What Brings out the Beast

Aspects of myself wane and wax with time, and the aspects I associate with my therianthropy are no different. My therianthropy is always there, but it isn't a stable thing. Different parts of it are brought out or buried by somewhat different things. As a whole those parts tend to move in the same direction, though. There are words for that, but I don't use them. Partly that's because I think trying to get too specific with labels is as bad as getting too vague; it pigeon-holes you. It's also because my experience talking to other therians is that it's pretty universal.

Scent-rubbing and vocalizations are always present. They don't wax and wane. They're not things I think about, I just do them. Vocalizations are more involuntary. I often hiss and snarl when I'm injured, and you sure as hell don't think about what sound to make after you stub your toe. Pretty much the only place I rub my cheeks on is where I sleep. While the behavior is always present, it seems to vary in intensity because of scent. When a place I sleep doesn't smell like me, I scent-rub a lot. When it does, I scent-rub only a little. Either way, it's soothing.

These instincts don't have very much emotion associated with them. Like I said, scent-rubbing is soothing. Of course I'm stressed when I bang my knee and snarl. But I don't associate them with feeling very different from how I normally do. A lot of therians report altered mental states; they have mental shifts. I won't say I've never had them. I have; feral instinct bubbles to the surface and the mental noise rattling around my skull quiets. They've always been rare for me, though. For some therianthropy is a constant altered mental state. For me those are more like brief glimmers than anything else.

They've also been less consistent, as well as weaker. My instincts strengthen and weaken somewhat randomly--or at least in response to things I'm unaware of and probably never will be. But I've noticed some general trends. Moreover, over the past few years I've talked more with other therians and found I'm not the only one with these sorts of experiences, not by far.

To start with, my instincts wax and wane with my mood. I have dealt with depression and deadened emotion for most of my life. It's not that I only experience mental shifts when I'm happy. I sometimes have them when I'm absolutely miserable. I associate them with emotion, though. When I'm not feeling much of anything, I don't feel instinct either. When I'm ground down enough, there's not much left of me to feel.

I and my therianthropy aren't really separate things, even if I sometimes refer to it that way. So it makes sense to me that it's this way.

Weather and seasons are another influence on those parts of me. The strength of my instinct seems to vary depending on the seasons. During the winter, it is weakest. During the summer and spring, it is greatest. That's partly because I loathe the cold and spend more time inside during the winter months, but I think it's also because my theriotype is from warm climates. If you put a cheetah in a blizzard, finding shelter is probably going to be a higher priority than hunting or scent-marking. Though, oddly, thunderstorms make me feel very shifty--it could be because few humans are out during them, and it's darker.

Related to this, my instincts seem stronger in deserts and grasslands--particularly deserts. The landscapes of the Sonoran Desert are wide open, but they're also hidden. I'm not restricted by trees, and I can see the sun and open sky. There are cacti, but you learn to move through them quickly. I can stalk lizards and rabbits through the desert, rub my face on rocks, and sun myself without being disturbed or having to worry about being seen.

That therianthropy seems to be weaker or stronger depending on the place you're in is something that many of the other therians I've talked to have noticed. If you place a wild animal in an unnatural setting that doesn't speak to their instincts, you will get a mentally unhealthy animal and they won't express their natural behaviors. It seems to be the same for a lot of us. We need a more natural landscape on a deep, visceral level--that's not unique to us, but there's additional reasons we need it.

We need it because having deadened instincts isn't good for us. Even when they're muted, even when we're trying to suppress them, they're still part of us. If you stuck me in a locked box for the rest of my life and made me forget what rabbits and trees were, that wouldn't change the fact that chasing rabbits feels right and natural. Dragging my fingernails over the bark of trees would still feel right on an instinctive level.

It can be all too rare to get those opportunities to let yourself express our instincts. If you go too long without being able to do so and suppress that part of yourself, you can even convince yourself that it's gone--or at least withered. It happened to me.

It's not, though. The fact that it readily re-emerges is proof of that. All too often we discount the degree to which our surroundings shape how we feel.

 

-- Citrakayah

Written May 2023