Causes of Feeling Nonhuman that are NOT Therianthropy

Wow! Dust, is that Therian Guide or other sites also? My last canvases were from the SEHowl, the old Werelist and PathwaysToDarkness. I wonder why the difference.

Tulpas are sorta weird (okay, yeah, duh). They can be created subconsciously but I can't see how that can be created accidentally because they require so much energy. What I mean is that, even if the subconscious does it - it does it intentionally.

"I think it could be easy for a young person to confuse a tulpa with a therioside, which could easily lead them to confuse normal behaviors and sensations with being nonhuman." I could see that happening - after all, a lot of people think that poltergeists are manifestations of adolescents' subconscious. Tulpas and poltergeists are related. I'm just trying to wrap my brain around an accidental tulpa. I wonder how many of modern werewolf sightings might be accidental tulpas.

As to what to do, I dunno. Maybe a very brief explanation that there's a difference between modern usage and the more ancient usage. How common is it to use "tulpa" for an imaginary friend? I was sorta surprised to hear about it.

(2018-01-14 22:06)WolfVanZandt Wrote:  Wow! Dust, is that Therian Guide or other sites also? My last canvases were from the SEHowl, the old Werelist and PathwaysToDarkness. I wonder why the difference.

Those that voted on TG.

Seems like your research was done a while ago, maybe that's why.

LP,
Dusty

It was, but I still wonder why the difference. Is it the online population or therianthropy that's changing? Or maybe the LGBT+ population.

DustWolf Wrote:I don't remember exactly when all this was, but there was a trend amongst people to come to therian forums claiming tulpas. Though I am a skeptic myself and probably not the best person to talk to, to me tulpas sounded as just identities people claimed to have imagined into existence.

I distinctly remember overhearing a conversation once, years ago, about tulpas in the context of "I wonder if I should make one? They're just friends you imagine into existence, right?".

Granted, it's safe to say that these individuals were probably in their younger teens and grossly misinformed but as @WolfVanZandt has said, Tumblr has attempted to completely re-write the script and it's filled to the brim with younger, much more naive individuals with little to no guidance or structure. Essentially, it's much like the blind leading the blind. The one thing they do seem to have a firm grasp on is flailing absurdly whenever someone offers guidance and claiming that a simple differing opinions makes them a victim of some atrocious crime.

There's just no cleaning up Tumblr, realistically. While I commend those who are trying to make an effort. I'm often left to wonder if we wouldn't be better off, as a community, discrediting Tumblr as a whole, chalking up whatever losses we might have as collateral damage and moving on. It's going to reach a point where it's either going to be that or we're going to have to band together and invade these places as a single organized unit to make clear what we won't allow our experiences and our identities to be made into.
[/Rant]

"Headmates" we're also a trend a few years ago with quite a few individuals from the Tumblr crowd proclaiming they had something that mimicked the symptoms of DID. The give away to these people, however, was that they always hid behind these "alt identities" when they'd done something wrong and didn't want to face the music for it. What's really alarming is that we took down a sexual predator once, who did just that. He claimed to have a whole family of headmates which is why, to this day, I'm extremely skeptical and keep my eyes on anyone who acts similarly.

DustWolf Wrote:Do you think it's possible that some people think of themselves as therian, but are in fact only LGBT+?

I believe this was the case with one particular alien/coyote/possum/alligator/mountain lion/dog/demon and 52 other types that he concluded "this is it! I've finally found my TRUE type!" Only to change it next week.

It may be the case with few others but I'd say those numbers are slim enough to not be worthy of mention.

By far, I'd think the number of furries who think of themselves as therian would outweigh the number of lgbtq people.

Lyc

Something that may cause the feeling of non-human is dissociative identity disorder. I don't know there is any documentation saying if this is common or not but a few individual I know with DID say they don't feel human, but they aren't therians.

Actually, I've seen several case reports with nonhuman alters and even have a few. On the Lenowill scale, the extreme cases look a lot like multiple personality "disorder". My situation was like that until the alters merged. I don't know if it would be accurate to consider multiple personality with animal alters as non-therian. It's very possible that therianthropy is what conditions the person with multiple personalities to have animal alters.

(2018-01-20 3:12)Arccitius Wrote:  Something that may cause the feeling of non-human is dissociative identity disorder. I don't know there is any documentation saying if this is common or not but a few individual I know with DID say they don't feel human, but they aren't therians.

Nonhuman alters/headmates, while not common are not unheard of. Our multiple system is actually mostly made up of nonhuman alters/headmates. If they identify as / are therian mostly depends upon the person. Many nonhuman alters/headmates would say that they are or identify as a nonhuman animal, but only some would be comfortable using the label therian.


Actually, on the topic of causes for feeling nonhuman for reasons other than therianthropy, some symptoms of dissociation can be not feeling human, sometimes feeling like an animal and sometimes not, feeling like your own body is not really human or not really real, feeling like you are somehow different than other people or disconnected from others, and so on and similar. Most of which a part of depersonalization.

- Cavern-Risen (female, werewolf)

(2018-01-13 21:16)DustWolf Wrote:  I've heard LGBT+ people mention that they once believed themselves to have a non-human identity, because of how alien they felt within their bodies.

Do you think it's possible that some people think of themselves as therian, but are in fact only LGBT+?

LP,
Dusty

I don't think feeling socially isolated is the same as feeling like a non-human creature. The awkwardness that comes from being a same-sex attracted person around opposite-sex attracted people is a very "human" feeling, at least in my experience. It's more a feeling of shame, and feeling like the people you're hanging out with don't quite get who you are, which, granted, can come from identifying as non-human too, but it revolves around a different type of "you don't get me."

But, I do think you're onto something, there are a lot of transgender people in the therian/otherkin community, and I think a sense of non-human identity can come from living with body dysphoria because the body and brain's map of it don't quite match up. A sense of detachment from one's physical self probably does feel somehow different from "normal", and it might lead some people to identify as non-human.

I don't really know enough about psychology or neurology to really say anything of substance though. I've just noticed that body dysphoria/ feeling "disconnected" from one's physical body seems to be a common thread in both the therian/otherkin and transgender communities.

It's not something i'm very knowledgeable of but I suppose in some rare cases it could be caused by clinical lycanthropy. From what I've read those who have it claim they can physically shift into a nonhuman creature or they identify as nonhuman.

The problem is, what if clinical lycanthropy was caused by a therian having a mental illness? I've known cases of therians who had schizophrenia who thought they were p-shifting because they were hallucinating.

Actually, I think there are two kinds of clinical lycanthropes. One is what I just said. The other is a Maninstreamer who, for some reason or another is primed to think they are shifting when they are hallucinating - they're not therians. They're not therians because the therianthropy goes away on medication and doesn't come back.