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pandora

nonhuman | hyenakin
queer | indigenous | australia

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creature heart @creatureheart9/11/2023, 1:16 PM

Journal 05

Being so new to the community, I'm kinda just floating on the outskirts, trying to allow myself to figure things out, which I know takes time.

That being said, I feel like I hesitate at times in allowing myself to think about things because a lot of stuff you come across leans more into spiritual based things, and I have never been a spiritual being, so to try and look at my nonhumaness through a spiritual lens I don't think will ever really work.

I don't have phantom shifts, that I know of? Or would even know what to look for with them? And while I think reincarnation is a cool idea — and is technically the one afterlife belief that would make some kind of sense because all matter is recycled and used again — I don't have any way to know if I have past lives.

But would something to do with how I see my gender and ideal self be enough to make me nonhuman?

Would that be psychological?

Or would that be another reason a part from the two listed for a nonhuman identity?

Part of me is, in the clearest way possible, anxious and worried that I cannot truly be nonhuman without a certain idea to my nonhuman self. Matching what I have seen among those also part of the community, even though I know no one is the same, or experiences their identity the same way.

And then there is the fear of finding out I might not be nonhuman, even though exploring your identity and realizing you're not something is entirely valid... but I also do think that I am nonhuman as I have just never really been human regarding actions and thoughts about myself, etc, etc.

I don't know. =(

— Pandora

#creature: the mind #otherkin #otherkind #Otherhearted #therian #therianthropy #alterbeing #alterhuman #nonhuman

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in reply to @creatureheart's post:

EchoSkunk @echoskunk9/11/2023, 2:19 PM

You are describing a LOT of the same concerns I had when first exploring my nonhumanity.

I am not a spiritual critter, so I was a bit put off by all the empasis on past lives and animal souls and whatnot - nothing against those that hold those sorta of beliefs, but that's just not me. I also didn't have any phantom shifts and wasn't sure if my petplay headspace really counted as a mental shift, and I really didn't know how to tell the difference between myself being nonhuman and just wanting to be nonhuman.

I did end up resolving a lot of these concerns, though. I tried seeing if I could induce a phantom shift, and after a little bit of not-quite-visualization (I have aphantasia, so instead I ran my fingers along where my muzzle, ears, tail should be and imagined the textures and sensations I would be feeling) and all of a sudden I could feel phantom muzzle, tail, ears, and claws. Probably anyone could accomplish a similar feat (see: the rubber hand illusion) but the sensations felt /right/ in a way I wasn't expecting. I practiced conjuring forth these phantom limbs maybe twice more, and it's already gotten to the point where they will just appear, unbidden.

The intensity of these feelings, in addition to the existing nonhuman feeligns I was having, was enough to overcome my fears of "am I just faking it?" and I ended up taking a similar approach as I did to my gender - the best indicator of if you are trans is if you /want/ to be trans, I thought, so if I have these strong feelins of wanting to be nonhuman, i must be nonhuman. The fear of being insufficiently spiritual was largely dispelled by my accepting that "brains are weird and hard to understand, and that's enough for me to accept that my brain feels this way for some reason I don't understand (yet)."

I've only accepted my nonhumanity for... maybe a month, and I'm not active in the community, so recounting my own limited experiences is the best I can do to try to help. Hopefully my story can give you some confidence.

creature heart @creatureheart9/12/2023, 10:28 AM

Thank you for your reply! Truly!
I've got a lot of similar replies and supporting replies about how in the end the reason isn't all that important as the here and now is and how I feel. So I'm thinking my worry and anxiety was my brain having a moment of overthinking things.

Spiritual and psychological are the two main ways that are brought up that people explain their nonhuman selves, so when my brain didn't automatically connect to them — between never being a spiritual being, and not knowing if how I feel would fit psychological "requirements" — it decided to go, "Welp, are we even nonhuman then?" because, after all, brain needs to convince itself that we "need" to show just how "real" we are in our nonhuman identity.

Thank you again though. I'm glad to see so many others show that I am not alone in this.

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