If you’d like to skip the blog post, and simply join the ART of ADHD Community, you can click here.
I’ll also scatter links throughout the blog post, to make the link easy to find, in case you decide to impulsively check it out while you’re reading.
What has been one of the most powerful experiences in your journey as an ADHD Adult?
Time and again, over the past two years, I’ve helped people connect to amazing ADHD Communities. I’ve also met many folks who were looking for something different. Even those folks who were looking for something different, something more? They found the impact of connecting with a community of fellow ADHD people extremely powerful, meaningful, and life-changing!
As ADHD folks, we so often feel out of place, or even out of phase with the world around us. We often feel misunderstood, judged, ridiculed, punished, and/or ostracized — simply because of how differently we think, feel, and function. To experience such immediate, warm, supportive and understanding social connections is very unusual, and frequently life-changing!
Finding a diverse group of people from around the globe, who, somehow, seem to immediately understand you, accept you, and share so many of the same experiences, idiosyncrasies, even though you’re from wildly different places & cultures on the planet? There’s really nothing quite like it! So few ADHD people are used to having this kind of experience.
The Importance of Community for ADHD Productivity, Habits, and Navigating Life Change
In April 2021, I had a conversation about ADHD, Productivity, & Habits with Habits Expert, Neuroscience Researcher, and Founder of Brain by Design, James Garrett. While it’s not his specialty, James Garrett has extensive experience training and coaching ADHD Adults, Kids, & Coaches.
He affirmed my own experience as both an ADHD person and ADHD Coach:
What is one of the most powerful things an ADHD person can do to overcome a lot of the resistance we experience with intentional habit change, changes in routines, & etc?
Connect with a community of supportive people on the same journey. But not just any community. There are specific things we, as ADHD people, so often need from that community, which tend to be very difficult to find.
Here are a few of the qualities that came up in our conversation:
A Community that understands some of the more difficult challenges we face.
Because of differences in our neurological wiring, neurochemistry, and behaviors, “support” communities can often be unhelpful or even toxic for us. Especially when we run into a uniquely ADHD hiccup in the process. So often we hear amazingly unhelpful advice like, “Why don’t you just do the thing?”, “Stop being so lazy”, and other classically unhelpful tips.
Instead of helping us facilitate the learning or change want to make, these communities often kill our motivation, put a bad taste in our mouth, and give us another proof that we’ve failed, and all the usual self-depricating thoughts and feelings.A Community that can provide meaningfully helpful, practical, tactical, & judgment-free support from both peers and professionals.
There are SO MANY ADHD “support” communities out there, where folks come to vent about how hard ADHD life can be, the gaslighting they experience everyday, etc, etc. And we need safe places to do this, in places we know we won’t be judged, and we know there are other folks who understand the difficulty and pain of our challenges.
However, we also need the kind of support that reminds us of our strengths. The things we’re good at. Actively helpful support to get moving on that thing we’ve been unable to start. To help us identify where we’re getting stuck, and find a better way forward. Or just someone for body-double support, so we can “just do” a thing that we need to do.A Community that supports you in your need to “go against the flow”, do things differently—including helping you self-advocate.
The world around us is NOT designed for ADHD people. We often need to find our own way of doing something. But we struggle to advocate for ourselves. We need help finding a way that we can explain to our boss, our spouse, etc. in ways that they can accept and understand, that we understand the way things are usually done. But in order to “do the thing”, we need to approach it differently.
There are many other things that ADHD people often NEED from their relationships & community that are simply absent. And the absence of these things only increase the difficulty in managing the challenges we face every day with Planning, Productivity, Organization, Motivation, Energy Management, Processing Emotions, etc, etc.
Sometimes we can find a community that offers a few of these things, but it often seems impossible to find a community that offers the kind of support we need to overcome these ADHD challenges, and live the life we want.
What makes the ART of ADHD Community different?
We are progressively building the ART of ADHD Community to provide all of the things mentioned above, and more.
Due to the time commitment and other investments needed to manage and support different needs, we will be creating different membership tiers.
The first level of support is available today! I’ll outline what’s included below.
ART of ADHD Community - Basic Membership: $10 per month
Community, Support, and Connection in the ART of ADHD for all 52 weeks of year (including holiday & vacation weeks!)
Connect with an intimate community of highly driven, non-judgemental, supportive, & compassionate ADHD Adults & Coaches who get you
3x Thursday Thunder Body Double Sessions each month on Zoom, with one (or both) of the Co-Founders (Catalina Bajuyo Finck & Jeremy Finck (profiles below)
Exclusive interactions with the Co-Founders
Special Discount for additional membership tiers, only available to inaugural Basic Members
Two or Three additional Membership tiers will be added in Phases
Phase 2 will launch in October 2021. Each additional tier will include everything in the Basic Membership. Each tier will have something different to offer.
These are the additional features that have been confirmed, and will be released in Phase 2, & possibly a Phase 3:
Learn to understand and advocate for your unique ADHD needs with our Monthly ADHD Webinar, PLUS…
Access to an extensive, growing Resource Library of Adult ADHD workbooks, planners, infographics, & more!
Get year-round, ongoing Planning & Productivity Training & Support!
Meet 3x each week* with live support to:Start your week strong with live, guided support for Planning
Recalibrate mid-week (guided, with live support)
Finish strong with guided, live Body Double productivity sessions
(leveraging ADHD-friendly principles from Flow State science)*NOTE: These three sessions are IN ADDITION to the weekly Body Double session offered in the Basic Membership.
In other words…
1x each week (Basic Membership)
+ 3x each week (New Tiers - available beginning October 2021)
= 4x TOTAL live sessions each week!
This translates to over 200 hours of live support each year!
Additional, exclusive opportunities to connect with co-Founders for specialized support
Who are the ART of ADHD Co-Founders?
Catalina Bajuyo Finck…
….holds a diverse background that reflects her Intensity, Compassion, and Diverse interests:
Event Planning
Organizational Development
Program Management
Early Childhood Education.
Leadership roles in
Non-Profits
Community, Environmental, and Volunteer Organizations
Catalina leaves indelible imprints on every community she leads. She is well known for her ability to foster strong, heart-centered communities of service.
Jeremy Finck…
…thrives on his passion for helping others to:
See and Act on the best in themselves
Explore and Discover how to incorporate more of what lights up their life
Develop powerful, sustainable and meaningful strategies that make a difference
Shift perspectives & find solutions to challenging problems
Facilitate Learning & Training focused on developing skills and habits that generate progressive, sustainable and transformational growth
He has long-time hyperfixations with Neuroscience, Health & Wellness, and Human Performance. He is known for his patient, compassionate, and informative approach. Jeremy received his ADHD Coach training at the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA) in 2020.
Why we're doing this
Jeremy and Catalina founded the ART of ADHD Community to:
Foster a safe and supportive environment where ADHD Adults can connect with others who "get" them
Provide on-going, high quality ADHD Support, Education, and Training for ADHD Adults.