Welcome to my carrd!
A lil bit about myself, my name's Napp, I am 19 years old, I use they/them pronouns, and I'm an American Shorthair cat therian.I made this carrd for the purpose of sharing my experience as a nonhuman, more specifically a therian and otherhearted.
Therianthropy
Therianthropy at its core is someone who indentifies as an animal on a non-physical level due to involentary animalistic behaviors.I was awakened in 2022. There are two main explanations for therianthropy; psychological and spiritual therianthropy. My therianthropy is completely psychological.Ever since I was a young kid, I felt out of place and I didn't connect with most people. I acted more like an animal than human sometimes. Like swatting at anything dangling like a ribbon, chasing small animals like I was hunting (prey drive), and crawling into dark, small spaces and just...stay there...cause it felt comfortable.Even now, I still experience these animalistic behaviors, but now I can control them better than I did when I was younger. For example, I still have a prey drive, but I can control myself to not chase after a pigeon in the city streets.I would watch cartoons about humans being able to turn into animals and I was SO invested in them. Sometimes I felt a hint of jealousy towards the characters for being able to transform into animals.A lot of friends and family have told me I was like a cat and for some reason, I felt happy about that. I felt acknowledged and seen. Of course back then I didn't know why and brushed the feelings off but after finding out about therianthropy, a lot of things made more sense.I'm what some people might call a suntherian (pronounced soon-therian), which is a therian who has their kintype's personality integrated into them thus having little to no shifts. However this doesn't mean that they feel more like an animal on some days and less on other days. Their experience is best described as similar to that of a sliding scale.Although I don't personally use this label for myself I think it best explains my experience of being a therian.
Otherhearted
Being otherhearted means you have a strong connection with an animal and you identify with them but not as them. The animal that the person identifes with is called a synpath, kith or simply (animal)hearted.I am raccoon and raven hearted.For raccoons it just kinda came out of nowhere. I saw a picture of a raccoon and for some reason my mind thought that I was connected with this raccoon somehow and that I was part of the raccoon family. Right now though, I'm kinda questioning whether I'm raccoonhearted or raccoonkin.For ravens it took more research for me to figure things out. After learning about therianthropy I learned about being otherhearted and I came to realize that my raccoon and raven kintypes were actually raccoon and ravenkiths instead. I don't necessarily act or have instincts of a raven but I do feel a deep connection with them like I should be flying with them in the sky.Otherhearted people do tend to get shift and I'm one of those people. I don't feel any shifts from my raccoonkith but with my ravenkith I get ph-shifts (phantom shifts) of my wings.