Theriotype Searching

[Stella]

When searching for your theriotype do you take your physical human personality into consideration to find your theriotype? 8 am quite unsure because I am brand new to this as I have recently been awakened as a wolf therian but my exact subspecies is completely unknown. Any feedback or answers would be extremely helpful! 

[Kisota]

It's actually easier if you try to look at things about you that are not part of a normal human personality!

A lot of times, a new person in the community will say something like this:
"I'm a wolf therian - I love my friends and am very loyal and protective!"

The problem with using things like "loyalty", "protectiveness", "playfulness", "introversion," and such to understand therianthropy is that there is a lot of overlap with normal, human things there. Humans often feel all of those things.

Urges to be outside, or have a simpler life, that sort of thing, those can all be normal people things too.

I don't want to say those things can't have anything to do with therianthropy. You might very well find that part of "wolf" for you is a certain kind of playfulness, or particularly fierce urges to protect loved ones.

And to be honest, you'll never be able to completely separate "human" and "animal" in your mind. There will always be some amount of bias, and that's not all bad. Most therians experience a blend of human and animal, anyway. Most tend to feel "both at once," rather than two separate sides. And there will often be a fair amount of things that don't categorize easily as "totally animal" or "totally human."

BUT.

That said, you'll have a much easier time figuring things out if you first look at the more unusual, animal-like things you experience. For example, for me... that includes things like urges to bite, shake, and kill small to medium animals, eat dead things or food on the ground, weird stuff like that. I also often have feelings that my body is a weird shape and that I "should" be four-legged and closer to the ground.

I'd suggest keeping a journal and writing down things that you experience. Then try to figure out which things are probably normal human things that you're subconsciously choosing to think of as "wolf" things. Then find the things that probably aren't part of the normal human range of experience. There will probably be a few you are not sure about, and that's okay too.

Once you have a good idea about what kind of weird, animal things you might be experiencing, it'll be easier to interpret those things and learn more about yourself.

A word on subspecies:

In a lot of animals, subspecies are determined by geographic location. For some animals, there isn't a lot of difference between subspecies, especially if the subspecies are all on the same continent. Northern animals tend to be bigger, and are likely to tend toward larger prey items (and so, possibly larger family groups). Sometimes there are color differences (eg, Arctic wolves tend to be very pale), or other physical differences. But a lot of times, the most major difference between subspecies is simply where they live. Everything else different about them is usually a result of that, so the differences may be very slight, or a bit more noticeable.

[Deleted]

I agree with Kisota. A lot of new wolf therians do say "I'm loyal and protective of my friends." But, that could also be said with dogs as well.

Basically, you have to look deeper within the traits of the animal to know if it fits you or not.

[G.D.]

Personally, I don't incorporate anything regarding my human shell when it comes to considering experiences that define my otherkinity. My body is just my body, and it's human. It has nothing to do with my energy type, how I manifest, and what I am able to do non-physically. The body and it's individual quirks are nothing more than tools for learning and a means to express myself in a physical state of being.

When it came to understanding my experiences and discerning my kintype it had a lot more to do with looking inwards and outwards than just stopping skin deep. I had to study my shifts in perspective, mental state, energy consumption, and how exactly I affected the environment around me. Meditation, projection, etc were all parts of this. I collected data over several years, always having an 'idea' of what I was but I didn't sit and confirm it until I was absolutely confident I had weeded out all other possibilities.

My experiences are of course going to involve a lot of spiritual topics and ideas, so it may be different than an answer from a psychological otherkin/therian.

I personally don't believe your body inherently has jack to do with your identity.

[Seraphyna]

If you ask me, anything that can be explained via our present humanity should not be used as "evidence" of a non-human identity for the simple fact that it is, in fact, human. These things can be amusing, but they are primarily coincidences.

[Kisota]

Right, good point, Sera.

You don't want to base a non-human understanding of yourself on anything that's pretty much normal human stuff. Start with the weird stuff and go from there. If you're looking for why you feel like a wolf and only turning up things that are fairly normal... Well, that's a sign you might want to reassess whether what you're really feeling on the inside is "wolf", another animal, wishing to be a wolf, or something else entirely.

That doesn't mean you might sometimes experience things that feel animal to you even if they COULD be normal human things, or maybe that feel like a combination - something maybe a human wolf might experience. Those experiences aren't wrong. But if those are the ONLY experiences you have, with nothing un-humanlike in your typical experiences, you might have something else going on.

On the subspecies thing,
I recommend you consider what types of environments you feel drawn to, after first considering whether their are any "physical" traits (phantom shifts, etc) that might exclude some subspecies (eg, based on size and the way I feel my fur should be, as well as habitat preferences, I don't identify with desert coyotes).
But don't feel like you need to nail down a subspecies. Most therians don't.