Self Care Systems AuDHD informed
Helping you move from
"What is wrong with me?"
to "How can I best help me?"
Transformation Coaching
A self-directed framework
helping ADHD, AuDHD, Overthinkers, Anxious, Stuck
Adult life can be brutal.
Especially if you're neurodivergent.
Especially if you anxiously overthink everything.
Especially if you never feel you're allowed to rest.
Especially if you're burnt out, foggy brained or, simply, stuck.
You need someone who accepts you without judgement.
Someone you can trust.
Someone who acts for you with confidence.
And that someone needs to be you.
You don't need 'fixing'.
You just need some help to be able to understand yourself better, like yourself more, and start acting from what's important to you.
The Grateful Self Care Systems framework sees your challenges non-judgementally, objectively, not as defects, and uses system design principles to help you overcome them and build your personalised, sustainable life toolkit.
It's not therapy or, even, coaching - its a self-directed process that enables you to confidently act from your values and strengths.
We help you design a unique, empowering system that stops you fighting against your Self.
Your system for you and your life - not blindly, hopefully applying social media hacks...or anxiously surviving other people's daily demands.
Build a sustainable way of thinking, being, and living that is all yours.
A 1 in 8.3 billion support system.
The Grateful Self Care System can help you
Cope better with demands and task completion
Feel more in control - less undermining anxious overthinking
Start moving towards your goals
Become aware of limiting beliefs from your past - start healing
Beliefs that prevent us moving forward.
"Until you make your unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate."
~ Carl Jung.
When we act from patterns that hold us back we are not acting from our wisest adult self. We are REacting from the pain of the past. We can easily end up replaying unhelpful scenarios - taking us further away from what we really need and want.
Grateful Self care Systems helps you identify the conflicting 'parts' of you (like the Inner Critic, the Procrastinator, the Perfectionist etc) and work with them, not treat them as an adversary.
Acting from your aligned purpose is...
Less unwanted pressure, less friction, less anxious activity.
More regulated, healthier boundaries and safer, sustainable pacing towards your goals.
How we work
Self : Help you foster a fresh, compassionate curiosity in your self
A non-judgemental curiosity that neutralises society's "moral" demands.
Stop guessing why you're stuck - diagnostically deconstruct your behaviours and any environmental pressures you face.
Identify the conflicting 'parts' of you (like the Inner Critic, the Procrastinator, the Perfectionist etc) and work with them, not treat them as an adversary.
Build self-awareness,
RADICAL self-acceptance, and resultantly, self-gratitude and a healthy desire for self-care.
Coach : A mix of education, tested tools and focused, action-oriented techniques
to become more regulated, stimulate self-reflection and initiate (& test) positive changes through self-aligned action.
Creating greater clarity of the pressures of your day-to-day life,
your brain chemistry's role in everything you do and alerting you to where your capacity is being stretched.
Design your 1 in 8.3 billion system!
Build a self-caring, strategic support system to meet your needs and, ultimately, the needs of those you care about.
Stop your war with reality - accept what is and make strategic decisions based on facts, not frustration.
Move towards your goals using
your mind's natural neuroplasticity - learn how to rewire your brain to see aligned opportunities and execute with clarity.
We meet you where you're at
Never demanding, rushing or judgemental.
Difficult stuff has inevitably happened in our lives so we benefit from an approach that allows us to go at our own pace, gradually developing greater acceptance and capacity.
How this approach can help
ADHD and AuDHD
Neurodivergent adults with ADHD and AuDHD
Following our diagnosis, or our undiagnosed awakening, we're faced with a confusing, often painful, challenge to our identity. We're not sure what parts of us are ADHD, what parts were 'masking' and what parts were/are our true self irrespective of the symptoms.
We have two choices:
- We can continue to force fit our selves into a 'neurotypical' system. Forcing us into nervous system overwhelm, damaged relationships, painful bodies and shameful, regretful hearts or...
- We can non-judgementally, lovingly, re-establish who we are - take off the mask, reacquaint ourselves and create a healthy day-to-day support system, with boundaries that enable us not just to cope, but thrive.
We can help you make sense of you again, neurologically, physically, emotionally - gaining clarity around your true self, your needs and your aspirations and goals.
Men
Juggling roles, missing pieces
We play different roles at different times - boyfriend, partner, husband, dad, mate, work colleague, advocate, defender.
With the challenging, often contrary demands of life it is easy to have your true self be neglected, blurred, bullied, shamed, rushed, coerced...
and then we, perhaps, respond with anger, avoidance or submission to the easiest path...
which leads, ultimately, to guilt, loss or shame at how we reacted. Who knew eh?
Are a we a monolith man as defined by contemporary Western society - stoic, winning, free of fear, a man's man? Or are we deeper, more complicated and much more interesting than that?
Maybe it's time to accept all parts of ourselves, without shame, with gratitude - even when the world seems to judge those parts harshly.
Maybe its time to stop and re-examine who you are. And what you really need and want from life - For you and those you care about.
Business Founders & Entrepreneurs
Do you feel there's something blocking you?
Something invisible, but felt, that's preventing you achieving what you'd hope for?
Perhaps your day to day is at odds with what you want or need to be doing?
Maybe there's a limiting belief niggling at you - a belief you formed when you were much younger - when you felt attacked, ignored, misunderstood by parents or peers?

Maybe there's something in your offer, brand or work culture that doesn't ring true anymore - perhaps inauthentic or misaligned with your deeper values?
We can start by helping you realign with your purpose (again) - lessen the noise, offload the blockers, and act from what truly drives you.
Let's build your day-to-day system around your neurodivergence
Build systems on our good days that can carry us on our bad.
Create Safe anchors and Nurture Regulation
Understand your daily and monthly energy, dopamine and emotional tides
Radically offload, externalise and automate as much of the executive function as you can
Build around Capacity & Dopamine.
- Get clarity around how dopamine levels impact your day.
- Be honest about your capacity; and energy levels; and how hormonal changes, situations, people, environments, food/drink, tasks and limiting beliefs impact your energy and ability to be present.
Once you have that clarity you can start to model your busy life to accommodate your current capacity and build a daily scaffold that supports you.
Your Scaffold
If you keep throwing yourself at life and keep feeling thrown around by it then perhaps its time to stop, assess and make self-caring changes.
Your capacity and your "inputs" (environment, diet, people, self-talk etc.) are a perfect place to start.
- Ditch the unhelpful
- Automate/delegate as much as you can
- Accept and align with things you can't (or don't want to) change
- Compassionately control how you respond to dopamine, hormonal, energy and emotional levels
- Create anchors - diets and inputs that support you (sensory supporting, dopamine aware, gut healthy, supplement stacking, time blocking etc.).
Calling ADHD, AuDHD, Neurodivergent parents!
Parenting with patience can be severely hampered by A(u)DHD, so you need to be kind to your self. It can be so hard at times - you're probably up against challenges with:
- task initiation and completion
- decision paralysis
- organisation & planning
- forgetfulness
- maintaining your own healthy scaffold
- poor sleep
- impulsive responses - when overwhelmed or simply remaining present when it all seems so BORING!
- anxiety
- communication - so that we all feel safe, heard and understood
- oppositional behaviour
- rejection sensitivity
- frustration and quick to anger
...and many other challenges.
Remember these are inevitable due to your neurology but we can lessen their impact.
It all starts with accepting your feelings.
Name them and thank them for what they're telling you.
Stop ignoring them, stop pushing them away.
Start addressing their needs.
For men who want to get unstuck and build a life of purpose.
Overthink? Brain fog? Anxious? Constant burnout? Feel stuck or flat?
...but not up for therapy or coaching...
You're trying to cope with your high-pressure life using an out-of-date operating system that desperately needs an upgrade.
Grateful Self Care Systems helps you code that upgrade.
It's a framework that sees your challenges as data, not defects, and uses system design principles to help you address them - to build your own personalised, sustainable life toolkit.
Its self-directed - no navel gazing, just your inbuilt curiosity and your natural urge to problem-solve. It's a framework that will help you:
> Stop guessing why you're stuck.
Our deep, single-session Audit diagnostically deconstructs your behaviours and any environmental pressures you face.
> Identify the conflicting 'parts' of you
(like the Inner Critic, the Procrastinator, the Perfectionist etc) and work with them, not treat them as an adversary.
> Understand your brain chemistry
so you stop fighting you and start acting with greater acceptance to better leverage your assets.
> Stop the war with reality
Accepting exactly where you are right now within this systemic mess we humans have built - so you can make strategic decisions based on facts, not frustration.
> Know that goal manifestation isn't woo woo magic
it's neuroplasticity in action. Learn how to rewire your brain to see aligned opportunities and execute with clarity.
Hi, I appreciate you popping by!
My name is Ian Ward.
I'm an A(u)DHD & trauma informed transformation coach with +25 years experience in human-centred systems design.
I am not a psychotherapist or counsellor.
I have lived with a chaotic drive, 'anxiety' and hyper-vigilance all of my life.
Success, FUN (instead of rest), unwise actions, burnouts, quick temper & shame were aided/caused by a strong dopamine-hunting exuberance for life and my (mostly unknowing) toolkit of parasympathetic touchpoints : music, meditative guitaring, art, sunbathing (vit D too!), hypnotherapy (quietened my inner voice at last!) and, thankfully, intimacy and belonging.
My nervous system/body had started to let me know that my constant hypervigilance was taking a toll. Add to that the dawning understanding of how it all affected my relationships and the parenting of my beloved neurodivergent daughter has, inevitably, led me on a journey to this point.
Fired up by the on-brand hyper-curiosity, hyper-focus and hyper-vigliance, I have gained a range of certified qualifications and training that give me deeper insight & tools : CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) Diploma (CPD), ADHD Coach Certification (CPD, NCCAP, icahp, IPHM, CMA), Somatic Foundations Certification (ichap), Trauma-informed Coach Certification (icahp), Trauma-informed Manifestation Coach Certification (icahp), principles of IFS (Internal Family Systems), DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), MA in Multimedia Design (Distinction), BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering (2.1), Life Coach inc. NLP & Hypnosis, Behavioural Science for Brands...and WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) Diploma...that's ongoing.
I have also conducted qualitative lived-experience research with hundreds of neurodivergent (diagnosed and undiagnosed) social media users.
My role is to gently and non-judgmentally facilitate
- greater self-curiosity
- an alignment of healthy internal beliefs with wise external actions
- the co-design of systems that lessen friction in your life - reducing pressure, enabling safer pacing, establishing boundaries, helping you to deliver what's important to you and freeing up energy to focus on your goals.
How? By engendering self-alignment through:
- Self-compassion and patience
- Radical honesty about you & your life - education and meta work
- Regulation (dopamine/nervous system) - stress reduces, decisions become easier,
- Self-caring accommodation that is respectful of the tidal nature of life - especially true for A(u)DHD folk.
Our A(u)DHD brains typically don't like to follow orders ("Hello, demand avoidance!") but they will often get on board with (truly) aligned agreement.
So, in a nutshell we...
Compassionately engage with self > Align > Regulate > Reduce Friction in your day to day.
What purpose-led organisations say about Grateful
"Grateful have given us tools, courage and language that speak with authenticity.
There's lots of thinking of purpose, personality and discovering who you really are as an individual and business.
Ian has empowered us, his support has been invaluable...I’m getting emotional now!"
Luz, Founder LatAm Business
Clean Tech
"Ian has shown time and again that he can cut through the complexity and create systems that make people feel confident and in control of their money."
Bruce, Founder/MD Abundance
B-Corp Ethical Investment
"Grateful helped us create a brand (+web+socials+print!) that feels true to our sustainable goals while connecting with our less eco-engaged customers"
Nicky, Founder Artisan.Sustainable.Local.
Sustainable Shopping
"The focus on creating a 'grateful customer' helped us look at every area of the design process in a more emotionally intelligent way and we are delighted with the results."
Dan, Owner & Founder,
Underdog Leadership
Future Leaders
City skyline
Birthday Sparks
Fashion Magazine
Blurred Lines
We work between the Perch Eco Business Centre in Bicester, Oxfordshire and a Solar powered, Air Source Heat Pump heated home studio/clinic in nearby Chesterton.
The Perch Eco Business Centre is located in Elmsbrook, the first phase of the Northwest Bicester eco-town.
The centre has been built to excellent environmental standards, boasting zero carbon energy usage enabled by photovoltaic panels, BREEAM excellent standards, and Passivhaus Plus certification, amongst other features inc. B-Corp, good coffee, better people, healthy indoor plants and stress-reducing furry friends!
It's a lovely, community-focused environment that inspires and nurtures.
See more info about Perch Eco architecture at Greentech and Architype.
Photo all rights Perch Eco Coworking and Town Square.
