The long and short, without the short

I found a PDA-competent counselor in my province. This isn't the biggest guns, but it may be useful, depending on her waiting list. Here's what I wrote, for posterity (neurodivergentcounseling.ca):

Hello!

I know you're taking folks for your waiting list right now. Hopefully you can let me know if you have a sense for how long that waiting list is, or if it's very long can steer me in the direction of someone else who's PDA competent. Here's the situation:

I'm a 40-year-old somethinggender person who moved up to the BC interior nearly 5 years ago. My life has been intense but pretty good overall, and I've been pretty good at driving towards the things that are important to me and hitting those targets (thank you, suspected PDA, which does not let me survive while settling for less than what I need). For most of my life I've lived in what a friend calls a "pocket universe" of probably mostly-ND people (in hindsight) and although I've had significant struggles I've felt pretty ok with my community.

Moving up north I joined a company that was full of my kind of people and it was ok-- until that company went under. There aren't many jobs in my small town so I took a job with the provincial government. Everyone there is the kind of normal I only thought existed in movies: monogamous, cis, straight, has kids, takes kids to hockey, goes fishing. I used to think my superpower was connecting with anyone, because I was great at finding commonalities with folks-- I think that because I didn't believe in, or hadn't experienced, normal that I was more accepting and people found that a relief. Now, though, my local partner is moving away and I don't have any community in this town. I've learned about PDA and it fits me on a level I didn't think possible, and I've come to realize that other folks' experiences are not as similar to mine as I thought.

I don't have community up here and I need community to feel ok. With covid everyone has shut down into their live-in family group; I'm poly to my bones and kinda solo-poly/RA/I don't do closed nuclear family groups that way so I can't just join them, but no one wants to conect. With covid folks don't travel up here, before this all started my plan was to hold big events a couple times a year and get my socialization mostly from that. With covid folks are even more hostile towards differing viewpoints and opinions and feelings, and they other folks so hard; I don't feel safe around people who other so intensely, since I am so deeply other myself I find it both feels unsafe and is not the way I want to move in the world.

My beautiful farm that I've had up here encompasses all my special interests. I live in my own house, which I own, on acreage. I can trial a hundred varieties of tomatoes or preserve endangered heritage pigs or geese here. I love the land, this land, like I love my family (well, less complicatedly than I love my family) and like I love myself-- and I do love myself, and over the years have really come to be grateful for who I am.

I need to make a life plan, or a five year plan, that lets me keep or re-create the parts of my life that I love and also find a way to survive and thrive in the normativity at work or change jobs, and that lets me find community, and that lets me hold my boundaries around people I'm in community with in a way that feels non-antagonistic but also protective of me. My dad was the worst kind of verbally/emotionally/keep deniability around it but be super mean and provoking and undercutting kind of abusive and I really suck at negotiation and healthy conflict.

I'm feeling really underwater right now. I'm moving out of the despair part and into having energy to move, but I can't figure out how to move, what direction I need to go in. I know you have experience with shaping your life to fit your PDA, and I'm looking for tools and experience to help guide me on doing that. I'm looking for someone to ask me the right questions. I'm looking for someone to offer suggestions and understand when I say no immediately, but maybe those suggestions can work in the back of my brain (thanks, PDA). I'm also kinda looking for affirmation that this is a reasonable label for me and that all this internal pushback on demands of every sort, especially joy, isn't just some sort of misshapen trauma response. And, I guess, I'm looking to stop having trauma responses to things like diversity and inclusion workshops at work, or my brother saying something in a family facebook chat.

Anyhow, that's the long and short of it. Be well, and I hope to hear from you.

Cheers,