What Makes You Believe /You/ Are Therian?

(2023-06-09 18:14)PrimatewithCoffee Wrote:  … when I pondered on why God made me a Therian, why did He make me feel so other-human? It's because I believe I have a purpose that isn't so defined yet. But to be a healer, a changer in people's lives. I have seen my actions, both good and bad, affect those who need it the most. It's an odd thing to think of, and it goes deeper. I'm not putting myself on a pedestal either. But I believe that my detachment from the human world is part of my purpose, to not be tied too deeply in earthly thinking so that I may have an outer perspective of things. To be Therian is to have that sense, but to also have an understanding of animals more deeply than those not spiritually, religiously - or whatever you would call it - intuned with the universe. Of course, it's not to dismiss my human form, I recognize that I'm permanently stuck with earthly issues, inside and out.

Though that's what I think of when I wonder why God made me the way that I am, and will continue to do so until I pass. That's why I believe I am a therian, I have this unexplainable purpose that ties into my therianthropy. Perhaps my trauma, my condition, is just what ushers that destined purpose. What if I didn't have trauma? Or autism? Or the past that I have? Would I have experienced divinity from deities or understood the world in a more open way?

This is one of the most beautiful, thought-provoking replies I’ve gotten to Any of my posts. Detachment as purpose, healing as progress, therian as counterpart — even friend — to humans and other nonhuman alike.

I am ‘Niish Manidoowag’ — in my paternal culture, we 2-spirits are chosen as healers and scholars, assigned greater purpose and connection to man and woman alike, to man and nature, to living and dead, to beasts like & unlike ourselves … a sense of grounded, definite Reason for existing the way that we do. Being the way that we are. It’s not dissimilar to what you describe feeling, and I find it lovely that, from two entirely different walks of life, we’ve come away with such specific spiritual parallels (for lack of a better turn of phrase).

Now I'm not a therian but I'm still kin and non-human so I think that I can answer this as well.

I feel as though my non-humanness has always been with me my whole life. When I was a kid I would act out more animalistically than my peers. Then around puberty I experienced early signs of species dysphoria. I'm not a spiritual creature in the slightest. I don't believe in spirits, souls, gods, afterlife. Any of that. It is purely psychological for me. There's something "wrong" with my brain and its wiring. Now I am autistic. Which some might say that's the reason why but I think that it's more of a correlation and not a causation for my non-humanness. They're connected slightly in a way for me but me being autistic did not cause my otherkinity. I think that if I were to explain it to someone who was non-kin I would mention me being autistic because they might understand that but again, it's more of a correlational thing. Not something that caused it. I only know how my brain works. No one else knows what I'm feeling nor thinking but I know that I'm not human.

So overall, for me, it's purely a psychological identity that probably resulted from general brain wiring and the disconnections from society and societal "norms" as a child. Aspects such as species dysphoria also probably caused me to identify this way because why else would I feel as though my species and my body feels inherently wrong. So me being kin just makes sense to me. It's the best way to describe my animalistic nature, my cravings, and my dysphoria.

Belief in my therianthropy is based on my past.

I regularly question my therianthropy. Ever since the "click" in my mind at the age of 13, my animal side has been going away and back, sometimes with renewed vigor. There was a period of 2 years when it did not return at all. Most likely it was due to global changes in my life.
I don’t know how much this is connected (and whether it is connected at all), but when in 2020 I suffered a form of covid, the species dysphoria returned, introducing new shifts, and the wolf was firmly entrenched in my mind and has not left me since then.

Back to the question:
What Makes You Believe You Are Therian? That my beast always comes back.

It's hard to pinpoint it for me, I know that it was definitely there from the start. Lots of childhood stories, so far back that I only know them because my mom told me.

I was always interested in animals, humans not so much. Learned to walk first and switched to crawling afterwards. Animals were drawn to me as well, even the ones that didn't trust people or kids normally.

I remember having a facination about animals and everything they did. Would often imitate it to understand it and I just didn't see myself in humans. They just kind of were there and did stupid stuff I didn't care about.

Since my childhood was a disaster I eventually ended in an escapism phase that had to do with a nonhuman identity. This got me wrongfully diagnosed with autism and with that everything got even more hellish. So I ended blaming myself for it and pushed everything remotely weird away. It caught up to me eventually though...This simply is what it is. Odd animal behaviours, a draw to ferrets that didn't feel like a favorite animal. Eventually I started googling.

I was blissfully unaware of the obvious dog stuff, partially due to Cletus being canine. With the answer to my theriotype questioning came a lot of childhood memories that were completely buried. And I'm glad that I finally was able to deal with them. It's like I have my soul back to be honest.

This doesn't really explain why I'm a therian exactly. Maybe it's brain stuff, maybe it's spiritual, in the end only nature knows that one. I just know that the experiences are real in some way. Whether it's mental-shifts, any interaction with dogs or ferrets that ends up teaching me something about myself. Or even just getting awfully emotional from looking at the stars. It's all the proof it needs for me.

(My diagnosis ended up being PTSD as well, so same boat there.)

I can't really effectively explain my reasons for feeling the way I do because, quite frankly, I am not sure of how I feel anyway.
Is it merely a psychological hiccup? Am I perhaps compensating because I feel different from most others? Do I assume I am therian because I don't understand myself or how humans really are? There are far more questions and uncertainties than there are actual answers and it is like there are two sides of my mind battling one another; waffling between 'I am a demonkin/demon therian' and 'This is silly, I am just a simple, introverted human who is still trying to figure out who she is.'.

This is not meant to insult anyone but merely trying to put into words how I feel albeit rather poorly.
Maybe I have -perhaps temporarily- adopted therian because I was always different from others; even as a kid I assumed that the other kids around me were aware of the same things as I was or had a similar horizon but I realized they did not.

I really don't know and sometimes I wish I had a more solid concept of my nature and how far it goes then thee are times I just wanna shrug and say 'What does it matter? I try my best each day to get along and that is what matters.'.

I don't know...all I know is right now I am tired and need to go to bed soon.

In general, is it usual for us to not know what we feel? I agree to the battling going in my head, as well as to my therianthropy being based on my past. Cheers to the people who wrote this.

I believe that my past experiences, especially with my m-shifts of my werewolf side have led me to believe I am a werewolf therian. I am also dissociative with it and I feel this way because of how I perceive myself. That and when I see werewolf movies or literature, I just go: "OMG That's me!". For Jaguar therioside, it's the same deal here, it just clicked. Now people here probably think I am a werewolf therian because they are so big and bad. But really, I would rather not be one because of the strong m-shifts when I get stressed, plus the whole wanting to eat others which is prominent in werewolf movies.

You are probably wondering why I don't call myself otherkin because of my mythical werewolf side. The reason is: I believe that animals that are wild or feral are akin to therianthropy. The beastly side of it. Otherkin beings to me are like elves and dragons for instance that have a community. In other words, not really wild or feral, but just used as an example.

But yeah, that is why.

Therianthropy just seems to be the best label I have. My internal self image has always been nonhuman to some degree. Not always consistant on species but always there and impossible to ignore. It describes my experiences with feeling and behaving in an animalistic way, which started from young enough that I can't remember feeling any differently.

Idk where it came from, or why I'm like this, and there's definitely been experiences in my life that have both contributed to it and subdued it. It's something that seems to have been there from the start in some way, but also developed into what it is now by things outside my control.

(2023-06-24 5:44)Alliana Wrote:  Otherkin beings to me are like elves and dragons for instance that have a community.

What do you mean, humanoids?

I don't think I'm otherkin, in fact, I don't think I know what it all entails.

Therianthropy seems more familiar to me. There was a certain click with wolves I didn't understand at first, yet it did change the whole outlook on life from that point on. There wasn't even a name for it at the time, even though I knew about the lycanthropy as seen in movies but didn't expect there would be other individuals who had similar experiences like my own. Revelation, the moment I entered "real werewolves" on the internet! I don't think therianthropy just goes poof, and it's there, like so many young are inclined to believe. You don't go about saying you're a wolf or anything else the moment or after you enter your query. Therianthropy to me nowadays, is just like an additional fragment existing in the back of my mind and not paid much attention to. I just know that looking up wolves or seeing them by accident triggers homesickness and longing. They can even make me happy in some cases. It varies depending on what's happened during the day and moment. Aside from that, I am practically emotionally constipated as is.

(2023-06-07 15:05)indoraptor Wrote:  but I would not consider those the source of my therianthropy; rather, I consider them external factors that led me to discovering my therianthropy.

I believe that my therian identity has spiritual roots and a psychological stem.

As an autistic kid, I was often put to the side in human settings, so I spent a lot of time with animals. Additionally, I often felt that whenever I showed emotion, I was treated like a wild animal rather than a person. As a result, I preferred the company of animals and felt more like an animal. I don't think these things originated my therian identity, but I think they made me more likely to realize it later on.
In short, I think this was always a part of me, but I might not have fully realized it if it weren't for the factors that made me feel so fundamentally different.

In that sense, my animal soul is the root and my life experiences are the stem that allowed my therian identity to grow from it. In the absence of either, the flower wouldn't have ever come to be ^^