Meet Our Team - Seth Schoen
Seth Schoen, PhD.
Position at the Hallowell Todaro ADHD Center:
ADHD Executive Function Coach
How long have you been working at Hallowell Todaro ADHD?
I have been working for the center for some number of months, let’s say 4.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. It has a lot of corn and sky, and my family.
What are your favorite books / TV shows / movies?
Honestly, I mildly enjoy reading books, which is a strange thing to hear from someone with a PhD. Nevertheless, at various times in my life my favorite books have been the Homeric epic The Odyssey, The Lord of The Rings, The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism, My Grandmother’s Hands, Practicing Compassion, and probably the Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin novel series by Patrick O’Brien, since I read all of them.
For TV shows I am enjoying “Our Flag Means Death.” It has pirates, humor, and is a wonderful criticism of toxic masculinity. I am also enjoying some of the new Star Trek series. Schitt’s Creek was wonderful! Basically, I enjoy shows with a strong dose of hope, and that show how good we can be as human beings. I like to call them “breaking good” shows.
What is your favorite sport and/or sports team?
Growing up in Nebraska pretty much makes you a Husker fan. So, I am a fan of college football to the extent I need to be to remain a relatively competent Husker fan. My wife and I are also fans of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team. Well, she is, and I became one because her passion for them is contagious. I love it!
Complete the following sentences:
When I’m not at work, you can find me...
at home taking care of my two daughters. I love being a parent with my wife! But I also enjoy my own time so you might find me engaged in one of my many hobbies.
When I want to de-stress, I...
forget to do it and usually perseverate on TV. But, when I remember to de-stress I engage something more centering for me. I usually get into a hobby, creating something. I might also meditate or engage a spiritual practice that reconnects me to myself and what is important to me.
My favorite time of year is...
I have lived in southern California for a while now. The weather is basically the same all year. I grew up with seasons, though, and miss them. As I recall, the first day of Spring after winter is a wonderful day that I miss. Let’s say Spring, when life returns, plants are in bloom, and thunderstorms pass through.
My favorite thing to cook is...
I enjoy cooking holiday meals with my family. Planning them with my wife and then cooking everything together is really rewarding, especially when the meal turns out well. It is also exhausting!
The best gift I ever received was…
The gift of life from my parents. Oh! and the black sea barracuda Lego set when I was 13.
If I could travel anywhere in the world, I’d go to...
I would like to see icebergs calving. Right now is a good time for that, unfortunately.
What led you to pursue a career helping others?
My dad was a veteran’s counselor, and my mother was an advocate for people with disabilities. In the end, try as I might this apple didn’t fall far from the tree. That’s not a bad thing either!
When I was 7 my mother and I were on the way to pick up my sister from school. It was quiet in the car, and I was watching the mottled sunshine through the trees as we drove along when I suddenly felt trapped in my body. I had the thought that for the rest of my life I would only experience the world through my body. I would never know what it was like to be my sister and experience the world as she does. Since then, I have been interested in the way that other people experience the world.
What education, skills, and expertise do you bring to your role?
Perhaps the connection may not be obvious, but I bring an expertise in spirituality and compassion to my role as an executive function coach. Compassion, especially self- compassion is such a wonderful gift for all of us living with ADHD. It helps us understand ourselves more fully without judgment or shame and helps us tend to our inner worlds with care, connection, and love – similar to the way we care for our close friends and family. Compassion also helps us connect to that which is greater than ourselves from which many of us derive foundational meaning for our lives. Spirituality is also important for our lives but let me clarify a common confusion first. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing. Think of it as a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. So, some spiritualities are given expression through religious forms, while other spiritualities are not religious at all. A thriving spirituality helps our lives flourish, it helps us connect with what we value most, with our sense of what is ultimate (examples include nature, the universe, God, love, deity, the human spirit, family, ancestors, warrior ethos, etc.). Identifying our own spirituality and living into it through spiritual practices that sustain us roots our lives in what is most important for us. Finding this and deepening it is a skill I bring to coaching. It is important for me to point out that this is a client-led process, based on their interests.
I also live with ADHD, so I bring my life experience of living with ADHD and being diagnosed as an adult to my coaching as well. This is helpful because I understand experientially what many of us go through and have/am still working through all the ways ADHD affects our lives.
Another skill I bring to coaching is empathy and what I like to call cheerleading. Basically, those of us with ADHD respond well when we feel heard, understood, and affirmed. This is how empathy helps. Cheerleading is important because people with ADHD have a tendency to discount our knowledge and success. This gives us a distorted understanding of our capabilities and what we actually accomplish in a given day. My role as a cheerleader is to point out where clients are actively doing and accomplishing things but may not have noticed it or thought about it as an accomplishment.
Who/what inspires you?
My clients inspire me. I know that may sound cheesy, but I genuinely feel inspired when my clients see something in themselves they didn’t know was there or experience an aha moment, or simply feel seen and heard in a way they haven’t before. These shared experiences are the nourishing waters I return to when I feel depleted and my well runs dry. I am grateful to be part of their journey.
What’s your personal philosophy/approach toward the work you do?
So, I am a trained theologian. This means I have spent time pondering big questions of a religious and spiritual nature. One of the insights my graduate studies led me to is the importance and centrality of compassion for our lives. Let me explain. The astronauts that went to the moon were fundamentally changed by that experience. Some of them describe their experience in ways that are almost identical to the ways that mystics and contemplatives across religious traditions describe their experiences of union with Ultimacy, however that is defined in their tradition. I think this is because they were sharing a similar experience: interconnectedness. Standing on the moon and looking back at the earth, those astronauts had a physical experience of transcendence when viewing the earth from the moon - a literal third person perspective. This experience mirrors the inner transcendence described by mystics and contemplatives. From their vantage point it was easy to see both how fragile our earth is and how intimately connected and interdependent we all are. This is the basis for my work, and compassion is the way I try to practice and embody it. When we hold ourselves with grace and care the world opens up to us, we feel at ease. Simply put, we feel like ourselves. I guess to put it simply, my approach is to be part of the process of people living into their authentic selves.
What is one small thing people can do to improve their lives and increase their happiness?
Alright, first of all happiness is defined in a number of ways, so it is kind of amorphous and this can lead to problems. Understood as an emotion happiness is transient and not a stable basis for constructing a flourishing life. It comes and goes like any other emotion. Striving toward something this ephemeral places us on a path that is easily exploited by others. For example, how many of us have bought something to make ourselves happy. Others much smarter than myself have spent a great deal of time researching and nuancing the intricacies of happiness and understand it in a more substantive and enduring way, so…
I think one thing people can do to increase their happiness is to be authentic, especially for those of us with ADHD. My life has flourished best when my choices reflected my body’s authentic interest in that choice. This is maybe a small thing, but not necessarily easy. To make this more actionable I like to notice when I feel alive and most like myself throughout the day and reflect on why and what precipitated that state of being. This usually helps me connect to what is authentic for me, rather than shoulding on myself for the list of things I didn’t do or need to get done. For example, when I pick my daughter up from daycare and she runs over to me and gives me a big hug I feel alive, I feel like myself, and notice a sense of accomplishment as a father. I feel this way because in this context her hug is a sign of secure attachment and affection. It is a small but important sign that my parenting efforts and commitments are working.
We provide a range of support for people with ADHD.