About Otherkin/Therians?

I suppose I would be considered a cat therian. This is entirely psycological for me. I do hiss when I am angry or don't want to be touched by my lovely but very clingy wifey. I will purr when I feel happy or cuddly like right after a good meal or when she rubs my shoulder or back in the right spot as I have plenty of back pains. I meow when I want something or get lonely, it's usually my way of saying, "hurry up!" I do also lick and bite.

There are playful nips and slightly harder bites when I get anry from being touched too much. "Stawp eet! >_<" Licking of course registers as affection to me or to console when she is sad. I do love naps and can out sleep a real cat I swear. I'm every bit as moody as a cat and I hate when my hair is messed up like when you pet a cat the wrong way. I basically act exactly like this cat meme I will link below. I can comes snuggles but I get pissy when she tried to give me a hug but I will plop myself on her. I have space issues massively and spaz out because of the anxiety.

Now I would like to clarify all of what I have just said so I will not be misunderstood. I am 100% human and have never claimed to be anything else. I have heard astrally you can shift which I have never done but do tend to believe since it makes sense because you would not be bound by physical laws as you are not physical in addition to the fact I have had some reliable credile practitioners tell me of their experiences doing so. I do believe in past lives so perhaps I was a cat in my last life and some of these behavior just carried over, who knows?

I seldomly use the title of "therian" because of the connotations that come with it because of the bad name fluffies give to it. Most of my behaviors you could say are pretty normal. A lot of girls don't like it when you mess up their hair. Plenty of people have space issues and don't like to be smothered. Lots of people have anxiety, that is nothing new. The only things you could really say are weird is the noises of hissing, meowing, purring and I suppose licking. These noises just feel like the most comfortable ways I can express myself.

For me it is not however a religious thing because the deities that I honor don't really have a thing for cats and in fact have a thing for dogs, wolves, or stags. I would consider myself to be a cat person but the irony? I'm actually extremely allergic to cats. They make my eyes water, my throat feels like it tightens and my nose stuffs up so I have a lot of trouble breathing. I mean for like when I would go hang out with friends at their house if they have a cat it wasn't too bad as long as I didn't have them in my lap or near my face. I could pet them for like a minute then just walk away and wash my hands. It still bothered me because of all the cat hair everywhere.

I found out I was allergic to cats when I got my third cat Saya which I loved dearly so even after I found out I was allergic because I would have her sleep in the bed with me I tried using different allergy medicine and nothing worked for me. I tried having her sleep in the living room and that was the best compermise we could come up with but it was still pretty awful for me I just couldn't bare to let her go.

We ended up having to give her away when my father died and we had to move to a one bedroom apartment because they wanted too much for the pet deposit plus the monthly pet rent. Now tack on feeding her and buying litter. We could not swing that because my dad cranked up the eletric bill before he died and I was barely almost nineteen so I did not yet have a job because I was considering going to college trying to find all my options. I graduated a little while after I turned eighteen and he died right before my ninteenth birthday on September 14th. So I was put into debt on the bill because since I was a legal adult and tenant I had to pay it. My spouses money was something we shared even back then so she paid it since I had no income but that on top of our normal deposit, moving fees, monthly rent...We didn't have a choice.

However, we did make sure she went to a home with a sweet old man who got her all her shots and takes very good care of her so a happy ending was reached! He was able to provide for her all the things we never were. Whether it is a human baby or a fur baby it's good to remember it's not all about you. It's about what is best for them and this was what was best for her. As for have I mean another Therian yes I have but ironically both in the canine persuasion. One of which is Evynne and the other of which is my wifey who would consider herself more of a she-wolf. So smol black kitten and large beautiful white wolf. I often call her Ying Ying and she calls me Yang because it is ironic how it always works out this way. I am like the moon, her like the sun. I am the Raven to her Star Fire. The doom and gloom to her sunshine. So with us there is always balance.

As for what I think of your Kitsune Otherkin buddy...I don't know him well enough to say. Therians I can understand as if feels comfortable and makes a lot of sense to me. You could have been in a past life, these traits are easily explainable, yadda yadda. Otherkin I can undersatand to a degree as a religious thing where saying you are Angelkin if you are Christian makes sense as you feel that you are a servant of God. So it kinda seems no different than how I spiritually identify as an Amazon which were actally real women who did physically exist and they have the skeletons, tombs, and all that junk to prove it.

But I can still see the contrasting simularity. I can also see how I say Enyalius is my spiritual father that might come off as weird to some people who don't understand it's just a bond type thing and I do not mean it in a literal way. So like for example if you are a Dragon Magick practitioner and you work a lot with Dragons on the astral plane and find that you embody their courage and other traits in addition to getting very close to some of them I can get why you would call yourself Dragonkin.

I can even understand if someone were to call themselves Nymphkin because they are a woman who is very into nature blah blah blah. Well, Nymphai are lesser female goddesses of nature. So if your actions reflect that, it is a part of your personality, hobby, and passion...If you pray to Nymphs, have an altar to Nymphs or anything in this realm I can see why you would find them sacred and consider yourself a part of their spiritual family. A lot of this just gets into context being super super important. It's when you claim you have impossible powers like a super hero or can physically shift into an animal you lose all credibility. So the key is when saying, "I am blank" please for the love of god give context! Things get easily miscontrued when you fail to do that and then it becomes this big argument and aint nobody want that can of worms!

Link:

https://scontent.fphx1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p480x480/16003141_1073000299476587_7382139502498616492_n.jpg?oh=6ec940276e3ab7a40ba5272cc0b4657a&oe=59304865

Thank you for taking the time to respond Syren :)

The person I am talking about doesn't really claim to have "powers," at least not in the fictional sense. In his own way, he practices forms of magic, though again, I doubt he realizes it. I've come to this conclusion based offof the conversations we have.

An example being a person casting a "glamor" to make themselves less noticeableby others. Physical appearance is the same, people just don't "see" you. If that makes sense? He often does this, and I find it interesting that's he's been able to figure this stuff out on his own.

A common side effect of being a Therian/Otherkin that I've read about is phantom limbs. This is also something that he's described, just without using any of the terminology. He doesn't claim to physically shift into a Kitsune, nor does he claim to be one "in disguise" or anything like that. If he did, he would've lost credibility, as you said. But he has not crossed that line.

He is a fan of Japanese lore and mythology. It could be that he strongly connects to Kitsunes, and this would be why he feels the way he does.

I'm not going to try and sit him down and explain that he's wrongbecause spiritual connections or feelings such as this are personal. So, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, see what I can pick up from the conversations we have, and so on and so forth.

On a personal note, I can relate in a way. I would not call myself a Therian, but I tend to be more on the wolfy side. This isn't because I think wolves are cool or what have you. Simply the way I feel sometimes. But I can agree that the terms tend to have negativity tied to them, because of all the teenagers who want to be special snowflakes.

Neither me nor my friend act like animals. Like you Syren, most of our behaviors are typically normal. I know I don't howl at the moon and he doesn't act like a fox. In all honesty, he sounds more like you Syren. He purrs sometimes, he'll "meow" when he wants my attention, and so on. But again, we're both behave like human beings.

It's very difficult to describe him, though. He's like a bag of trail mix XD But he's not crazy, he's not a special snowflake, he's just different when it comes to spiritual things such as this.

Okay so, for the longest time I identified as otherkin, before realizing it didn't help me at all and I didn't really care for it. I do though, have a lot of friends who still identify as otherkin.

For them mostly they believe it was who they were in a past life, or just that they are kin, like family, with something. Example I am of kin with the ocean, with bears, etc

I honestly think it's a pretty vague term, it can be used for a wide variety of things such as spiritual beliefs, or just for comfort, some even use it as a coping mechanism. Sometimes I find these people to be very disrespectful towards other religions or cultures, saying they know everything about it when they really do not, and just think it's fun and cool.

Online I've had multiple otherkin/therian groups/people criticize me or sometimes even gang up on me for my beliefs, so I'm not too friendly with that area of the internet, they were always very picky about what I said and did, so personally I'd just be careful if you're interacting with larger groups or trying to learn more. honestly i don't really think there is too much more to learn than basic concepts as it varies from person to person.

I agree that it is a vague term. Which is why I think it's hard to gather information about it, in addition to those experiences/connections being personal for the individual.

I have no interest in interacting with Otherkin/Therian communities, just trying to learn more about the one person I originally posted about :) I think the solution there would be to keep learning more about him and come to my own conclusions.

I heard about Therians and Otherkin awhile ago when I was trying to figure out my connections to certain beings. I feel a lot of times people who are just really in touch with a spirit animal/totem that they will read about therians and think "That's what I am." But that isn't always the case. Personally, I can identify with being some type of cat therian, but I also identify with a fairy or mermaid otherkin. Still to this day I have no idea where being a therian/otherkin comes from. I've thought about it stemming from past lives but then I wonder how something not in this life would affect you at all. Of course it is a state of mind, but I have felt "phantom limbs" over the years (fairy wings, etc) and I still would like to know why if happens to certain people. Perhaps some people were born into the wrong body in the wrong realm haha :) It's an interesting thought though.

Hello, Jaxies here!

I have studied " OtherKin " for about two months and found it super interesting ! I even met a lady who said she was an " Otherkin ".

What are your thoughts on Otherkin/Therians?

I find them to be very interesting people and I would love to study the topic more and meet more people who see them-selfs as " OtherKin ".

To be honest, I didn't think id find this type f thread here and when I did see it I had to double take cause I thought I mixed it up or my mind was playing tricks on me.
Therianthropy can be psychological or spiritual, as well as otherkin, and it makes no one less or more valid than the next.
therianthropy is a real thing, as I myself, and a fox therian, I spiritually identify as a fox because of my soul, which has multiple fractures should from my past lives, but fox is the most prominent, and I do not believe I have a strong enough human soul, if at all, in this body, which is why I identify this way.
I know a lot of people as therians, mainly online, but I do know one person in real life that I am close with that identifies as a therian as well.
Now, there's also a huge misunderstanding of terms throughout the otherkin community, which the most common one is kin and kith. kin used in the terms of otherkin is identifying as something, and with is the connection feeling or identifying with it as family, etc. there's still a lot of people who hate otherkin and therians and believe its a mental illness, but I believe its just an identity, along with gender or how you represent yourself.
along with the topic of the kitsune otherkin, if there's more information on how they described themselves id probably have more of a say on it, but because if my lack of understanding on that topic and because I don't know who they are, all I will say is there's a lot of uninformed and uneducated people, aswell as fluffs, who claim to be something they are not to try and fit in or look cool, I'm not invalidating that person due to lack of information on them, but that is what I have to say on that subject.

I'm really glad that this topic was brought up, and that there are supportive people in this coven on the subject!