the theory of attachment- my little idea

heyo! this is a theory i had related specifically to how my own therianthropy came about, it's not something i beleive to be the explanation for all therians. however i want to know if anyone else out there feels similar.

as a little kid i was obsessed with dragons. something about dragons just made sense, from the way they behaved and sounded to the way they moved their bodies. it just clicked. i liked to draw dragons and pretend to be a dragon and was a dragon for halloween many times. i used to get in trouble for refuseing to act like a human during school, under the beleif that if i pretended to be a dragon for long enough, people would just have to accept that i was one.

furthermore i liked to get creative with dragons. i played around with the features, takeing insparation from other animals both fictional and real. i liked animals in generall and while other kids in my grade where hooked on disney movies i just couldn't get enough nature documentarys.

as time went on my love for dragons never faded, but my days of acting like one came to an end. i knew my dream of being a dragon would never be realized because i was a human. that couldn't change.

later on however, i began to feel like i was missing some peice of myself. something big and important. i questioned many things, namely gender being one of them. it was easy for me to beleive i was some sort of xenogender, mistaking speceis dysphoria for gender dysphoria and such. i discovered the existance of therianthropy from digging around the xenogender area of the internet. at first i didn't think much of it. my reaction was nothing more than "you do you, it's not for me". mere background noise. but once i considered the possibility it was pretty straightforeword. of course i'd be a dragon. i was always a dragon. this is what i've always wanted was to be able to call myself one of them.

i'm still not sure of the specifics, but i know generally what type i'd be. from the beginning i knew i'd be small. parttially domesticated. no firebreath. as a kid i already knew a lot about how i'd be as a dragon. i think of myself as being like a collage of different features with dragon as the canvas. instead of having lots of different theriotypes, i have borrowed things from lots of different creatures and compiled them into one single animal.

basically, i belive i was so attached to the idea of dragons that i became one. hence the title of this post.

thoughts? has anyone else had an experience something like this?

This is exactly what I experience! I've always loved dragons and cats sense I was little. Eventually I fell in love with Eurasian lynxes, and all the cat behaviors I had as a kid fell into place. My friend and I always pretended to be dragons, to the point of annoying our other friends. So yeah, I understand what you're saying. I've always loved dragons and cats, and now I am two dragons and a cat of sorts lol.

I honestly really like this theory! I'm not sure if it fits my therianthropy but I just think it's a good explanation of how someone could be a therian

It makes sense , I’m still questioning my theriotype so I don’t think this theory fits me but still…. I think it will help a lot of people

It also probably explains why there are so many wolf therians. Who doesn't like wolves?

I don't know if I completely agree with this. I guess it would be a possibillity because you subconsciously know that you have a deeper connection to that creature but just really loving a specific creature and always pretending to be one doesn't mean that it becomes your theriotype. At least that's how I see it. Of course this could be the case but the shifts are involuntary and uncontrolled unless you supress them. As I said, it might just be that it clicks with someone as you mentioned for yourself but some people probably misidentify themselves as a therian thanks to similar situations by being a hardcore fan of a critter. All I really want to get out is that this could be taken wrongly or something by nontherians who then identify themselves if you understand what I mean.
~Greenleaf

This fits my experience with a unicorn which I feel is like a kith type rather than theriotype. I loved unicorns and pretended to be one as a child. As an adult I have experienced occasional unicorn shifts which seem to be controlled semi-consciously. It has the feeling of a child playing pretend, as if a child inside is causing phantom sensations but I'm not controlling it consciously.

It feels like I'm reading my own notes! My history with dragons is a lot like yours, especially the part with mixing all my favorite animalistic traits into a dragon form. Idk if that's the main reason why I'm partially a dragon therian but I can see that helping others, definitely explains why there are so many wolf and cat therians, they are well-known and easy to attach to.

I think this comes down to which theory of the nature of therianthropy people ascribe to. The psycological I believe would agree with you the sprital/metaphysical ones might tell you it's the other way around, your obsessions was your therianthropy manifesting itself. For me I find this interesting to think about because given where in my journy of therianthropy I were asked about this you would get some widely differing answers and really would have fallen on either side of the previously mentioned divide.