2221: Culture Connections with India’s only certified ADHD Coach Sonal Singh
We met Sonal Singh as she was managing the virtual green room and serving as host for our session at last year’s CHADD International Conference on ADHD. Our paths had never crossed, but as we started chatting we realized just how fascinating her path had been.
She is India’s first certified ADHD coach. We think this is fascinating. What would you do if you were in her shoes, and you had the opportunity to teach all those in your sphere about neurodivergence and executive function and the entire spectrum of ADHD?
Of course, Sonal is doing much of her work with an International audience from her home in Delhi and we certainly don’t want to set her up as an ADHD savior for an entire country! But, we think hearing of her experience in this place and time can give us an interesting insight into the development of ADHD awareness as a culture, and that’s worth discussing on the show this week.
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Episode Transcript
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Pete Wright: Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer: Hello everyone. Hello Pete Wright.
Pete Wright: Nikki, today's conversation is a long time coming.
Nikki Kinzer: Yes.
Pete Wright: A long time-
Nikki Kinzer: Since November of 2020.
Pete Wright: Was that it, November?
Nikki Kinzer: Well, that's when we first met her.
Pete Wright: Yes, yes. And then the world happened and we had to shake some things up and I am just so excited to have our guests back on the show with us today to share a bit of her experience in a fascinating time and place in which we live. Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Twitter or Facebook at Take Control ADHD. And if this show has ever touched you or helped you make a change in your life for the better with ADHD, if you've ever found that you understand your own relationship with your ADHD in a new way, we invite you to consider supporting the show directly through Patreon. Patreon is listener-supported podcasting. With a few dollars a month, you can help guarantee that we continue to grow this show, have fantastic guests, add new features and invest more heavily in our community. Visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to sign up today. And I have to say, we welcome our new members. Our membership is on a bit of a run. We're growing right now and I'm so excited about it and petrified. We just released our ADHD resource library, and that was our last tier. And then I am on deck for a new tier. As soon as we hit this new goal, I think we have less than 20 members to set our goal. And Pete's going to be doing a new podcast, a new tech-related ADHD podcast and I'm nervous about it. It's going to be members only, not even available at all to the public and it's coming. So if you're interested in that, if you want to support development of that show, a second ADHD podcast with Pete. I'm speaking about Pete in the third person as if he's a different guy-
Nikki Kinzer: It's kind of funny.
Pete Wright: ... and he's actually me.
Nikki Kinzer: It's you. It's you, Pete.
Pete Wright: And if you want to support that again, head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to help support podcast number two, podcast number two.
Nikki Kinzer: Pete number two.
Pete Wright: Pete two, that guy has it in for him. Who knows what's coming down the pike? Any other news, old business, Nikki?
Nikki Kinzer: Nope, we're good.
Pete Wright: I love hearing that. All right, let's get started. We met Sonal Singh as she was managing the virtual green room. She was our host for the session, not last year, I guess, but it was the year before now at the CHADD International Conference on ADHD. Our paths, weirdly, had never crossed. Yet, we started chatting and realized just how fascinating her experience in the ADHD global community is. She is India's first certified ADHD coach. What would you do if you were in her shoes and you had the opportunity to teach all of those in your sphere about neurodivergence and executive function and the entire spectrum of ADHD who had not experienced it, who didn't know what they were living through? I think that is amazing. Of course, Sonal is doing much of her work with the international audience from her home in Delhi. And we certainly don't want to set her up as a ADHD savior for the entire country. We don't want to do that. That might be too much for her to shoulder, but we do think hearing of her experience in this place and time can give us a fascinating insight into the development of ADHD awareness as a culture, and might just help you have those conversations with your own. So now saying welcome to The ADHD Podcast.
Sonal Singh: Thank you so much, Nikki, Pete, I'm so excited to be here. You're right, this has been a long time coming and I'm glad that finally we worked it out.
Nikki Kinzer: Absolutely. Well, I have a question for you right off the bat, because I'm looking at your bio and I'm seeing that you went to a lot of different universities, so you have a lot of different degrees. What is your past experience and what led you up to being an ADHD coach?
Sonal Singh: Yeah, so I started off with studying business and finance, and that was my life's goal, to be in finance because that's what I loved. And I did that in the US, then came back to India and did business journalism, did consulting, went back to [inaudible 00:05:12] for my master's degree and then came back to India again and decided to help my parents set up a nonprofit here. So I've been running this nonprofit called Maitri India for the last 15 years. And as I was on this journey in my nonprofit, where we work to help people who are very vulnerable and marginalized, I also, of course, started my own family and started working a lot also with children who come from underserved communities. And what I found was that I had a child, who of course, has been affected by ADHD, who has ADHD. And there are lots of children that we were working with that also struggled to pay attention, that also struggled to have a lot of response inhibition, so to speak. So the ability to control their impulses. And there were a lot of learning disabilities that these kids were struggling with that was not getting supported in that environment. And this led me on the path to actually become an educational therapist, to learn what are learning disabilities, to start helping children with those differences, and also understand ADHD, primarily because of my son, I was looking for an executive function culture in India. And to my surprise, there was nobody. There was nobody. You could find a lot of people in the therapeutic space, which is great, but nobody who would coach a child or an adult, or executive function skills, or emotional regulation skills, or social skills. And these are so core for children who are neurodiverse, adults who are neurodiverse, right? So that's what brought me on the spot that I felt I had to help my son, I had to help these kids, I had to work with them. And yeah, I started training.
Pete Wright: I find that fascinating. You say you started training, you were in Delhi when you decided that you wanted to become an ADHD coach. How does one do that? I imagine the country's infrastructure around supporting ADHD coaching is nonexistent.
Sonal Singh: Absolutely not there. There is nothing that supports you here. So I actually started looking for all these international programs for ADHD coaching. So first of all, that was my first step. And I came across a couple of different programs, and of course there's ADDCA. And when I started looking at what time I could do these programs, could I do it online, did I have to be present in the US? Just figuring out those logistics. So the first class that I was signing up for, it was at 12:30 AM in the morning till 2:30 in the morning. And yeah, it was crazy, just the schedule and the routine. But finally we figured out a much better time and I spent a year and a half just being on classes, these live online classes for a year and a half. And it was fantastic, so fabulous. And the training process was so fun. And I learned so much about myself. That was the other thing, right? As a parent to a child with ADHD, you realize that there's so much about yourself that you probably did not figure out, especially living in India. I realized that there were sections of ADHD, challenges or people, the kind of behaviors, the kind of ways that you are depicting me clearly, that's who I was. And I found myself on those pages in those words. So that was a really interesting experience.
Nikki Kinzer: Was it difficult to get your son diagnosed?
Sonal Singh: Extremely tough. And the reasons for that are varied because when he was younger, we could not find anybody who really wanted to give him a diagnosis. The philosophy in India is for a large number of kids, that you don't want to label the kid, the child. So therefore, many doctors can be absolutely averse to giving you a diagnosis.
Pete Wright: Yeah, I want to clarify that. They don't want to label the kids, talk more about that, because the difference between a label and a diagnosis is, I guess, should not be so fuzzy.
Sonal Singh: Absolutely. I think there is so much stigma in India around ADHD, around autism, around learning differences that the community that supports or does these diagnosis very often will not actually label children unless the child is very extremely clear on that diagnosis. So in my son's case, we were not sure what exactly was it that he was struggling with. So was it learning differences? Was it that he's on the spectrum? Was it that he has ADHD? It's only when he was nine years old. And I took him to New York because we still didn't know what was going on. And it was such a frustrating experience that we finally got a diagnosis that he has ADHD, and he has a learning disability.
Pete Wright: You had to come to New York to get it.
Sonal Singh: I had to come to New York. That's not to say one could not get it here if I had really, really pushed hard, but everybody would continuously give me no answers, or maybe he's on the spectrum. Maybe he has... Actually, ADHD was never really even talked of. And nobody really discussed that he needed support with executive function skills, emotional regulation skills was something that we were working on, but there were all these little dark spaces that I was not really supported or told about, how do I really help him? How do I get him access to the services that he needs? Till we had this very... And this was his second assessment of very detailed assessment in the US. Before that he'd been assessed three times here in India and in the US, and that's when we particularly got a diagnosis that he has ADHD. And this is not a unique experience. That's the other interesting thing. There are so many kids over here that do not get diagnosed that easily. And even if they get diagnosed, they don't get the adequate support that they need. I work a lot with adults with ADHD, young adults with ADHD, and many of them have recently been diagnosed rather than being diagnosed much earlier in their life. Because either the parents didn't want to take them and get them those sort of services, or it was that there was just no understanding. And many kids and many young adults have also been diagnosed with anxiety or depression instead of ADHD. So a lot of misdiagnoses as well.
Nikki Kinzer: I can see that, because that happens here, especially with women and young girls. I know with my own daughter, I had a hard time getting diagnosed and I can't imagine how difficult it would be when it's not really even thought of in India. It's not even something that's on their radar, necessarily. It's got to be really difficult. So you work with young adults-
Sonal Singh: Yes.
Nikki Kinzer: Right? I mean, adults with ADHD. Do you also work with children too?
Sonal Singh: So I work with anybody above the age of 12 and I work a lot with parents of children with ADHD or any other executive function, emotional regulation challenges. And of course, I work directly with teenagers and young adults and everybody else, the general population.
Pete Wright: I wonder if you could reflect a minute on what it's like helping people make that transition from living in a place where ADHD is not a generally broadly accepted diagnosis to realizing, through their work with you, that not only should it be, but they have it, they live with it. What is it like to experience that with people?
Sonal Singh: It's been such an interesting experience, honestly. So yes, I work with a lot of young adults, like I said, who either been recently diagnosed or they suspect that they have ADHD. So it could be either one of those issues. And many times, they come to me because they are struggling with your typical executive function challenges, or they're struggling with emotional regulation. And it is having such a deep impact in their lives, whether it's in their academic life or in their work life, whatever spaces that they are active in. So when we start working together, the first thing that we do is we really start understanding what they are experiencing as a person with ADHD and how it is actually a valid experience. It's not something that is made up. It is not something that needs to be judged or criticized by, not only others, but even by themselves, because they are so conditioned to feeling less than. That this is just a made up story that I am actually this lazy person, or I'm this person who procrastinates all the time, just because maybe I don't understand what to do or whatever other sort of conditioning or other criticism that they've heard, right? So this is where it really comes from, that the first step is just that validation that what you are experiencing is real. And that in itself is transformational.
Pete Wright: Yeah. I have to imagine that grand awakening is extraordinary, right? That they realize here's who I am, but this is why I feel different in my community.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, and I know that even here, a lot of people don't understand coaching. They don't understand what it is, what's the difference between coaching and therapy, or they've never heard of ADHD coaching until they come across it or... A podcast like ours, Pete. So I'm curious, do you find that too, where people are like, I don't really know what you do, but I'm curious, so I want to know more about it.
Sonal Singh: Definitely, yes. All the time. So the other thing is in India, again, there's a lot of emphasis placed on being from the medical space. So for example, when people seek support, they generally would rather go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And just the idea of coming to a coach who doesn't have the medical degree behind them is something that is very uncomfortable for many people. That is the first step. The second issue is that people don't really understand what is ADHD coaching, or what is executive function coaching or emotional regulation coaching, or social skills for that matter, right? So there's a lot of education that really goes into it. When I do my first calls with people, when I go for webinars and I have these conversations with parents, right? So there's a lot of education that really takes place on what does coaching do and how does coaching support you in ways that are actually sustainable and something that you apply and how is it actually different from just receiving therapeutic support, right? So that is the distinction that we make a lot of times in our first call. And people really are confused as to why have I never heard of ADHD coaching before, right? It's like this thing that doesn't exist. And they will typically look for people outside of India, if they've ever heard of ADHD coaching, never in India, because it just doesn't exist.
Pete Wright: Sometimes you're working with somebody and they really need therapeutic support, right? They might need a stimulant. They might need to work with somebody to get a prescription. How does that work for you in a medical community that is so reluctant to give a diagnosis in the first place? Do you interface with the community that to help educate and say it's okay to prescribe a stimulant, can they get stimulants if they need them?
Sonal Singh: Yeah. So now there are more and more doctors in certain spaces who are absolutely doing these sorts of assessment and the diagnosis as well for people, it's increasingly happening, especially also for young adults and for children. There is still a lot of stigma in the general community about medicating a child for ADHD, because there is this whole perception, my child is going to become a zombie, my child is going to get to be really low on energy. So there are all these misconceptions on how medication really works. And that is what I do through my talks. And I know that there are... So I have now started working a lot with doctors as well. And I know that this is the process that many of them also follow, to talk to their clients or their patients about how medication actually works, the experimentation with different doses. The experimentation with different salts because that understanding is absolutely lacking. That said, there is still a large number of doctors and a large number of patients who are present. The doctors are not diagnosing these patients in the way that they need to be diagnosed or not prescribing the medication in the way that they need to be medicated, which is to say that they might give them one stimulant, and that's it. And if that stimulant isn't working for the patient, the patient is at a loss because they don't really know that they can go back and change the dose or change the salt, or try a different strategy [inaudible 00:20:42]. So that education is not impressive.
Nikki Kinzer: I can see that being a major disadvantage because it does take time to figure out what kind of medication works for you and how discouraging to think, oh, well, this didn't work. And that's all I have. So you're spreading that word. I'm sure when you're talking to clients to talk to them more about their options and their doctors, I would assume.
Pete Wright: Yeah, I have to imagine there's this training about the language to use with your doctor. How do you communicate with people who are reluctant? How do you begin that process? I'm making some assumptions here that that's part of your coaching is to learn the language and how to use it.
Sonal Singh: Yeah. I'm actually just now starting to understand a lot more about how to work with doctors, and the lockdown hasn't helped in this process of course. But yeah, we have initiated that process and that conversation. So in fact, I'm working with ADDA and some of the other coaches in South Asia and in Australia to see if we can put together a program, just specifically targeting doctors, the medical fraternity, psychologists, to communicate to them about how to work with the broader population that is not able to access their services for a variety of reasons, right?
Pete Wright: I think it's important to understand how you're seeing perception change both at the micro level, the people that you are working with directly in India, and are you seeing those perceptions change? What kind of impact do you find that you're making? I say you very broadly, you and ADDA, and the experience that you're having doing this work.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, and the other coaches you're connecting with too, for sure.
Sonal Singh: Yeah. So, like I said, in India, there aren't actually that many coaches, right? As in, there is nobody yet, there's only me.
Pete Wright: There aren't very many, as in one.
Sonal Singh: As in one. But, here's the good thing, there are lots of people who are actually able to access coaches outside of India, right? So people are getting aware that there is something like this that exists that can support them. That is a great step forward, honestly, because you want people to go out there and seek help, right? The kind of impact that I see, or the kind of difference that I see in the time that I've started working in this space is that there are more and more people who are willing to take that step. There are more and more young adults, especially who own the fact that they have ADHD, they are not shy of it. And they're so curious about how they can help themselves to actually manage the challenges or the different... Or understand their ADHD, for that matter, a lot better to understand how do they hone their strengths and how do they actually work on the different challenges that they have and move forward or in whatever vision of life that they want. And that has been really great because I don't think this is something that I saw when I first started working in this space, where people were very reluctant to talk about their ADHD. They were very reluctant to talk about it to other people. So we talk a lot around advocating for yourself and being able to understand and judge, what are the spaces that you need to actually talk to people about your ADHD? So that has been really a great thing. And the other thing that I've really enjoyed, and this is coming from a coaching session I just had today, in fact, and it's just a reflection of the last few years, or the last couple of years, especially. This young adult that I was working with, or I have been working with has been so delighted to have understood how her ADHD shows up in herself. What is the kind of strategies, survival strategies that she's had over the years and how some of those survival strategies are not working. And she needs to have a new way of rewiring her brain, a new way of developing her toolkit. And that's what's going to take her further. And that self-realization and that self-awareness is what has been so amazing. And this is what I see with all these different young adults that I work with, the teenagers that I work with, which was not the case earlier. It was very much, I have ADHD, what can I do? It was almost a crutch, or it was this resignation that I have to live like this, living in this state of not being able to do the things that I have to do or not making other people happy. So just a whole lot of self-doubt and lower self-worth because of the fact that they just weren't feeling validated.
Pete Wright: It's gratifying at some level, as somebody living with ADHD, that everything that you're talking about is... I could use those same words, right? Here you are in India working with Indian and international clientele. Everything you're about is... These are universal concepts for me. You're speaking right in my backyard. How though, does culture impact coaching when dealing with an international clientele? How do you handle that?
Sonal Singh: That's a great question. So, like you said, there are so many similarities, right? The human experience, as such, is absolutely universal. So that is a big thing that when I'm working with international clients, we are connecting at that level. There are, of course, cultural differences. So for example, the way somebody in India experiences ADHD within their families, there's a lot of lack of support. There's a lot of stigma attached. Somebody who is in the international world out there may experience that thing in validation a little bit differently, not in the same way as somebody feels it here in India. So that understanding, sometimes I really have to be able to open my mind up to, and be able to see with a different lens. So therefore I actually spend a lot of time, and not just reading, but I have also lived in the United States. I have lived and moved, traveled across the world. So there is this understanding of how people experience life in other cultures and communities. And that has been a helpful experience too. But yeah, definitely it requires me to shift my lens and to have a much more sort of an open mind to the fact that yes, this possibility can exist. So for example, ideas around gender or sexuality, these are things that not everybody talks about very openly here in India, but people outside of India actually really grappled with these issues as a part of their identity, as a person with ADHD. And how do you actually support them through that time?
Pete Wright: Added to that, I know it's pretty easy here when you see somebody struggling with ADHD and they are dealing with attention, fractured attention, and I need to go get some help with ADHD, right? The bar of knowing when to go get help is lower because we have a culture of acceptance here that has grown over decades, that makes it easier. What I am thinking is the weight of sort of crisis that I might have to be dealing with in a culture where no one is talking about ADHD. I have to deal with all of those unconscious stresses and cultural issues of cultural bias against ADHD before I'd be willing to pick my head up and ask for help, ask what is this that I'm dealing with. I imagine that there is sort of latent trauma around it that people don't know how to talk about.
Sonal Singh: Absolutely, yes. So many people that I work with, and I think of myself as well, right? The fact that you have gone through life or are going through life where there is just a complete, not just a nonacceptance of ADHD, but at some level also thinking that you are creating this whole persona of someone who is different, and honestly you don't fit that prototype or that way that you would imagine someone to have ADHD. And it's not such a big deal. I struggled with those challenges, too. So what makes you special, right? Why is it such a challenge for you? So that stigma is so strong because there is a complete nonacceptance of somebody's diagnosis. And forget the diagnosis, even. That's a bigger word. Just the fact that this is who they are, that they struggle with certain ways of being, they need that novelty, or they need to, for example, get up in the morning and they need a certain structure and certain support to help them live their life a certain way for them to be successful. And the perception is... That's just unnecessary. This person is seeking attention, or this person is incompetent, right? So you're dealing with this burden. It's a massive shame. And the burden is constant. It is from your family. It is from your siblings. It is from the faculty in your school or in your college, or it's just from the pills that you have, it is in your work environment, because there's always that. This person just keeps making a big deal about something that we all struggle with. Little realizing that no, he or she has a different integrity, it's a different wiring. So yeah, there's a lot of, I guess the word I'm looking for is, again, I'm going back to invalidation, but not really seeing the person for who they are.
Nikki Kinzer: It shows your clientele how brave and courageous they are to ask for help. And to say, I want to understand this. I want you to help me see this in a different lens. And what a blessing, really, to have you. And I hope that more people in India will become coaches that you can have colleagues with and be able to help more people. Because I can imagine there's a lot more people that need help that just you can help.
Sonal Singh: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright: Yeah, what are you finding in terms of the demand for other people to become coaches?
Sonal Singh: As of now, interestingly, and maybe it's a factor of the fact that we are in lockdown, I've not had that many people who asked me about how can they become a coach. As of now, whenever I interact with people, mostly it has been, how do I get help? What is the way that you can help me? And if you can't help me, where else can I seek help outside of India if it's not here? But strangely, as of now, because I think this whole notion of ADHD coaching is so new. And just to bring that conversation in for people who are in the ADHD, sort of little [inaudible 00:33:55] still has to start to take place. So for example, I had started a peer support group for Indian young adults. And we had such little uptake because people were reluctant to kind of be part of a peer support group, which was meeting in person. They didn't really know what to expect, how to interact, and what to expect from it, honestly. It's taken us a while to get to a point where we have a peer support group for Indians outside of India. And they are very active. So slowly, we are trying to bridge that gap where we have a space for global Indians, or global South Asians, and everybody around the world can participate in that space and then generate more conversation again about, how do you help your ADHD, and ADHD coaching is one of those things.
Pete Wright: As we get to wrapping up, you've just landed on the thing that I think I'm most interested in, which is making that pivot for people, for a group that does not accept ADHD, even if they're living with it, to make the turn and realize, oh, I need to be able to accept this for myself. My life will be improved just at the awareness of living with ADHD. What do you think it is that helps people make that transition?
Sonal Singh: From whatever I've seen with my clients and whatever I've seen, again, with myself, the first and foremost is that self-awareness that this lived experience is real and I'm not making this up. What I'm feeling actually exists, right? And that is huge. And knowing that there are others who can support you on this journey, that you are not just walking in the dark without really understanding why you are the way you are, right? So that, I think, has been what I gained from this, what I take away from that.
Nikki Kinzer: You're amazing.
Pete Wright: Yeah, Sonal, that's just great. If people want to learn more about your work, say they hear you on this podcast and they want to learn... I would love to have my coach be the only certified ADHD coach in India. Where would they go?
Sonal Singh: Yeah, so you can find me on www.sonalsinghcoaching.com. That's Sonal Singh, S-O-N-A-L S-I-N-G-H, sonalsingcoaching.com. And then on Facebook, I'm on Exceptional Minds. And on Instagram, I'm on ADHD life coaching.
Nikki Kinzer: Great.
Pete Wright: That's cool. We'll put, all those in the show notes for folks.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. Thank you so much. [crosstalk 00:37:04].
Pete Wright: Yeah, it's just really great to have you here. Any last words? The first day, it's very early here. So for folks who are watching the live stream, what would you leave them with? Give us a final message.
Sonal Singh: I guess what I would leave you with is the fact that everybody in the US, especially, and in many parts around the world are already walking far ahead than we are in India on this journey of understanding ADHD. And so much of what you do actually helps show us the path of where we can go and how we can support each other here in India, and really learn about living with ADHD in a way that is actually very fulfilling, that is meaningful, right? Because that is one of the experiences that many of us really don't know exists. So thank you for sharing those stories. And yeah, just being really authentic about your ADHD, that is so helpful, because that's who you are. That's who I am and living that life with authenticity is really helpful because that's what I can do [inaudible 00:38:18].
Pete Wright: That's lovely. That is a great-
Nikki Kinzer: Yes it is.
Pete Wright: ... great message. Sonal, thank you so much. And thank you, everybody, for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute about the conversation we're heading over to the show talk channel on our Discord server. You can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer and Sonal Singh, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next week, right here at Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
