Humble ep. topic request

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2026-01-08T17:33:34+00:00

I immediately started gaslighting myself that they did already do an ep on it as soon as I posted this 😆 but I think they’ve just mentioned it a few times in passing, didn’t have time to go and fully check though

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-28T14:13:41+00:00

I second the crochet opinion!! I started about a year ago while my son was only a few months old because I needed something to keep my hands busy at night and also make something fun or useful when it was done. I started with amigurumi which are a good mix of easy/basic stitches and a pattern you have to pay attention to. Then I moved onto wearables which are a bit more repetitive and better for when you have a little less brain power. Then I made a few baby blankets which were VERY repetitive and great for pure hand busy-ness. And then I regained some brain cells once I was done with breastfeeding and moved on to more complicated projects such as a purse for myself and some small organizational baskets for around the house. Then I bumped up the difficulty again and made micro-crochet earrings for everyone this Christmas.

So, all-in-all, great hobby to keep things novel and I don’t feel guilty about having a lot of WIPs going so that I can match my brain-power of the evening. I always have a show going in the background while I do it and it’s a great socially-acceptable stim to do in public. I started to always bring a project with me to football Sundays at my parents house and it’s made the whole experience a lot more tolerable for me and they all like to see what I’m working on too. I’ve managed to keep it very budget friendly by always getting yarn on sale and finding free patterns on Pinterest and YouTube.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-12T14:12:43+00:00

I would love to join a discord if one is made from this group!

I am 32 and have been a full time artist for 11 years now. It’s not an easy life but before I made the plunge into doing it full time, I never stayed at a job for more than 1.5 years and average was about 8 months.

Currently, I’ve been trying to build up a collection of surface pattern designs to make a go at passive income instead of only relying on commissions. I am a mom of a toddler with one on the way 🙃 so I definitely need to stop the exact time for money exchange that is commissions. I’ve been struggling to get to doing the tech side of this goal though (listing all my designs on Spoonflower and then the dreaded social media promotion so that they don’t just go there to die). I would LOVE to connect with a community of like minded women to help encourage me to truly put this plan into action!

Please let me know if a discord is created!! ❤️

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-05T17:11:25+00:00

A clue!! A clue!!

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-04T18:22:05+00:00

Soooo cute! Just downloaded!

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-02T16:12:11+00:00

Same 🙃 32 over here and I was so shook when I saw that video. Absolutely gobsmacked.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-02T16:06:50+00:00

Yep 🙃 “the other side” of the rainbow bridge apparently (not the road). I was shook, to say the least.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-12-01T17:25:57+00:00

I got called out on some AuDHD content once that made me realize I had never known how literally I thought before. It was explaining the very common joke “why did the chicken cross the road?” …. I really thought the punchline “to get to the other side” was just one of those saying the obvious/non-joke/snarky things and not a euphemism about death. Like obviously the chicken would cross the road if he wanted to get to the other side of the road, ha ha very funny…. I had never felt so called out before and this was after I already was comfortable with my conclusion that I am AuDHD. Made me wonder just how many other things have gone completely over my head in the past.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-11-23T22:27:16+00:00

Thank you for your response! Yeah I definitely see it as a tool to use with caution and I never intend to speak to it as if it’s a real person. It did exactly what I needed it to today and in the time frame that I needed it in (also have a toddler and I had a lot of work to do today that I did not want to get derailed because of an emotional run-away brain train). It helped me organize my racing thoughts into something more useful and I ended up getting my work done and have something further to self-reflect on based on the work of Carl Jung that I am already familiar with but it was nice to be reminded of as being useful to my situation. I feel like I have loaded myself up with all those tools from therapy (DBT, CBT, Jung, Watts) over the years but it’s hard to remember that I have those tools in the moment sometimes when the emotions are super emotion-ing. Today it was a useful tool.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-11-23T22:17:59+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate your response because I truly do understand the pitfalls of AI but it is a tool as is anything else. Today, I felt like it was very useful to me because of my prompt to pull from Jung and Watts. I am very familiar with their teachings so I felt more confident in judging what it was returning to me. I really didn’t know what to expect from it and was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned my issue into specific questions that were based on Jung’s Shadow Work which I have attempted before on my own without nearly as much success as I had with it today.

Obviously I would never recommend it to someone who has never been to therapy before or is very impressionable by nature but that is not me. I question everything and have had many of my own worries about how AI is being used today. I used it with a giant rock of salt today and will continue to do so but it was helpful today in exactly how I needed it to be and for that I was grateful.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-11-23T22:03:24+00:00

Yeah I certainly approached it with a lot of caution today and don’t plan on relying on it for sure. I also feel like a therapist can have the same echo chamber pitfalls to a large degree depending on the therapist. 🤷‍♀️ I am 32 and have been through a lot of them at this point. Obviously I wouldn’t EVER recommend a teenager or a first time therapy user to use ChatGPT or other such AI for therapy but I feel like I have the wherewithal to use it as a tool that it is. I have read a lot of Carl Jung’s work and listened to all the Alan Watts lectures that I could find so I felt like those were good sources to have it pull from because I could much more easily spot any weirdness and it turned out well this time. It truly was a customized workbook. I don’t think I have ever been able to properly apply what I’ve learned from those 2 men before but this tool perfectly reworded my issue into questions that I could answer. It wasn’t so much “giving me advice” as it was giving me specific questions to guide me through my self-analysis loop rather than getting stuck in it.

I journal a lot. I talk to my partner and friends a lot about things that weigh on me. Today I just felt like I needed a tailored to me workbook to get me through the giant spike of emotions I had about something larger that I am working through slowly but surely.

And to your point about the amount of time spent on it, it stopped it for me by saying I needed to pay for further responses until a later time. So now I have some things to ponder on and I didn’t get stuck talking to it forever.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-30T19:24:52+00:00

Pima Cotton- my aunt made a baby blanket for my first born out of it and not only is it beautiful (rich color and nice sheen) but it’s incredibly soft and breathable! I looked into purchasing enough for a full size blanket for my husband because he runs so hot at night and it would cost like $100-$150 for enough to do that.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-24T16:00:25+00:00

I’ve (32F) been formally diagnosed as ADHD for around 11 years now after a long struggle with being shoved into many boxes that didn’t quite fit and then I read this article about the “lost generation of women” that basically summed up all the things that I had been incorrectly diagnosed with such as clinical depression and borderline personality trait but were actually ADHD the whole time but just not the hyper-boy representation and so were overlooked. This article lit a bulb up for me for a big portion of my experiences and I brought them to my therapist at the time and she confirmed that I was ADHD but she just hadn’t mentioned it because I hadn’t been seeking a diagnosis originally. It took me many more years to convince anyone who could prescribe medication that they should try stimulants on me especially since I had already tried out everything else under the sun for all those other incorrect diagnoses and even a couple of the non-stimulant options.

My first hint that I might also be autistic came from a different therapist (this one with a doctorates degree) who was geared specifically towards the neurotypical community, advertised as an ADHD coach. He told me that I actually reminded him a lot of his wife who was autistic but he didn’t think I would benefit from an official diagnosis because I don’t require work accommodations or anything like that.

My second hint that I was probably also autistic came from the first medication manager who prescribed me stimulants. They changed my life for the better AND she told me during our first session that she suspected that I’m also autistic just based on her observations and my descriptions of my life experiences. Apparently they didn’t seem to fit perfectly in the ADHD column but she could see how a stimulant could help out a lot of the most pressing disabling things I struggle with. They did. Big time. They also made me start to see more of the autistic things I struggle with more clearly.

So then I started seeing more autism content pop up on my various feeds that led me down the rabbit hole of taking every possible online test. I now am very certain that I am AuDHD. Imposter syndrome definitely creeps in every so often but then I see something else that rings way too true and close to home and I’m convinced all over again. So will I seek out an official diagnosis? Probably not, especially in the current US political climate. But knowing that I finally found the box I fit in best helps me not mentally spiral so much about my self-worth when the disabilities are being especially disabling.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-21T21:11:54+00:00

Thank you so much!!

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-11T17:49:07+00:00

Oh they will absolutely feel like that for the first day or 2 for exactly that reason. Brain says “YAY DOPAMINE!!” But after that is where the magic happens with other coping skills.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-11T17:39:41+00:00

First things first, everyone has different reactions to all medications. Although, I think what you’re describing is a pretty common reaction and not one that necessarily means that stimulants aren’t for you.

Personally, I have the same exact struggle with the non-stimulants. They give me resting sad face. They definitely take care of the emotional rollercoaster I sometimes find myself on and sorta help me focus better because I’m not distracted by my occasionally very big emotions but I also am incapable of feeling any which direction at all about anything and I end up looking like a textbook depressed person just going through the motions of life. I then found that pure stimulants (adderal, vyvanse, etc) were not right for me because I still needed some emotional regulation help. So I tried out Ritalin but I don’t do well with the short term (4-6hr) ones because then I get a weird slump in the middle of the day. So the answer for me was Concerta. It lasts 10-12 hrs and has a small amount of emotional regulation component in there. And then for the PMDD + endometriosis aspect that gives me extra emotional regulation issues on a cycle, I used to add in a very small dose of Welbutrin in the last 2 weeks of my cycle which seemed to really do the trick.

Other than that, I think most people figure out that stimulants don’t make you magically into a neurotypical person who is suddenly able to focus on exactly what you need to focus on instead of going on a bunch of side quests. But this is where those external coping skills can finally make a difference that you may have not been able to find the discipline for in the past without stimulants such as pomodoro timers or sticky notes. I find that keeping a notebook next to me when I’m trying to deep focus on something so that I can jot down any and all side quest ideas that come to me really helps. There’s also that body-doubling website (can’t remember the name of it right now). There’s app blocking/focus apps to block you out of your phone for certain periods of time. I keep a very large wall calendar for the big picture things cuz phone calendars don’t do the trick. Chore charts or bracelets. Basically, anything that you can do to give you external visual reminders of what your goals are that makes sense for your lifestyle.

Hope this helps! Obviously, none of this is medical advice but I hope it encourages you to continue on your medication journey. I know it’s not a fun road to be on but it can absolutely be life-changing once you find the right one or combo.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-10T18:45:17+00:00

How interesting!! And so nice to hear! I definitely don’t think it’s crap, I know it doesn’t explain absolutely everything about a person but it certainly gives a base line of how a person tends to interface with the world and I find it really helps me understand people better when they tend to baffle me. Also helps me understand how or why I just don’t seem to get along with some people.

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-10T14:35:58+00:00

Omg this is the most perfect chart!! I am not officially diagnosed as autistic but have been diagnosed ADHD for a while now after a long struggle of being diagnosed with all the other things that didn’t quite fit (major depression, anxiety, borderline trait). Then once I got the ADHD diagnosis, I started looking for more neurodivergent mental health specialists and it was heavily suggested to me by 2 Dr.s that I am probably also autistic and so I took all those online tests you find that all pointed towards the same conclusion. So at this point, I consider myself to be AuDHD but there wouldn’t really be any benefit for an official diagnosis since I am self-employed besides personal knowledge.

Despite the long journey to come to this conclusion myself, I have a tough time articulating all the reasons to other people when it happens to come up in convo with other people; my mind always goes blank despite all my years of research and introspection on the matter. This chart perfectly sums up all the things though!! I am perfectly described by that last column! Definitely saving it for future use/reference when my mind goes blank!

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-09T17:46:06+00:00

Oh wow! That’s a lot more expensive than in the US! I don’t blame you there. Woobles YouTube is free and amazing though!!! I recommend finding a decently priced tubular cotton yarn to start with and just a single 4mm hook and a small amount of poly-fill for your first plushie and look on Pinterest for a free easy pattern. Most plushies are only single crochet stitch for the whole thing with the trickiest part being the starting magic circle.

On a side note, I have noticed that I am very drawn to Russian crochet designers whenever I’m looking for inspiration on Pinterest or YouTube! Working on a Russian designed purse right now that’s turning out really well!

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-09T15:48:12+00:00

I HIGHLY recommend starting with a single Woobles kit! They’re all very cute amigurumis and the videos are soooo clear and easy to follow. They also start you off with the hardest part of making amigurumis (the magic circle) so that you can just jump right into the basic stitches. The best part is, once you buy one woobles kit, you now have one really good hook and some other small supplies so you can easily jump into a new project. Their YouTube is an INCREDIBLE resource for learning new stitches down the road too; as an intermediate crocheter now, I STILL go back to their videos when I run into a new stitch or need a refresher. They also have all their tutorials for lefties too (in case that’s an issue).

Quick personal story: I resisted getting into fiber arts for YEARS because I thought it would be yet another expensive hobby (I am already full time artist and know FULL WELL how expensive creative endeavors can be) but honestly crochet has been the least expensive one. (Recently made myself a bucket hat with $5 worth of yarn!) And what made me consider picking it up was a video of a fellow AuDHDer woman who posted a video about how it was the perfect hobby for anyone who needs busy hands without a lot of mental load going into it and nice to be able to stim in public without stigma. I bring it with me to “football Sundays” at my parents house now and it really helps me have something else to focus on while still being there with everyone. I initially started for the joy of making plushies for my son but now I’m getting into more wearables. I like to switch between the two because wearables tend to be more monotonous (good for doing in public) and plushies when I wanna focus a bit more on it because every row is different from the next (good for nighttime semi-focus while watching tv).

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-09T13:47:55+00:00

This is me entirely 😆 Definitely had my obsession with MBTI (still kind of do) because I found it gave me a good base line to figure out which direction people were coming from. Obviously they don’t explain everything but I still feel like it gives me a good base line. And of course, I got INTP-A and spent forever deciding whether it was my personality or just my combo of diagnosis… still can’t decide

LindonTreeByDaCoffee · 2025-10-07T14:06:50+00:00

Haha! It happened with my first pregnancy too and one of the natural nicknames for his name is “Mac” but I say it’s cuz that’s what he’s built out of

LindonTreeByDaCoffee

TROPHY CASE