What Makes You Believe /You/ Are Therian?

(2023-06-26 12:22)Lupus Ferox Wrote:  

(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 mean those who are sapient, don't have to be humanoid. Just those who don't act wild or anything, that would apply to therians.

Sorry if I don't make sense. But that's what I believe.

i know im a therian because ive been a dog since i was young. a young kid hiding in the corner like a scared animal, running outside at night, and just being "abnormal" in general. its definitely partly to do with my trauma and schizophrenia, and i just feel the animal inside me, being me. i am a dog, i just am.... idk if this is just the ramblings of a mad man XD

What makes me believe that I'm therian?
The predisposition of consciousness to shifts, sometimes dog behavior, admiration for dogs and their bodies...
In fact, although I know that my therianthropy is psychological, I cannot give an answer why I have it. Until the age of 18, I thought that I was a man; after the awakening, I cannot consider myself that way. If earlier I doubted whether I was therian, now I understand that I am one. It's a part of me and it won't leave me.
It can be suppressed, it can be denied, but it is unlikely to leave us. Because it is part of each of us. And I don't know how or why she came into my life. But I am proud that I got a new path for development, a new meaning and a new impetus. A new plane where I want to evolve.

I'm not. I may have been a wolf in a previous incarnation (figurately speaking), and then my love and life was taken from me. I was rendered a disembodied spirit existing in torment. Over decades I came to realize I have to inhabit the body to "reincarnate." The body is a neural network attached to a bunch of smart machinery. Flesh and blood. I don't like it but I can live with it.

Thats really interesting!

Personally it's really hard for me to tell why i feel what i feel, but i don't think i had a past life. I have two main theories.

1. It's just how i was born. for no reason. I was just born with part of an animal in me. I experience animalistic urges and feelings that happen to match up with an animal.

2. As a child i played so many games as animals, and i grew up around pets, that eventually it just became a part of me. other things came into play like how it made me feel safe and happy, but thats the gist.

I have other small parts of theories but nothing big. I don't really personally believe my therianthropy was really caused by anything, its just how i am.

(2023-06-07 15:05)indoraptor Wrote:  So … perhaps I am in a minority here, but — I do not think there is any one explanation for therianthropy, just like I do not think there is any one explanation for sexuality, or gender identity, or any other such individual facet of one’s self. We experience and are influenced by so many different things, perspectives, & people throughout our lives; I find it reductive to attribute any one thing about yourself to any one other thing about your life. Reality, and personality, just doesn’t work like that.

That is not to say there’s no place for theory! There’s tons of space for theory. And I’d like to invite you all to tell me why you think you are therianthropic.

For me, I openly attribute isolation from, lack of socialization with, and trauma caused by humans from an early age to me identifying as & seeking community with other nonhumans. All of these things are related to my autism and PTSD, but I would not consider those the source of my therianthropy; rather, I consider them external factors that led me to discovering my therianthropy.

My therianthropy itself, I feel, is more psychological than spiritual, yes — but I also feel that it is innate. I can’t tell you why I feel, think, and do some of the things that I do; whether I was predisposed from birth to be this way, or if I would have been different had I been a happier child — but I’m inclined to think that, whatever it is, it was Always inside of me, inside of my brain, my heart, what many would call my ‘soul.’

My two-spirit identity also ties into this. Rather than a human male and human female spirit, I feel a vague, ambiguous animal spirit & an even vaguer and more ambiguous human spirit live inside of me.

That said — those are just my influences and self-interpretations!

What are yours?

My soul feels like one of my theriotypes, but I also believe I developed therianthropy as a young child, due to abuse and neglect. I only felt safe around my cats when I was younger, and I think that’s how it came about. Now, I feel much more spiritual, but that is subject to change.

I want to answer this, but I don’t want to go into a lot of detail right now. But I believe mine is caused by several things- most of it is related to subconscious coping. The earliest reason I’d think of is being lonely as a child and not having many friends, and using animals, escapism, and imaginary friends to cope. I believe it had a part in causing my alterhumanity, as well as my neurodivergence and general “differentness”. I believe it also may have been caused as a way to subconsciously deal with trauma and stress. I also use escapism to cope and watch and play a lot of media, and I think it may have had a part in it, as I have a lot of fictionkintypes and fictionflickers.
I also believed I was a system for over a year, and some of my ‘alters’ stuck as kintypes, which I think could’ve been accidental copinglinks.

When your spirit guide more or less clobbers you over the head and says "this is what you are." You kind of take note.

I really want to say and believe it was isolation, as when I found myself suddenly alone in middleschool it left a trace in my psyche till this day. I want to say it was to deal with that, that I was weird on my own but my brain created an 'animal persona' so that my incompatability would be explainable. But I acted like this before middleschool. I acted like a dog since at least 7yo, that's the furthest I can remember. It was never big, a few things here and there, nothing to get anyone concerned. But it was always there. So now I have nothing else to say except I was born like this, still connected to my past life somehow.

I feel like that my theriothropy comes from being introduced to nature at a very young age, which makes nature have a special part in my heart. As a kid, I went to a unique school that focused a lot on nature and teaching kids about it, and I was encouraged to roll around in mud and generally be a weirdo.

Thing is, when I transferred to public school, I had realized that the connection I had to nature had been something I took for granted, and didn't fully appreciate it. I felt lonely without trees always surrounding me. I hated being with large groups of kids who talked weirdly and smelled like chemicals, and being forced into tiny, brick walled classrooms.

I feel like theriothropy is something that helps soothe the loneliness I felt and feel, and it gives me peace of mind to know that I will always be part of nature, despite trying to use toilets that were covered in vandalism and dealing with people constantly telling me my handwriting is chicken scratch