My Therianthropy

Because identity can be fluid, therianthropy is usually also a fluid experience. While for some it may be a constant state of experience and being, to others, like me, the state changes overtime. Therefore I know that my current experience is most likely indefinite, and things may change in the future. This bit of text, however, describes my therianthropy as I currently experience it, how I believe I came to be this way, and what I have experienced in the past.

For as long as I can remember, I have considered myself a being of nature. As a child I already felt a great distance between me and the rest of humanity. I did not define myself with the body I lived in. Back then I still had the freedom to see myself as something different than just a plain human. Even then my greatest connections lay in nature. I associated myself more with nature than anything else, and found myself having trouble understanding the humans around me. Unlike a lot of other therians, I did not grow up watching a lot of content of my theriotypes. I was also scared of dogs for a long time due to the unpredictability of their loud barks, which barricaded me from getting to know canines at the beginning of my life. But during recess I would chase after my friends and tried running on all fours. I'd claim territory in the small bits of woods nearby. It was only after I met a new friend that I learned to associate these experiences with the wolf. While my own obsession was directed at tigers, the wolf was just always there in the background, somehow being a part of me. Having found someone who had the same urges was amazing. During my teenage years we lost contact, and I felt depressed and had social anxiety as I tried my utter best to fit in with the rest of the people. After those long years, we finally regained contact, and it was in this time (2016-2019) that I would actively identify as a wolf, yet still not knowing about the therian community.

In July 2019, I found the therian community after searching the internet for people who had the same experiences as I did. The experiences of a wolf, or any animal for that matter. It's then that I discovered the therian community, and it didn't take me long before I decided to define my animalistic experiences with that term. I am a wolf therian, more specifically a black phase wolf. I enjoyed doing research about the community and its terms, because I liked how people had categorized and made terms for the things I experienced. The therians I met in real life were exactly like me, and this was incredibly beneficial to my mental health. During that time I remember telling my mother "All my life I thought I was the only one who looked at the world the way I did, but now I'm finally sure that's not the case."

Whether I identify as human or not is something that often fluctuates. To me it feels like my wolf self is mixed with my human self, and sometimes either the wolf or the human is more dominant. My existence is filled with behaviors, urges, instincts, and personality traits that I cannot help but associate with the wolf. I've always been someone who is abnormally focused on hierarchies and body language, who is boss and who is not. I've always been incredibly territorial, and I feel the need to mark the place that I claim as mine. But I also experience short-term things such as the urge to hunt, the urge to chew on things, the urge to show body language that does not align that of a human. Most of the time I sense phantom ears, slightly above my actual human ears, and they interact with the sounds I pick up. I usually perceive a lot of things with the logic of the wolf, like a constant perception shift. It is only with this theriotype that I often experience species dysphoria, because at times I feel miserable about the fact that I can get so little taste of the life that my wolf self desires.

At the beginning of 2020 I began questioning a second theriotype. While my wolf self will always be a dominant side, I had experiences that simply did not fit this animal. There were several aspects about myself that I kept in mind during my search. The first indicator were my vibrant colors, which I associated with myself due to my Synaesthesia. I knew about the phantom limb I experienced on my back, a big colorful fin that would be bigger than the rest of my body (I would question peacocks shortly, but I didn't feel avian). I also have always been attracted to the surface of bodies of water, which was weirdly specific and nonhuman. I also felt a connection to a green habitat, which for the longest time I thought to be the rainforest, only to later discover it is rather an aquarium. It became clear that I was most likely some kind of fish. I surely looked into different types of fishes but none fit the signs as much as the betta. I had honestly not heard of this animal before, but everything fell into place like a puzzle. I had a flashback of my ten-year-old self hanging out at the surface of the water in the pool of a camping place in France, where I would just blow bubbles for hours on end. The colors, the giant fin, the habitat, the fact that the betta is a high-oxygen fish, meaning they often hang out near the surface. I even discovered that the betta's general personality had a lot of similarities with mine, and that I felt a lot of affinity with their mating process. In February 2022, I confirmed my betta fish theriotype.

During my years in the community, I've spend quite some time trying to figure out what I believed to be the cause of my therianthropy, as this is a individual and personal theory for everyone. While I usually explain my experiences through psychological factors, my general belief turned out to be rather spiritual. I didn't necessarily look deep within myself to adopt this theory, but once I thought of it it stuck, because it explained a lot to me. I found the theory through the phenomenom called the Mandela effect, which is when a significantly large group of people remember as certain event differently from what is true. The theory behind the Mandela Effect is related to the multi-verse theory (that the people who experience the effect have crossed universes), one Steven Hawkins was a huge believer of. It indicates that there is an endless amount of universes stacked on top of each other, so many that universes exist with the slightest alternatives. It means that every being on the planet has endless alternatives of themselves, in any shape and form. This means that I could be any animal, however, for some unknown reason (which may be related to psychological factors) I happen to be related to my wolf and betta fish alternative version of myself. Shifts can easily be explained with this theory, the same way as the Mandela Effect; universes crossing paths. It also explains the hearttypes and other connections I may have with other beings.