#oh hey i run an entirely separate website to my writing and i've been running it for *thinks* around 22 years

[not-poignant]

There's an essay on lithub by an author who had an octopus talking to her in her head as she wrote a novel about him, and I thought you might enjoy it. Shades of stupidhead. It's called lessons learned from a year listening to the fictional octopus in my head

Hi anon!

I've been sent the link to this a few times already (a lot of people know I love cephalopods, and that I do work with spiritual and non spiritual animal teachers - I literally run and write this website about animal meanings and animal teachers)!

I found it interesting, though I didn't really connect specifically with the article (I had more of a detached 'oh neat this is something I've seen a lot of people do before' reaction).

I think it's really cool that the writer was able to have these processes and this experience, and was able to talk to an aspect of themselves - it's a thing a lot of people (especially people who work with animals on a spiritual level) have experienced and do, whether it's an inner wolf, or snail, or spider etc. It's pretty cool, 100% not a unique phenomenon, but it's just awesome that we got a cool article that markets a book about it. :D

It reminds me a lot of Internal Family Systems parts work, where you can - among other things - sometimes let a part take on a voice, or it does it anyway, and then you have literal conversations with aspects of yourself. Those sorts of internal dialogue systems are awesome, and it's a great phenomenon for self-communication, and doing it through the symbolism of an animal avatar can be really powerful, because you can ascribe characteristics of that animal to your inner voice (or it can self-ascribe), and sometimes make the voice more appealing or at least understandable because of it.

I have an inner wolverine that's been leaving commentary around the place in my life for easily over 15 years. In that sense, it can even be used as a deliberate technique for self-communication, esp if you have a fragmented sense of self. It's why some people are super drawn to spiritual animal work, they just have always connected to animals better than people, and then realised they could communicate to themselves through animals, even in their own heads.

Anyway, tl;dr, very cool article, I'm happy for the author and her self-acceptance as a writer, and that she can share that (and her book/s) with others too. :D