Holothere vs Therianthropy

(2026-02-17 9:42)Hemlock Wrote:  

(2026-02-17 8:00)FernFox Wrote:  I also agree with Neon Rosette's reply a bit above. If someone is experiencing true delusions, I don't think they would be seeking out a word that puts them into a little bubble like this. They would just 'be' the animal.

It falls into this weird grey area of "I delusionally believe I am a physical animal, but am self-aware enough to know that it is a delusion". This by definition, means that it is not a true delusion-- as true psychotic delusions typically involve a lack of insight. Having that degree of self-awareness, yet choosing to still feed into delusions / self-identify as being a physical animal -- and encourage it by taking on an 'identity' that specifically marks you as delusional -- is unhealthy and shouldn't be encouraged. (Especially among easily-influenced young people just trying to find words to explore their identity).


- Fern

I'll comment on this one as someone concerned.

It is not entirely impossible for someone to hold a delusional belief while knowing other people register it as a delusional belief. It's usually referred to as double-bookkeeping in psychiatric literature. You are correct that it is kind of on the grey line between what a medical professional would qualify as true psychosis or not, but it is not entirely uncommon in people with certain schizospec disorders (such as schizotypal), or in people who have been through the medical system for their delusions.

As a language shortcut, people usually refer to the belief held as a delusion when they know they are experiencing double-bookkeeping. Knowing other refer to one's belief as a delusion also doesn't necessarily means people do not act on the held belief : a lot of people will still to some degree follow rules imposed by the held belief, or continue obsessing over the subject. For a simple example : I am currently medicated and stable. I used to have a held belief that God talked to me to punish me. I currently am able to recognize this is a symptom of my disorder. Yet, even knowing this, it is very uncomfortable for me to enter churches or possess objects tied to a monotheist god, and to verbally denounce my delusion as fake. I wouldn't even consider my current state double-bookkeeping, I have experienced that too and it's a lot more severe, because in that case I did simultaneously hold the belief as true and try to react to people as if I did not believe it!

Psychosis is more complex than an off and on switch, and while what some people are saying online does register to me as exaggerated or incorrect, there is in fact a few people who do strike me as experiencing that sort of things.

Finally, for whether it is unhealthy to have a label that acknowledge delusional status : I don't think so personally. This is a complex subject, but psychotic experiences are often very shameful. Being able to take them back and talk about them can be powerful. I preferred how the endel movement (an identity caused, rooted in, or otherwise tied to a delusion per the coined definition) went about it personally, as it was a lot more safe both for other psychotic people (the holothere movement often posts things that can trigger other's psychosis by asserting them as true empirically), and for oneself (a lot of what I saw of it surrounded how to cope with experiences that are impossible, a lot of posts that made psychosis easier to understand and help with for non-psychotic).

I do also agree that these subjects are prone to being sensationalized by young people who are trying to cope with their own problem and tend to select the most severe sounding label they can. It is an understandable impulse in the face of pain you do not yet understand, and many young alterhumans are isolated, dysphoric, and experiencing things that for a lack of a better word, makes them feel insane. I don't entirely blame them. But where the endel movement's advice would probably not hurt someone who may be in the first stages of a delusional disorder nor would it hurt someone who was not, the holothere movement has a bad habit of... relying on pain as a measurement of how animal you are. The most animal are the ones in most pain, and i see a lot of holothere having blogs full of extreme distress that they do not wish to fix as they consider "being in a human world" the source of all their pain in a way they cannot fix instead of hoping for healing.

Hope this was easy enough to understand, I am not psychiatry professional, but I thought a bit of nuance on the subject was interesting to throw in.

This 100%. I also have a psychotic disorder and it is not as shallow as a lot of others seem to think. You cannot control how it will play out, or when it will stop and start. I mentioned this in spoon's group, but one small thing can explode into a lot of big things, fast. One could think that having the delusion of being physically an animal is harmless, but in reality is not-- It could quickly either proceed to enter the territory of "well i'm an animal, so therefore I should act like one" and the person could bite others or trash things just because it feels right to them, or it could then stem off into other harmful behaviours. Example, the desire to rid of ones physical body because it no longer aligns with how they see themselves.

If you or someone else recognizes you're having a delusion, You should be getting help. You shouldn't celebrate it and dance around labels to approperiate it or make it seem like some tame thing.

I also wanted to briefly mention, the creator of the holothere label is also a horrible person, they support some horrible creators and like a lot of horrible things. And it's purely made to the publics eye, too. I worry about pups seeing this and thinking what he supports is okay, when it isn't. I won't speak of it here, as i do not intend to slander this individual (and I want to mention... do NOT go to harass them if you do your research, I do not support witchhunting or slandering).

I also wanna add, just in case, that when I made my comment about “if you were actually X, you’d just be X,” I wasn’t referring to delusion, but literal fact. As was said earlier, a lot of these people are being metaphorical when they say “physical,” but for those who are being literal, I’m here to say “you are undeniably, verifiably wrong,” because if you were, say, physically a wolf, you wouldn’t be online justifying your existence, you’d be out in the wild doing your thing. But you inhabit a human body which is why you were able to get online in the first place.