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Hello
Recently I’ve been looking into therianthropy. I heard of this term a few years ago and decided not to look into it as I was struggling with my identity being LGBTQ+.
Now I’m coming back to it and questioning if I am therian - at this point I believe I am, my theriotype is a grey wolf - yes I can hear the eye rolls already this is super original I know - and I have been trying to involve myself in the community.
What I’ve been finding a lot is that I can’t relate to many of the therians I talk to and read about, I believe this to be because my therianthropy is miniscule if not non-existent on a physical level. By this I mean my therianthropy is almost entirely mental and I cannot find anyone who feels the same way to talk too.
When I think of my wolf I imagine I am that animal, looking through their eyes in a forest or through snow or wherever I decide they are. They are not a part of my human body in any way. They are completely separate from reality.
I don’t want to practise quadrobics or wear a mask because I feel that this creature I relate too inside of me belongs inside, however if i do present it physically (which I don’t do often) - that being through minor vocals or wearing specific clothes - I must be completely alone, I don’t feel a need to show or tell anyone around me that I identify as a therian because of how personal it is to me.
I feel my experience with shifting is minimal compared to the rest of the community - the version of my wolf or myself in my head does not translate well to a human body, if I have the senses and touch of a human I cannot imagine or feel a phantom shift with ears or tail.
The reason why I feel I identify with a grey wolf is because they are an animal I felt challenged by for so long - I felt artistically challenged which may sound stupid, but not being able to recreate an animal i cared so deeply about brought down my confidence for years - as well as believing I was not the right person for the animal - again sounds stupid - but I felt like I wasn’t aloud to relate to these animals because people wouldn’t see me as one.
I have not just seen the ‘on all levels except physical I am a wolf’ meme and thought haha same but it's taken me a long time to think things out and question it. Writing it out here is really helping. I often put of thinking about it and just saying - I know I’m a therian it’s fine - without trying to understand it
I know this sounds very me me me but I wanted to say this first before my thoughts on the therian community.
Looking at the therian community through discord, social media posts, tiktok and the minimal amount posted to fanfiction sites I’ve noticed a common theme - You can identify as absolutely anything real, fiction, mythical, character, anything - but if you stray outside the norms of how you identify you get alienated or pushed into the cycle of,
“Many people feel this way you’re not alone! Will you find anyone who feels like this? NO”
People in this community are very happy with sorting themselves into categories and personally I do think this is a great thing when questioning something as complex as your own identity. But I think this makes people very afraid to step outside these categories where they do not have the stability of certainty.
I found this a number of times when I would be talking online to a therian and asking about their own experiences as well as things they had heard from other people - the repetition of the phrase ‘I’ve heard some people identify as XXXX but I identify as YYYY’ really gave the impression that this community is honestly quite self centred - which it should be for what it is - however there is no stepping back into the unknown once you understand how you identify. This makes the community feel quite isolating, it feels hard to get your thoughts across if you do you, you’re sent back to ‘I relate to that but with YYYY’
My point is the community can be very exclusive, and it hurts to not be included in a community of people who are supposedly the same as you.
I’m going to stop here for now because I am very tired - more detail on shifts next time...