What Makes You Believe /You/ Are Therian?

Well, to put it simply, saying ’I am human’ just never felt 100% right. Like, ever.

I’ve felt feline for as long as I can remember; as a child, I used to act out these feelings constantly, and although I’ve gotten better at controlling my instincts as I’ve gotten older, the feeling still hasn’t left.

I also felt a strong, strong sense of recognition when I’d first discovered therianthropy (although I was initially very skeptical of it). It was like something had finally clicked, I had an explanation for why I behaved in these ways. I can look at the leopard and serval and confidently say ’that is me’ and feel like I mean it. Other than our physical form, there is little to no difference most days between me and them. And whether I have a label or not, this is what I am and I can feel secure in that.

It's hard to say exactly what makes me feel this way, but I've always known I wasn't exactly like everyone else. I've always found greater comfort in animals or anything to do with animals. Everytime I played a game, I had to be something to do with animals. Toys? Always animals. Now I realize that maybe I was showing signs of being a therian before I even knew what it was. And as I got older, the traits never really faded. I mean, sure, they were a little more mature, but they were still there. And even now, they're still around, along with some of my traits that do connect to therianthropy. It may not make me 100% sure, but it makes me confident in my identity.

(2025-09-22 14:28)WereKitty Wrote:  Well, to put it simply, saying ’I am human’ just never felt 100% right. Like, ever.

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I agree with OP about the complexity of identity. For me there's a lot of complexity with this question, as I'm a firm believer that every facet of one's identity is influenced by multiple of both outer and inner factors, ranging from one's upbringing and their stage of life to mental illness and other identity features. My identity as a fox has equal chance of being independent of anything else and a certainty no matter what just as much as it has a chance of being caused by my childhood pets, the media I grew up with and their portrayals of the species, or even the fact that foxes were the first uncommon wild animal I saw in person. The general being a therian is the same way for me, where it's hard to pin down one specific thing that I could point to as a cause or influence.

One big factor I often think of, though, is my autism and anxiety combo. Foxes are small/medium predators that are extremely flighty and skittish, as I am. My behaviors, my mannerisms, they all would be completely normal were I in the body of a fox or some other similar species. Often times, people only need a reminder of a nudge to connect the dots and associate me with foxes. My own family and mate have made connections where I hadn't yet, such as my body language and vocalizations I make when I'm not masking around them. Things that are instinctual and normal to me give others a specific impression in such a way that they think of an animal like the kind I secretly identify as before they think of my known mental conditions.

Of course, I say this with the knowledge it looks like I'm just being an autistic wildlife lover, but I also don't see everyone else like this identifying differently. I've met a number of other wildlifers in college, in online spaces, and in person, and it's rare for them to identify or even see themselves as another species. In these groups, I've only met a handful of furries, which makes me think it's not even for a lack of the right words to describe it. I also have looked into autism and anxiety and the different ways it shows and affects those with it (to better learn about myself) and there's a number of things I do that don't fit. Whether that's therianthropy or more research needing to be done to better understand autistic individuals, I don't know, but I think all of this put together paints the picture of my autism and therianthropy overlapping, but being separate things.

All this to say that from a wholly practical standpoint, ignoring spiritual theories, I do think my therianthropy is in some way innate and a part of my core self and its own thing. If it isn't, then it's most likely an offshoot of my autism, even though a good chunk of it doesn't align with that theory.

Focusing on the spiritual side of things, I personally feel this innate therianthropy of mine is my soul being that of a fox's. How exactly a fox soul got into a human body, I doubt I'll ever know. I don't think it's anything to do with past lives, I personally don't have any memories and don't think I ever will, if I even have past lives at all. I also don't discern or feel any difference in the human and animal parts of my core self, if I even have both and am not simply a fox that knows how to be human, so I don't think it's me having both a human and animal soul either. My therianthropy is also just too long-term and innate to my core self to be a walk-in (and my earlier point about not feeling any kind of separation between them). I haven't really heard or thought of any possibilities to explain how I got this way spiritually other than my soul simply being an animal's.

I think I relate a lot to what @WereKitty said in that I cannot, in good faith, have ever called myself human. I remember being 7 maybe? Curling up like a dog, actually hating the length of my hind legs because they didn't tuck neatly into my body. I can't even deny that I experienced honest to gd species dysphoria as a pup, and I didn't even have the words to explain it back then, but that was most of the reason why I didn't verbalize it until I was an adult really. I've experienced strong, unrelenting, sometimes euphoric shifts throughout my life, and feelings like those don't just come from nowhere. I feel strongly that I am just innately a wolf, however non-literal that needs to be for someone else to understand it. I feel so strongly that I cannot really ignore it. I would legitimately struggle to do so, much in the way that I would struggle to just ignore other integral parts of my identity.

Well I guess I came to the conclusion that I was never 100% human, and that’s what feels right to me.
I don’t think my younger self realised that I was an animal, but I definitely showed it in different ways. Anything that wasn’t human I clung to. Anything that just involved animals fascinated me, and I felt a longing towards being different in this life.

But perhaps I don’t exactly know why I’m a therian. Maybe it’s just something we’re born with, like a different way of thinking.
Personally, I think as a therian I can help protect the beautiful nature around us, it’s apart of me and I feel extremely set to protect it.