"Healing" Your Therianthropy

So, this is a bit of a weird post. I think many of us are in agreement that things such as trauma and mental illness can influence the development of therianthropy, yes? Well, isolation is something that I believe played a large part in mine. I didn't know how to interact normally with other children and I always felt odd and disconnected. It makes sense that I may have begun to see myself as something else when I didn't fit what I saw humans being, and frankly didn't want to. I also spent a lot of time in my head, daydreaming myself as an animal, which probably wouldn't happen if I weren't so isolated.

However, things have been changing recently. I've found some people that I feel connected to. I feel less lonely. For the first time in my life, I have people like me. I've noticed some changes that come with this, and definitely some in relation to my therianthropy. Feeling less like an outsider, or even almost feeling more human, makes my therianthropy a whole lot less conscious. I'm noticing fewer urges in social situations. I'm noticing that I spend much less of the time dreaming of being an animal. These are relatively new changes and I'm still very far from an average social life, so I'm not sure how this will develop in the future.

Do I feel less like a therian than I did before? Well, that is the question. If you ask me if I still feel like a fox, I will say yes. I don't think that being a human feels correct and fox feels wrong, but I'm almost concerned I may be heading in that direction. Is it possible that this can be healing to the human side of me without detracting from the fox side of me?

If your therianthropy is a response to environmental factors such as isolation or trauma, do you think it can almost be healed? If the underlying issues are ameliorated, will the animality lessen? I don't know the answer to this. I would appreciate if anyone has any insight to share. I'm a bit afraid of becoming human.

So I wouldn't say my own therianthropy is due to trauma or isolation, but I've got another perspective you can look at this situation through which might bring you some comfort.

It seems to be anecdotally true that focussing less on your therianthropy makes the felt connection less strong. Folks who start jobs and careers when they're young have often noted that they feel less of a connection to the animal part of themselves seemingly because they don't have as much time, energy and mindset to devote towards it.

So the strength of your connection to your therianthropy can wax and wane. If you're only ever in situations where you're only using your human faculties (job, socialising), your animal nature may submerge from under-use but it's more like it's sleeping than disappearing entirely. If you lean into your animal side more by doing things like walking in nature, where your human faculties aren't as useful, your animal nature can re-emerge again.

So maybe you're moving into a phase of your life where you need to be more active and intentional about cultivating that fox nature if you want it to remain awake.

Hope that helps.