What It Actually Feels Like to Ask for Financial Help When You Have ADHD
The moment you finally ask for help with your money is one of the most vulnerable moments there is. But to be fully transparent, the first meetings may have you feel very similar because it’s not easy to ask for help, or to let someone into your financial life.
For most people with ADHD, their finances have become the thing they have never told anyone about. They feel too ashamed to say any of their numbers out loud, and often to even look at them. They worry constantly about the accounts or statements they haven’t looked at in months. They carry the stress and overwhelm quietly because admitting it to someone else feels like proof of something they are not ready to have confirmed.
"I've never told anyone this before." is something I hear often, as a financial coach who supports folks with ADHD. Every time I do, I am reminded of how much weight people have been carrying alone, and how important it is to show up for them to build their trust so they can get the help they need.
What People Expect When They Reach Out
Most people with ADHD arrive at their first financial conversation braced for judgment and worried about how someone will respond to them if they open up. I’ve heard way too many stories from my clients about their negative experiences at a bank, with a financial planner, or a family member before, and they all break my heart. If they’ve been open to help in the past, they have likely experienced the sting of being judged or misunderstood. They try to explain their relationship with money to someone who does not understand ADHD, and then watch the face of someone they have trusted to help them change.
They have been told, in one way or another, to just spend less or pay themselves first. To make a budget and stick to it. To try harder. To be more disciplined.
So then they hit another place where they are done trying to do it themselves, and they land here, on my website and start to believe there’s another way. They arrive at our first conversation expecting more of the same. They bring a carefully prepared explanation of all the ways they have already tried and failed, just in case they need to defend themselves. But they never do, because they have found someone who understands the challenges of managing money with ADHD, but also how hard it is to ask for help.
What They Find Instead
What actually tends to happen in that first conversation is often disorienting in the best way.
Instead of having to explain that ADHD makes money harder, they find someone who already knows that. Instead of translating their experience into language a neurotypical person can understand, they hear their own patterns described back to them with language they have never heard anyone use about money before. Instead of defending themselves, they find themselves just... talking, and often on the receiving end of a little info-dumping or oversharing.
"The weight of it is immense," is how one person described the recently described how it has felt to carry their financial stress and not feel like there was anyone who could help them. We still have a long way to go to help them work through their challenges. But they know they no longer have to do it on their own, and that is important.
There is something that happens when financial shame stops being a secret. It does not disappear. But it gets smaller. And smaller is workable. Then you start to feel hope because you see that someone who does this for a living has faith in you. When I see that shift early on when working with a new client, it makes me feel so much gratitude!
Why ADHD Makes That First Conversation So Hard
The barrier to asking for financial help when you have ADHD is not usually about the money itself. It is about the accumulated shame of years of trying to manage something that is genuinely harder for your brain than it is for most people, and not knowing that was the case for most of your life. We are also very often the best at thinking worst-case scenarios, and catastrophizing things! If that’s you, check out this podcast episode!
Some financial professionals who don’t understand ADHD have a way of making you feel stupid. Family members who are "good with money" have a way of making you feel careless. And after enough of those experiences, the idea of letting someone else see your finances starts to feel like a very bad idea. It’s usually not because the people you trusted to help you meant to make you feel like that; it’s because they don’t understand our brains.
What changes with the right support is not the complexity of your finances. It is the experience of being seen without judgment, understood without having to explain yourself, and met where you actually are rather than where you think you should be.
If You Are on the Edge of Reaching Out
If you are reading this and recognizing yourself in any of it, I want to say something directly that you need to hear.
You do not have to have it together before you reach out. You do not need to have tried every free resource first. You do not need to wait until things are ‘bad enough’ or until you’ve paid off a few of your debts before we chat.
The first conversation does not commit you to anything. It is just a conversation, with no prep work required. And for most people, it is the first time they have ever talked to someone who actually gets it.
What to do if you are ready, or almost ready to get support with your money? Book a free consultation! The door is open when you are.
The Other Side Is Real
The people I have worked with started their first conversation carrying shame, dread, and a detailed mental list of all the reasons they were beyond help. They now know there are people out there who get it and can help them manage their money better than they ever thought they would.
That is what the other side of financial shame actually looks like. Not perfect. Just better, and lighter, and more honest.
And it starts with one conversation. What have you got to lose, except a boatload of financial shame?
About the Author
Sherry is an ADHD financial coach who has heard some version of "I've tried everything" more times than she can count, and who considers a privilege to help people see that there are people out there who can help, who get it. She has ADHD herself and has lived the shame cycle, which is why she does not do judgment in her coaching sessions. If you are ready to have that first conversation, let's chat. You do not have to explain yourself to her.
