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I am officially moved over! You can find me at @thetadelta

This blog is now an archive. Feel free to browse, but please keep in mind that the posts here date from 2012-2018 and may or may not reflect my current views or current discourse and terminology.

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So uh. Hi everyone, it's been a while. Long story short, around 6 years ago I developed a chronic pain issue and then a whole lot of Life Stuff happened, so I haven't had the time or energy for anything other than surviving until pretty recently. I'm still in pain 24/7 but it's more manageable because I'm used to it now, and in general my life is much more stable than it ever has been.

I'm planning on restarting a personal therianthropy blog, but it won't be this one because this is technically a sideblog and I want an actual separate account so I can have an otherkin-only tumblr feed to look at. I'll be turning this one into an archive but using the same url for the new one, and I'll link to it here when I make it :)

I'm 5 years out of date on community discourse so I have a lot of catching up to do; hopefully I'll have time for that soon!

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Prey Dance

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Hey everyone! Just posting to say I still exist and haven’t forgotten about this blog. I’ve just been dealing with a ton of life crap and have been taking an internet hiatus :)

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Therianthropy & The Autism Spectrum - A Dissection

This is a topic that gets thrown around a lot but is usually dismissed because of the hordes of people who stumble into therianthropy and immediately go “this is absurd, you’re all just autistic”, usually meaning it as an insult (joke’s on them, autistic people are awesome). The fact of the matter, however, is that therianthropy and the autism spectrum can look pretty similar on the surface so I’m gonna straighten some things out and maybe people will finally stop confusing the two.

There are a plethora of behaviors common with both therianthropy and autism, but though they manifest in the same way the distinction is the motivation for those behaviors. Let’s look at some examples:

Sally likes to make cat sounds and may meow at random times, either voluntarily or involuntarily, because doing so comforts her. She will sometimes meow at people instead of speaking because it is easier for her to express herself that way. Sally may have grown up with cats and learned to meow by mimicking them. Sally is autistic.

Sam has the urge to growl when she feels angry or threatened. She does not feel the need to growl at other times, and the physical sensation of growling is not her motivation for doing it. Sam growls because of instinct and did not learn to do it by watching dogs. Sam is a therian.

Jeremy likes to sit in strange positions. He does this because it puts pressure on certain parts of his body in ways that feel good and sitting this way helps him stay calm and focused. Jeremy is autistic.

George likes to sit in strange positions. He does this because it feels more natural to him to act as though he has four legs and sitting this way reduces the dysphoria he usually experiences when sitting normally. George is a therian.

Amy likes to sit in small, enclosed spaces. She does this because she is easily overwhelmed and having sensory input come from only one entrance is much easier for her to manage. Amy is autistic.

April likes to sit in small, enclosed spaces. She does this because she has the instinct to build a den and sitting in a den-like space feels “right”. April is a therian.

Henry has difficulty socializing. This is because he is unable to subconsciously learn the “rules” of social interaction, such as when and how loud to speak. Henry is autistic.

Harold has difficulty socializing. This is because he subconsciously expects people to follow a set of social “rules” for a different species. Harold is a therian.

Karen has an urge to eat grass. This is because she imagines the sensation of biting and chewing it will be very pleasant. Karen is autistic.

Carol has an urge to eat grass. This is because she has a grazing instinct and her subconscious tells her that grass is food. Carol is a therian.

Isaac feels like he was born on the wrong planet. This is because the way people interact with one another and the expectations of society feel completely foreign to him. Isaac is autistic.

Leroy feels as though he was born as the wrong species. This is because he often does not feel comfortable having a human body or living a human life. Leroy is a therian.

There are also plenty of behaviors that clearly fit into only one category or the other which makes it pretty easy to separate people on the spectrum from therians. For example:

Sally often does things like rock back and forth or bounce her leg when she is sitting. These are stims she uses to regulate herself.

Sam often has a strong urge to chase small animals. This is because she has predatory instincts.

Jeremy has difficulty starting and stopping tasks. This is because of executive dysfunction.

George sometimes feels like he has a tail. His tail is a phantom/astral limb.

Another important distinction is that autism is a constant, while therianthropy is generally inconsistent (because of shifting). People who are autistic have the same needs/traits/etc at all times, while a therian may feel completely human one day and dysfunctionally nonhuman the next.

The most important difference, however, is pretty obvious: therians identify as a nonhuman animal. An autistic person may identify with an animal but not as one. I wrote a detailed post about that difference a while back.

There is, of course, a glaring exception: a lot of people are both therians and on the autism spectrum! In fact, the number of people who identify themselves as on the spectrum is much higher among therians than in the rest of society. That doesn’t necessarily mean that therians are more likely to be autistic, however. My theory is that it’s simply easier to realize and accept that you’re not exactly human when you’re not wired to conform to society. A disproportionate number of people in the trans community are autistic for the same reason.

Discussion is very welcome, and as always please let me know if I need to correct anything!

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X

‘King of the Dead’

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Tiger by Reinier Reynhout | LVSH

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Hope you get better soon :(

Thanks ^^;

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How are you now? Did it get better?

Not yet… This has happened before and it faded away eventually so I’m just waiting it out since nothing I’ve ever tried helps. It’s down to a 1 or 2 on the pain scale most of the time now, it’s just taking away all my energy :P

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Knob : Why are otherkin always kin with cool animals ? Why is there so many wolves ?

Me : I'm a giant shrimp.

Knob : Why are otherkin always trying to be so special ? Can't you just be a wolf like all the others ?

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I've been able to see aura my entire life, and I sometimes see flashes of tails/ears/wings or sometimes bodies that just don't line up on people. I just found out about otherkin. Is that what I've been seeing?

It almost certainly is! I have a friend who can see auras and she can see people’s astral/phantom limbs, too :)

Really sorry for my lack of activity! My head started hurting six weeks ago and hasn’t entirely stopped since so I haven’t been on computers much...

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Predator! Not that that’s surprising...

When you watch a nature documentary, do you root for the predators or the prey?

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I don’t understand how raccoons have time to think about these things

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about past lives

I see a lot of this lately and it really needs to be said that Being otherkin =/= having past lives. Being otherkin requires no belief in reincarnation, and even otherkin with spiritual ideas about their identities don’t have to believe that reincarnation is the reason they’re kin.  There’s a whole host of ideas that people have about why they’re kin.  I felt so stuck and lost when I felt like I had to shove my experiences into some idea of past lives carrying over. It never felt right, and still isn’t the approach I take to personally explaining my feelings. The more people equate otherkin and past lives, the more that people say otherkin is “the belief that you were nonhuman in a past life,” the more we include reincarnation as central to a definition of otherkin at all, the more people we’re pushing away from an identity and community that belongs to them, and I have seen it happen.  Being otherkin is experiencing things in the here and now that make you feel other-than-human, no matter where you think it comes from. No past lives required.

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It’s also okay to attribute things to both "mundane” things and therianthropy! I, for example, have a sensory processing disorder - basically, my brain is really, really sensitive to everything and can’t block out stimuli. I don’t attribute my inherent sensitivity to therianthropy, but I do believe that therianthropy affects the way I use my heightened senses (e.g. I use sound and touch to navigate just as much as sight) and that my natural tendency to use them constantly means I have a higher awareness that compounds with my processing disorder. In simpler terms, I have heightened senses because of both my therianthropy and a neurological issue.

Fun therian-related story from yours truly (given the recent post I reblogged here): I’ve alway been overly-sensitive in all sensory areas my whole life in such a way that I knew it wasn’t exactly a “normal” human thing to have to my degree. After I found out that I was a therian, I attributed this phenomenon to my therian-ness since I didn’t have an explanation for why this happens to me, nor could anyone else I spoke to give me a proper answer for it. I believed this for a number of years until I was finally diagnosed at the age of 22 with Nonverbal Learning Disorder, which attributed to my sensory sensitivities as it was one of the many symptoms that manifested with the condition. That is when I found out that my bouts of what I now understand to be “sensory overload” were indeed a human condition in the first place. I just happen to have a largely misunderstood and underdiagnosed cognitive disorder which is arguably on the autism spectrum and couldn’t have known about it otherwise at an earlier time.  Point being, while it is important to keep on the lookout for the more mundane explanations of things first; know that sometimes mistakes are made and we might blame something on our therianthropy/otherkiness before we learn otherwise later on. I think it’s important to understand that we embrace this factor as well and learn to accept that our initial viewpoints on the matter could be wrong in these certain situations.