Therian Guide: Forums

Hey all,

I've been thinking and this might be considered a somewhat controversial perspective, but...

What if Therianthropy is more of a connection than a condition?

Like, we like to think that therianthropy is something we are born with, but the more I've tried to understand my own therianthropy, the more I realised the reason I can relate to wolves, is because of a number of things I've been through in my life, that made me end up this way.

I wasn't simply born as a wolf therian, I was moulded, admittedly by forces outside my control (abuse, etc), but who I am and why I am more like a wolf than a human was something I've become through both nature and nurture.

Ultimately if anyone looked deep enough into their Therianthropy they might find that the reason for their animal traits is... that they're a person who is like that animal. You can find some of those traits (in therians) also in family members who are clearly not therians or in human cultural norms, etc.

What I'm saying is that for different reasons we as people develop traits that make us like certain animals and then that connection we have to those animals -- that is our therianthropy.


I'm not entirely sure about this. Even writing this I find I can't easily explain away my childhood therian experiences. Is it that I was in fact born a wolf therian? Or is it just the way I interpret those experiences now that I identify with wolves?

How did I become a wolf? There is nothing biological that could explain it and I don't believe in magic or souls. It does make sense that I inherited and adopted different traits that made me connect with wolves better than humans.

This has certain implications. If therianthropy is our connection with the animals, rather than some in-born trait, that means historically people who connected with animals were in a way, also therians -- and we may learn something from studying their experiences.

It also means something for polytherians, cladotherians and people who have trouble pinning down their theriotype -- our traits can be anything, it makes sense that we can find that connection with multiple animals or perhaps none. It makes considerably less sense that those therians were born as several different animals or one so illusive they cannot find it.

What about people who change theriotype at some point in their lives? Is there a force of nature that can change your species? Or is it simply that we find that connection with a different animal?

LP,
Dusty

I am personally In agreement with the "molding" theory to some degree as I believe that's what happened with me. I remember when I started feeling like a wolf. I don't know whether it appeared out of thin air one day around this time, or it had been there all along and I had just started noticing it. However I was around 8 to 9-ish years old - the same age in which I began to realize that what was going on between my parents wasn't normal, or healthy for that matter. Perhaps it's a defense mechanism of some sort?

As I said before, I believe in this theory to a degree. I certainly think that there has to be something else to it because if everyone who's experienced things outside their control ended up developing an animal defense mechanism of sorts than there'd be a lot more therians out there.

I've never been one who was onboard with the purely identity model. I've known other dissociative therians, I've known therians who were just deeply connected to a particular critter, some who believed they were dual-souled, some who believed it was all nature, all nurture, imprinting, etc.

Every one of those who had therian experiences seemed reasonable to me, and to break them down into various subcategories feels like it creates unneeded boundaries instead of unity.

I was under the impression that this principle of 'connection' was something widely recognized among therians! Oh dear!

When I first began trying to understand and describe my therianthropy I began to treat this principle of connection as something deeply fundamental to it all at a very early stage. I was using the word connection to describe my inhuman experiences as far back as the late nineties!

DustWolf Wrote:for different reasons we as people develop traits that make us like certain animals and then that connection we have to those animals -- that is our therianthropy.

This is essentially what I was trying to describe and explain! At first all I could come up with was that I felt this incredible connection with Wolves and that connection itself is what made this animal a part of who I am...

wait...what did I just say?.....

Here's where the overlap between 'experiential' therianthropy and 'identity' therianthropy comes into play. I became absolutely convinced that when one feels a connection deeply enough with a certain creature, you literally become united as one with that creature, even if only temporarily and even if it's only in your head.

That covers the experiential side of things but at what point does one decide that 'I Am X creature' and why does this happen? How does Identity and self perception factor into this weird equation we live with?

I grappled with this question for years. The best thing I have to offer as an explanation for this is an analogy based on the musical principle of Resonance. If you have two tuning forks that are matched in frequency, you only have to strike one to make the other one ring.

DustWolf Wrote:Ultimately if anyone looked deep enough into their Therianthropy they might find that the reason for their animal traits is... that they're a person who is like that animal.

That is how this therian connection thing works, in my mind. We are born or are shaped into having the ability to 'resonate' aka 'connect' with a certain creature. Oh but, what about the identity part of it?

When you have notes playing with compatible frequencies, the result is a chord. When this happens, you can no longer pick out individual notes. You experience the waveform as a single sound instead.

That is a good analogy for the identity side of therianthropy. We connect, identify and resonate with said creature so strongly, we no longer experience that as a separate entity. It is now a part of ourselves.

Thanks for posting this line of thought, Dust! I hope it continues to generate replies for a while, as it could be a good one to link up with the TG Academy somewhere!

Blayz

I agree with the molding aspect because of how I have a version of DID and my werewolf side exists outside of it as well. Whenever I get angry nowadays, I growl at someone and scare the bejeebers out of them and I get a depersonalization effect where my consciousness takes a back seat and my werewolf side comes forth if stuff gets serious.

I just wonder if there's a way to make that go away? I doubt it though, but yeah I also suffered from abuse as a child.

Humans are naturally connected to animals, some more than others. There are many ways people can feel and express these connections: regular people who love animals, animal whisperers, furries, therians, kith, shamanistic practitioners, etc. Most of the groups I listed can have altered states of consciousness, but they experience it somewhat differently.

I'm atheist with Buddhist leanings. I believe what we call the "soul" is impermanent and begins developing before birth. I think therianthropy in the modern world is most likely to be an adaptation to early trauma or autism. It looks a lot like DID/OSDD to me and there is some overlap. Some therians have DID/OSDD and may or may not know it. I don't know if anyone has ever collected statistics on the types of alters that systems have, but I'd say a sizable minority have animal-like alters.

I have asked myself why I'm here because I don't feel like a therian or a wolf. Or a human for that matter. People probably get annoyed with my dogmatic obsession with trauma psychology. The wolf was always there though, whether I felt it or believed it or not. And the "dog," too, formally known as an anger management problem. Besides all that, this is a great community.

When I came to TG saying I'm a wolf, I started to see things internally from a different perspective. I started thinking in terms of animal-logic and applying it to understand myself and solve some problems. One important thing right now is the relationship between the wolf and the "dog." The dog comes from the wolf and they are alike in some ways, but they evolved in different worlds. I found out their instincts are in conflict and it causes issues when they mesh the wrong way. It's kind of mysterious but that's the gist of it.

@Alliana, Love your werewolf instead of wishing for it to go away.

This would actually explain my case. Seeing my rather unorthodox start, my love for cats, a higher interest in various animals than humans... It's extremely likely this is a piece of the puzzle that is my therianthropy. I have thought a couple of times before that whilst I didn't have much of a non-human side in the past, I was already predisposed for therianthropy back then. That is, my chances of being a therian later was much bigger than for most people. Honestly, I can see how this could count for most, if not all therians out there.

Dusty, thank you for making this thread!
Once having it explained like this (I hadn't really given it much thought before), I definitely agree with your theory. While I know I was never a normal kid (and never will be, aha), I don't think that if I was born a dragon, wolf, and jaguar that I would just be realizing it now, within this past year. I'd think it would be something I had always inherently known. That being said, I believe that my Therianthropy is mostly the result of imprinting, maybe some moulding.

I most definitely agree with your theory! I don't believe I was "born" with the mindset of a polar bear, but it was molded into me by an interaction in my childhood, imprinted.