Staff Identification
Here on TG, we make it easy to identify staff. All staff members will have an underlined name. No other role uses this underline so it is very clear to see. On the Discord, we appear as Staff on the member side bar, but you can also check in the Meet the Staff channel under Introductions.

I had a feeling for a while that was non-human and was searching to work out what that was. I came across TG and the descriptions of therianthropy appeared to fit what I was experiencing very closely. I would say I *knew* I was a therian when I joined the site/discord and talked to other people here and related very closely with other people's experiences.

Might not work for everyone since there are many unique types out there but just existing in the group and seeing if you fit in is a reasonable indicator most of the time. As long as you stay critical and skeptical!

My story on why is somewhat complicated. I kind of have more of a set of nonhuman "parts" to my soul/spirit/whatever name you prefer to call it. Part being vampire, part lynx, and part fox. Those are the ones I know of currently. There may be more but it's been pretty stable since I found the vampire part recently. I think my soul partially originated in a separate/parallel plane of existence to this one, which is where the vampire part of my soul is from. It's relatively similar to this one, tbh. The vampire part of me knows I was once at least partly a human-shaped soul too (before being turned in said reality). The animal parts originated from here though, I believe. I also have psychological basis for identifying as nonhuman, being autistic and drawn more to animals or other beings than humanity. That and having trauma from my bipolar disorder.

i have an "all of the above" kind of ordeal XD

im autistic and always had a special interest on animals, and feeling more empathy torwards animals than humans is common for autistic people. i never liked talking and didnt understand social cues, and animals dont have any of that stuff so it was just easier. pair that with imprinting from being raised with dogs, then trauma from being bullied and treated as if i wasnt a person due to my disability added more to it animals felt more like family than family did, and the lifestyles of a wild animal just make more sense. i dont understand society

its also spiritual !! maybe those spiritual beliefs came from the psychological stuff but honestly i feel like i wouldve had the same beliefs either way ;p not sure what i think about past lives, but i used to really believe in them when i was younger. i just know i am anything but human in this one. its not much of a "i was meant to be born an animal" but more of "i am an animal and people cant know". i just dont seem like one physically. sometimes i like to think i am the way i am and not an animal physically so i can advocate for the animals that cant speak like i can. also to make art :3

this is a really interesting conversation 2 have !!

The older I get, the more distant I become, f.ex. to let anyone enter my world. I don't trust people all that much. Throughout the years, they've been judging and telling me how I should live my life as though I can't make those decisions myself. Through observations they've made on me, I got the impression that they don't see me as quite a whole person, a person who has rights, desires, needs... At times, I feel like I'm not even trying anymore to make my opinion known. Who'll understand? Who will take me for full?
Something quite personal happened recently which proved that they don't have the slightest clue what's wrong with me. As far as I'm concerned, they are just gambling with my life and taking my support away without asking what my needs are nowadays. Right now, I just happen to suck it up and live with it anyway, but I'm well aware life could have been better if they'd just let things be the way they were. In this society, I'm reminded over and over again that I'm neurodiverse, need support, can't decide for myself how I can fill in my life to the best of my ability etc. etc. It makes me feel like I can't do anything right, you know, like I'm being blamed for being disabled, that I'm faulted and flawed. It's suppression, really. It's discrimination. And if you look at how society marginalizes and discriminates smaller groups of individuals that don't fit their idea of just, I can't say that that comes much as a surprise there. If there was just a little sentiment of sympathy in their systems, they would have asked me for what I needed instead of GUESSING. I don't like smart-asses -excuse the language- who believe they know what's right for me without doing inquiries. Specifically when they go over financial support, I think it's very important that, if they want to do adjustments, they ask the parties involved what those parties actually need. I dislike slip of the finger work. This is just one of the couple of examples I've got that prove that they haven't got the slightest clue who or what they're working with. All my life, they have jeered at me, made fun of me and tried to put me on the sideline. Quite frankly, I'm done with that kind of treatment.
As to the question asked, I'm not quite misanthropic, but I have my moments where I loathe my humanity and want it to be gone. I can be very embarrassed when I hear the news and ask myself a lot if that's the species I really want to identify with, if I could. But nah, thank you very much.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm still mad over it. After all that's happened so far, that doesn't come as a surprise much.

(2025-01-23 1:32)UniqueUsernameTADA Wrote:  I don't believe in souls, and I don't believe that we are born therians. Some of us may be predisposed to therianthropy, but it is not guaranteed to develop. So what does it take to become one? I see two main ingredients necessary for therianthropy to develop. Those being a connection to an animal, and a disconnect from oneself. The connection can come from a variety of places. People prone to special interests and hyperfixations are far more likely to have this connection. The same goes for people with pets, especially those who had a deep bond with the animal, potentially due to trauma. The disconnect from yourself or reality seems to have several common causes. The first of which is being transgender, which causes you to be uncomfortable in your body and life. Another one is being neurodivergent, which causes you to feel out of place in the world. Trauma and dissociation are very common causes as well, but it can be from anything really. When someone feels disconnected from the world, they will latch onto the animal that they feel connected to for a sense of security and identity. They will begin to project themselves onto the animal, then they will eventually see themselves as the animal. I feel that this recipe for therianthropy explains why so many therians are neurodivergent, mentally ill, and LGBT.
My experience certainly falls under this pattern. I had a special interest in animals from around the age of three, maybe younger. I would play pretend as an animal as much as I possibly could, and learned all that I could about them. Once I started school, I couldn't act like an animal visibly anymore. The school environment was incredibly overstimulating and overwhelming, so I dissociated frequently. I spent hours every single day at school zoned out. While I was dissociating, I engaged in maladaptive daydreaming. In these daydreams I would imagine myself and everyone around me as an animal. I never saw myself as a human, not even once. I wanted to be someone else and somewhere else, and being an animal was my escape. Eventually, this pretending wasn't pretending anymore. I really did see myself as an animal on the inside. That has never gone away.

well I have to slightly dissagree my earliest memories are from being 1 and a half and I still remember havig dysphoria and dissconnection from humans mainly because they looked at me as if I was a trheat or treated me like a ghost so unless I imprinted all of these wolf behaviors when I was a 1 year old or less I find it unlikely I also remember that unlike most kids aka the normal ones I didn't cry or scream when another animal was eatean by another I just saw it as part of life so to speak I also vaguely supressing my animal side because I knew it wouldn't be precived as normal just so you know I don't remember all the stuff that happened just the ones my brain demed important and my meomeries from early puphood are more like a straight line wiouthout dates upantyl the point where I go to school and even then they might be slightly incomplet because I was a pup that generally while very observabt was focused on 4 things mum my dog Fluffy this one horse on therapy and other people's emotions everything else be damned lol

I found myself to be a misanthrope long before I discovered theranthropy. Humans have a cruleness that goes beyond nature. Yes there are other highly intelligent animals that do hunt and kill for sport but nothing on the scale of humans.

Years ago I cam across a quote by aristottle "The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god...” this spoke to me deeply as a lost teen who had been abused and traumatised like so many other creatures are. I think that's when I rejected humanity and opened myself up to finding what I really was. Even now I heavily reject the notion of being human even if my body is. Humans after all and weather they like it or not are still animals.
On that statement alone I would say theranthropy is connected, without one I wouldn't have found the other. Due to my ingrained fear of people I have adapted better to being my kintype because I know spiritually and psychologicaly im not human

I dont really understand why someone would find out their identity and name it something else. Thats like deciding that your left hand is now called Bob and only referring to your left hand as bob, it doesn't make sence.

However if they mean finding your spiritual name, that's different. We all have our standred name, the one given by parents that's written on paper work etc, but that doesn't always say who we really are. I suppose the modern equivalent is having a user name or gamer tag, but the same could be used for a spiritual name. Something we identify with that describes who we are as an individual. Some cultures have secondary naming ceremonies for this reason. Perhaps that's what people are trying to do when they awaken as therians?

Odd, I remember replying to this thread already... Or maybe it was another thread similar to this one.

Regardless, I don't really see this being the case for me personally. Nothing really happened to me prior to me showing the first signs, and while I do feel disconnected from myself, that came later on due to life circumstances. In fact, this disconnect contributed more to me not realizing I'm a therian, not to me being a therian. I also think being born with a predisposition for therianthropy in this case is pretty much just saying one is being born as a therian, but with extra steps. If one is a therian and goes their entire life without finding out, they're still a therian. There will always be at least some signs.

If I were to apply this logic to myself, I'd be a cat. I grew up around them, was pretty much raised by them when nobody else wanted to pay attention to me, and they're extremely imprinted onto me. I see myself in them, but not as a member of their species. I see myself as a member of their family. I'm cat otherhearted through and through.

It's also worth mentioning I used to despise most canines for the majority of my life. I only stopped when I figured out I was a therian, and a canid for that matter. I hated it, but what can you do. Sometimes I feel like it was a punishment or a lesson, but I don't really believe in that stuff.

I also remember mentioning a couple of times that my dad and me share quite a few canine traits. How he described himself when he was younger sounds an awful lot like me. When I told him about my therianthropy he wasn't surprised. Who knows.

Special interests being a major factor is a theory I share. Atleast in the cases where it starts early and the animal seldom if ever changes. Sometimes therianthropy itself might be a special interest and that could be how some people end up with lots of theriotypes?
If you were to discount autistic special interests or general obsessive tendencies (with or without autism), and only include cases where that isn't a factor. I think our numbers would shrink significantly.
I know it's a factor for me for sure, it would explain why I have two types that on the face of it are very different to eachother. The commonality there is lifelong or near lifelong passions. I am my passions, like a patchwork quilt of spinterests past.

People with this tendency are prone to social isolation and bullying especially in adolescence. And those interests are comforting and provide a reliable source of company during a miserable time. I hated being a teenager (and being a younger kid was a mixed bag too). I wasn't cool, I got picked on, didn't go to parties, I had anxiety with knobs on, home life was hell. Escapism is enticing. I have all the time in the world to throw myself into my passions and watch sealife documentaries and mermaid films and imagine being there. I can retreat into reading ape articles, collect figurines and make up fictional worlds about talking apes with a bonobo as self insert.

This is as good a recipe for a therian or otherkin as any. Autistic tendencies + interests + environmental adversity and isolation. Tried and tested formula.