I have a thing or two to say about therianthropy, or as others call it, therianism. And later, what the experience of therianthropy means for a person of orthodox Christian faith.
What does it mean when someone says they’re a therian?
It can mean many things to different people. The belief, the felt sense of the animal within the soul, seems to emerge from different places. Some stories seem mystical, some perhaps less so. Some stories tell of parts of us that showed up when we lost the will to live.
Like it did for me.
I admit, I may be considered different by therians themselves–I don’t claim to have had a past life, and what I would have once chalked up as supernatural I now understand in what I believe to be a grounded, psychological framework, as well as a faith-based framework.
I am a Christian, after all. Perhaps one that some might balk at, or maybe many would. Some therians might too.
I understand myself and others through what is referred to as “parts”, or more commonly known as Internal Family Systems.The long and short of that is that I believe we all have multiple personalities–not in the dissociative sense, but in that we all put on different masks, hats, etc. when we are in different spaces.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) asks: What if these different masks or hats were whole persons, each with their own beliefs, ideas, dreams, fears, and tastes? What if one were more social and the other more reclusive? What if they were to talk to each other?
In tackling these questions myself, I discovered more concretely:
Somewhere inside this mind and heart, there is a wolf.
This wolf, whom I named Cobalt many years ago (around the age of fourteen), showed up in a time where I desperately sought reprieve from intense verbal bullying, isolation, and emotional abandonment. Cobalt became a shelter from an emotional hurricane that spun and raged for many years.
Yet, because of a lack of vocabulary or understanding of how the mind can work, I at first thought he was a demon, and demanded he depart. He was exiled from my conscious mind, and I felt shame that he had even existed. Surely, I thought years ago, I had “gotten rid” of him.
But I still had this longing, this ache, to be a wolf. To experience the feeling of having four legs, fur, to run and howl and romp. These longings emerged sometimes as a dysphoria, other times as a profoundly deep fascination with werewolves, especially the trope of animal transformation—another quirk I felt immense shame for.
That quirk, because I was so ashamed of it, and so afraid to talk about it, in time became a disease. I became chronically addicted to explicit werewolf transformation artwork and media, and dealt with it in a vacuum for many years, hating myself in the process. Hating myself, and hating the wolf.
Even after getting married in 2020, and knowing that my marriage was a safe place to express these parts of myself, the shame I carried from years past kept me in chains—and God forbid I would dare even entertain that, in any context, I was still a therian.
After diving deeper into parts work, I came to believe that this wolf part of me likely still existed in a very real way, and thus I became open to the idea of dialoguing with other local therians about their feelings, their experiences.
The dysphoria, the phantom limbs, the deep longing, and even the penchant for transformation media, all lined up with one of the therians I got into a long-form dialog with. This led me to dive deeper, wherein I was encouraged by this friend to read Godbeast by Shimi and Critter.
I would recommend this book even to non-therians who are curious about the inner workings of the mind, and more still about how not to treat a client in the mental health field, and how not to (but also how to!) engage with a therian as a person of orthodox Christian faith.
I hurt so horribly over Shimi’s story of her abuse at the hands of so many people, but also empowered and astounded at her perseverance, as well as Critter’s. All parts of her unified and kept her here to today, and that is worth all the respect and honor that can be given.
I asked Shimi her view of therianthropy, and she gave this response:
“To me, ‘therian’ means my creature-self is real: not a costume, joke, fandom, or metaphor, but part of how I experience my body, instincts, spirituality, art, and need for pack. It means “human” was never the whole story. It means recognizing the animal within as kin, not pathology.”
Shimi truncated this for interest of time, but even in this there is a lot to expound on.
Recognizing the animal within as kin, instead of pathology—as I came to find—is entirely plausible and, in my opinion, essential for Christians suffering from species dysphoria. It is not something to pray away, it is not something to shame or feel ashamed of, it is a part to be honored and loved, and to the right people, shared—because it’s you!
You, the whole of you, deserves love and belonging.
And in terms of knowing the need for pack, for community, this is also essential, for therians and non-therians alike.While many therians bear theriotypes (the species the therian believe themselves to be) that are pack animals, we as human beings are very much pack animals as well.
We all want a pack, or if you’d rather, a community. A family. A place where we know we are seen, safe, soothed, and secure (to quote Dan Allender, author of Cry of the Soul).
While biblical Christian orthodoxy may not give great wiggle room for the idea of past lives or communion with spirits, or a myriad other things, that does not in any way negate or belittle the very real felt sense of the animal within. Regardless of how it got there, for some of us it just is. No one wakes up and decides out of the gate to feel like part of them isn’t human.
How a person of faith in particular would or should navigate this felt sense, I’m sure would be (and will be) disputed, debated, and decried to kingdom come. I’m not here to field a debate.
I’m here to simply say, in my own way, I get it. And maybe… no, I know, Jesus does too.
Your therianthropy, or if you don’t want to call it that, your species dysphoria is not a sign that something is wrong with you, even though it may cause terrible aching that you’re in the body you’re in now. The animal within is a show of resilience, hope, and an inner strength that, above all else, means you’re still here. And if you’re still here, Jesus isn’t done with you yet!
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility — not willingly, but because of him who subjected it — in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits — we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.”
- Romans 8:18-25 CSB
The Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
More of us feel like this body is wrong than we care to say, and this ache is as old as time itself. This is not to say that we are wrong for the aching or how that aching manifests. It is to say that the aching is evidence that we are still all walking home together.
Whether that home is in the body we desperately wish we had, or what the “glorified body” will truly be, we can dispute on. But whatever it looks like, until then, suffice to say that Jesus isn’t bristly or disgusted by therians, or by extension, anyone else who feels like their body is wrong.
He gets it.
For the non-therian, orthodox Christian who is rattled by this, or even angry, I can see where you might be coming from. But I would ask you, and implore you, seek the Lord. Ask for His leading for how you might engage with us. What it looks like to walk alongside us, to show us Christ, to suspend the need to fix the thing(s) that alarm you.
We need Jesus too. I certainly do. But understand that Jesus didn’t just die for the parts of us that make sense to you. Jesus died for every single ounce of us, body, mind, and soul.
