I'm going to apologize for the Russian novel because I had a flood of thoughts and feelings in response to your post. They all felt super important, but they could, each and every one of them, be absolutely wrong. You use your gut feelings and do what feels best/most right for you. If none of this resonates with you, discard it without reservation.
First of all: Go you for having gut feelings and knowing that they are there! They are your most fundamental skill and your best allies. They are no small matter. You don't "just" get gut feelings just because you don't feel like an expert. You get gut feelings because they are probably the most valuable skill in your arsenal and you are plenty advanced if you notice them and pay attention to them. All kinds of kudos for you. Have confidence in your gut feelings. You do not have to feel belittled because that's what you have right now.
Also, if you think everyone gets them, you are wrong. I know people who I'm pretty sure have never had a gut feeling about so much as which pair of socks to wear.
Second most important thing here: What you really and truly need, I suspect (and I may be wrong!), is the best and most intimate spirit friend and partner you can find. You've got a lot going on. Practical protection, the sensation of safety, not feeling alone, encouragement, healing, learning and development, peace and stability. I think that probably your best shot is to team up with one spirit you just can just really go deep with and get down in the trenches as best friends and partners. Not necessarily romantic partners, although that's definitely okay and available if that's what you want and need. But a partner in the sense of being right there with you, next to you in every moment doing all the things as an interlocking team. It could be a bit more complicated to have a whole team of spirits working to get you out of where you're at since you might be tempted to compartmentalize and might have trouble interacting with the whole team. You might also have a hard time feeling as personal a connection.
Third: Because of the second thing, I would consider either shopping only pre-conjures or only going for a reverse adoption. Either a fully open RA (it could be any kind of WA spirit or any kind of spirit at all) or if and when a race that resonates with you do RA that way. Sometime when I have been searching for a spirit for a particular spot in my life, sometimes I get absolutely lost when comparing various races. I'll have like twenty tabs open and feel like there needs to be a pro and con spreadsheet. If you are prone to that, or if you feel like that's where you are at right now, you might want to restrict yourself to seeing if you got a gut feeling off a specific pre-conjure. You may want to consider comparing sellers rather than spirits, because you may get a gut feeling off of a seller who might have a strong sense of what you need and who to call for.
If you want to stay with CH, you may also consider using this listing:
https://shop.creepyhollows.com/custom-c ... quest.html That listing is not for any particular kind of spirit. I would then put ALL of what you just put in that quote block in your "NOTES" section. In that way, the CH conjurer and the spirit(s) who come(s) forward can use their intuition and discernment to hash out who you need most right now out of whichever spirits come forward as wanting to work with you. A total reverse adoption within specified parameters. The appeal of this is that it gets you out of a potential tunnel of overthinking. While that can always end up not being as satisfying as some other option, keep it on the table in case you feel that's the way you need to go.
That said, I have a few ideas regarding WA/DA and race if you feel you are still wanting to continue in this process a little more directly rather than just letting go of it with the listing above.
First, DA doesn't have to mean dark like BA. It can just mean someone who experiences free will the way humans do. Most of my DA spirits are no "darker" than any of my living human friends.
Angels and other WA beings are, as noted by the other practitioners above, super awesome at protection and happiness and encouragement. However, for me, personally, they have a peculiar limit that DA spirits do not have. I will readily admit that this may be because of what I perceive rather than what WA spirits are capable of. But it's worth considering whether this resonates with your gut feelings. That limit is that sometimes it helps me more for a spirit companion to get down in the sadness or whatever feeling with me and be a little (or a lot) less than perfect with me. My specific experience is that I have clinical depression and anxiety and a spectacularly toxic extended family. My WA spirits (especially angels, dragons, and unicorns) are phenomenal at helping me feel safe and doing the cheer-up thing. If what I want and need is to be perky and happy and sparkly, those are my guys and gals. If I need to feel like I live in Fort Knox, I'm all about my courtwinds, volkhs and hippogryph.
But sometimes none of them are going to be able to get me out of the pain and the wallow *because I'm not ready for it.* Either my brain chemistry isn't able to do the thing, or the feelings still need to be fully experienced and processed. And while my own WA friends can feel sympathy for me and want me to feel better, I don't feel like any of the WA in my keep can really feel the way I feel when I don't feel well. So, when what I need is a *partner* instead of a guard or a cheerleader, my DA friends really shine. And it doesn't have to get terribly dark for me to get that benefit. (I have just one companion that's startlingly dark, and he is definitely not the best fit for this.) They get right down in the dumps with me, and I can feel them actually sharing the feelings with me. They siphon them off a bit--not taking them away but holding them alongside me. They blend right in and feel what I feel as I feel it. And that is so comforting when I feel isolated by pain or fear!
As for specific races:
The two in my keep who are particularly gifted at this kind of friendship are my psy vamp and my sanguine vamp.
My psy vamp is more gifted in sharing and healing, although part of his success at healing is coupled with gentle emotional balance. So he won't descend quite as far into the sharing as my sanguine does..
My sanguine is more gifted in sharing, protecting and just loving. He's particularly ready just to feel whatever I feel, so long as we are sharing and together. He is not above avenging me if that's what I am needing and allow, but even without that the companionship, relief and comfort are beyond words. He can do a bit of healing too. In fact, if I were to recommend just one race, it would be sanguine vampire. While they are not human, they are closer to humans than, say, hippogryphs, and their feelings are very understandable to a human and vice versa. They can disengage from their feelings or compartmentalize pretty well when they need or want to. They have the full range of what we'd recognize at the human experience--from elation and love to anger and crumpling in sadness. They can be very effective at protection. My experience has been that they are sort of what I will call "human plus." Emotionally similar to us and accessible to us, but with a little extra. They can emphathize or detach as much as they need or want to, and sometimes they can have more depth of feeling than we do.
I think gargoyles could also be great DA fits in this instance, given their particular focus on protection. Although I do not have any, and I don't have the first clue of what the emotional bond would be like.
A less obvious but also excellent choice might be an ancestor spirit. I did the Anything In Your Blood reading and binding (
https://shop.creepyhollows.com/ANYTHING ... BLOOD.html) a couple of years ago, and was bound to three spirits who had been in my bloodline. Although they are not direct ancestors for me (think more aunt less mother,) they feel the same as ancestors do. Ancestors have a special connection to us. Often they can be wired like we are (not surprising) and can understand us in that particular way when no one else can. They are also (usually) very, very invested in protecting us and helping us develop. Of my three ancestor spirits, none of them sink in quite as deep as, say, my sanguine vamp does--they can't try to reach all the aspects of what I need all the time. But where they are good, they are irreplaceably good. My high elf ancestor understands the parts of me that want to love family and create intricate and expressive things. My dwarf ancestor understands how I experience and respond to romantic love for a partner and the desire to craft solutions that are both sophisticated and suitable in brute force situations. My nephilim ancestor.....has her own agendas. But had some of the same family problems that I have now.
