

The same holds for young adults. People who are recognised late, or who work it out for themselves during training, at university or in a first job, usually arrive at the same question: what do I actually do with this, concretely, starting Monday?

That is why teenagers and young adults are not split into two separate products here. The themes carry across life stages. What changes is the examples, the pace, and who else is involved.

You do not need a diagnosis

Specialising in ADHD, autism and neurodiversity shapes how I understand and work — not who is allowed to come. Where a diagnosis exists, that knowledge feeds in. Where there is none, we work from what you actually experience.

Coaching is explicitly not an assessment and not a substitute for one. If it becomes clear that an assessment would be useful, I say so — carrying it out belongs with medical or psychological professionals.

What the work covers

Everyday life and executive function

Tasks that will not start even though they are small. A sense of time that does not report in reliably. Systems that hold for three weeks and then collapse. We look at where exactly it tips, and build strategies that fit you rather than ones designed for someone else.

Direction and transitions

Before leaving school, between training and study, after something was abandoned, during a change at work, or when circumstances shift without anyone planning it. Direction here does not mean being told what to become. It means working out what matters to you, which environments you function in, what gets in the way, what is realistically available — and then trying something and reviewing it.

This is explicitly not official careers guidance. Switzerland has dedicated services for educational pathways, and I point you there when that is what is needed.

Communication and self-advocacy

Requesting an adjustment. Explaining to a teacher, a manager or your family what you need without it turning into an argument. Preparing a difficult conversation and making sense of it afterwards. Saying no before it is too late.

We work on this concretely: what you want to say, in what order, in what words, and what you do if the response is not the one you hoped for.

Confidentiality

For most people under 18 this is the first question, so the answer is here rather than in the small print.

When something else fits better

Coaching is not the right thing during an acute crisis, when treatment is needed, when an assessment is due, or when you need protection. Other services exist for those, and in that moment they are the right ones — not a coaching slot in three weeks.

Coaching can sit alongside ongoing psychotherapy, but should not replace it. What belongs in whose hands is something we discuss openly.

The first step

A free introductory call of 20 to 30 minutes, to work out what brings you here, how I work and whether that fits. Nothing to prepare and nothing to prove.