(2020-01-28 10:38)DustWolf Wrote:  When I first experienced my dream shifts and my animality, I had no idea it was how wolves behaved. Knowing this is what makes me so confident that I am a wolf therian, because I know that my mind could not have been biased towards that conclusion at the time.

LP,
Dusty

You took the words straight out of my mouth.

I see doing research as one of the unusual and extremely harmful practices originating from Tumblr.

Exposing yourself to facts about animals is only going to make you biased and make it more difficult for you to understand your own feelings. We are all capable of the empathy, to feel something we think another creature might, it is a normal part of our humanity.

If you regularly "research" and expose yourself to facts about different animals, you are always going to feel like you relate to some of it every time, making you increasingly confused about your theriotype. The information might inspire you to have dreams or phantom shifts, or it may enable you to relate to the animal in daily life, all of which can happen independently of your therianthropy. It may make it difficult for you to differentiate from your actual therian experiences and the bias that you've accumulated while "researching" different animals.


The correct approach to determining your theriotype is based off of your experiences. It might be a good idea to avoid materials on the behaviour of animals, so that you reduce the likelihood that you are going to be biased and affected by empathy towards an animal.

When I first experienced my dream shifts and my animality, I had no idea it was how wolves behaved. Knowing this is what makes me so confident that I am a wolf therian, because I know that my mind could not have been biased towards that conclusion at the time.

LP,
Dusty

I didn't do research with the intent of checking my theriotype fits because there's too much of a risk of confirmation bias. What research I have done has been out of curiosity and a passion for primatology. That research did make the feelings stronger because very little of what I read surprises me and a lot of it makes sense to me personally. Therianthropic feelings are there with or without intensive research. I also have to factor in my personality as a human and the fact that bonobo personalities vary greatly and you could use the same test on one that us therians use on ourselves and find anomalies.

I don't need to do any mermaid research because they don't exist and there are a multitude of different types of mermaid. There's no mermaid criteria, it's too personal to quantify like that.

I do have some experience with tulpas- Back in...2012, I believe, I tried to create my own tulpa. I spent weeks doing research out of fascination, which eventually led to a few months of actually bringing my tulpa "to life". The experience was, in all honesty, a bit overwhelming because of how new it was to me. But I kept my tulpa around for a year or two until I just kind of stopped paying attention to it.
Anyhow.

Very informative and thought-provoking, what you have posted. Thank you for this intro thread.

I never bothered with research. I just had my experiences and feelings that have persisted as long as I can remember. They were fairly obvious. Later, I learned all I could about bears but before I knew my inner feelings I didn't do any special research.

I see it as studying animal behavior, features, and even mythology. Every once in a while I look something up about wolves but I didn't have to do a ton of research to confirm that I was one. For at least 5 years now I've had lupine characteristics. When I first joined the therian community the idea that one had to research and question their theriotypes was pushed onto me so heavily that I dropped the wolf identity for a different animal, which at the time I was absolutely sure beyond a doubt was correct. I used to think I was an albatross and a fox, and I was always having an internal battle with myself of whether or not my experiences were valid. Turns out, they weren't. I made the identity up. When I started thinking of myself as lupine again, the internal battle was gone. It was just silence in my head, because I knew that it was correct. It just felt right.

My point is, I didn't really need to do much research to know that I was a wolf. In fact, it just threw me off even more. I think that it was partially my fault though, as I trusted the outside facts more than my internal gut instinct.

"Doing research" just means putting my experiences in a logical row. Kinda like what I'm doing with my journal, now. I wanted to figure out what therianthropy meant to me, how it started, looking to my journey, seeing how my therianthropy affected me. My research is looking for the entirety of the story, both of my therianthropy and behind my therianthropy. It's mostly a great deal of using what I've learned and comparing that with my experiences. It involves a lot of introspection.

This came up during a conversation on how to discover kintypes in the shoutbox, I believe. For that, it was relatively simple. My theriotype was less of a part in my therianthropic journey. I have done purring, and I have done some roaring. I've "seen" myself with saberteeth. Those were cues of a variety of cats. I've tried using it for research, but that was futile. In the end, it always ended as a research of what animal I resonate most with, inside.

I don't do research.

My draconity manifested when I was a child by factors that I cannot remember, and it stuck with me since then as well as into adult life, my current day to day.

I have *tried* to research and compare my experiences to more rational animals, but it does not compare to how I experience my draconity, thus, lying to myself in such a way is pointless.

I do experience some fluidity between lizard and dragon though, and there are certain situasions where one will be more dominant than the other.

All in all my experiences are based on feelings, desires, species dysphoria, and animality.

On a topic coffeebear had mentioned in the shout box I would like to create a little thread for it.

( staff feel free to move this thread, I am not quite sure where to put this )

What does “ doing research “ mean ?


To me it means reflecting upon past events, noting down behaviour and things you have or would have with your kintypes and further learning about them ( books, documentaries, pictures, even news articles )

Wow this is very helpful Eli, thank you so much for making this thread. I've been trying to find a straightforward answer to what these things are for months! I'm definitely going to have to do more research, especially on the different totem animals. I strongly suspect mine has, or at least had something to do with a salamander.