Date First Written: November 2019; Date Last Updated: March 2021
A Brief Introduction to Overall Nonhuman State of Being
General Introduction
We are known as House of Chimeras in both the alterhuman, otherkin, therianthrope, multiple, and related communities.
We were born on the 21st of March in 1989 in the Arkansas River Valley at the foot of the Ozark Mountains, and still live there today. We have a bachelor’s degree with a major in History and a minor in Writing & Rhetoric. We currently work full time at a library.
Our general hobbies include reading (both nonfiction and fiction), writing (essays and stories), arts related stuff (mostly drawing and crafting) participating in various outdoor activities (hiking, amateur-level caving, wild-life watching, and learning wilderness survival skills), and collecting (namely books and animal bones). We read or listen to, on average, 60 books every year.
We label our body and thus ourselves as a whole as being both transgender and non-binary. We have also made several alterations to our body to appear more androgynous. Collectively our pronouns are they/them and individually our pronouns are she/her for the female members in our system, he/his for the male members of our system, and hie/hem anyone not strictly male or female.
Our overall spiritual beliefs can best be described as pagan. There is an undercurrent of pantheism, hard polytheism, and animism running through the members of our system. However, what is focused on, how much reverence is given, how regularly practices are preformed, and so on varies greatly among us. A major part of our spiritual practice is heavily inspired historical accounts and academic insights into groups like the Benandanti and Neuri as well as cases like that of Old Thiess. Another major part of our practice is heavily focused on local nature spirits and to an extent aiding the nonhuman dead.
Our Multiplistic Therianthropy
We have been aware of our multiplistic therianthropy since childhood (at least age 7 or 8). During our early adulthood our first therapist noted our multiplicity but only diagnosed us Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS) rather than Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) under the DSM-IV-TR because we stopped having issues with dissociative amnesia before we started therapy with her and she could not diagnosis us on past symptoms. (Though she did note we would have been diagnosed with DID if we had come in before we managed to deal with blackout on our own.) A little over a year later, around the time the DSM-5 came out we got a new therapist due to an insurance change. Our second therapist also affirmed our multiplicity but found we didn't meet the DSM-5’s criteria for DID or Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) due to our symptoms by that time no longer showing distress thanks to years of self-work and therapy and that being a new criterion. So, she did not re-diagnose us with anything. This accepting our multiplicity but not being (re)diagnose us with DID or OSDD has occurred again and again thus far with two more therapists over the years due to our current symptoms verses the current criteria in the DSM-5. So while we are a multiple system we do not have DID or OSDD anymore.
We are specifically a mixed-origin multiple system of nonhumans. A multiple system meaning we are a group of individuals sharing one single body together. (That is very simple definition of our living conditions anyway.) Mixed-origin meaning that the reasons for existing within same body vary among us. As for the nonhuman part, means that all of the members who are part of our multiple system are nonhuman personally even if our body is physically human. A majority of our system are pretty cut and dry nonhuman animals known to exist or had once existed on Earth. Smaller portion of our nonhuman members are of individuals whose species blurs the line between Earth animals and mythical or fictional creatures. Finally, there are people in our system who are plants.
Our multiplistic therianthropy is a state of being for us. A state of being where we are intrinsically nonhuman on a nonphysical involuntary, and profound level. We experience ourselves as nonhumans though our body is physically human. To whittle it down, we could say we “identify as” nonhuman but while useful to describe it that way to non-kin or people only just discovering the concept, such a phrase barely begins to describe the depth of our experiences.
Our state of nonhumanity is about awareness (or awereness as the joke used to be). Awareness of the world around us and the world inside us. Our multiplistic therianthropy is alive in our daily life and it has always been that way since we can recall anything from memory. It presents itself in how we live and approach the world around us. We are animal beings that have been changed by a life in a human body. For each of us in our body we perceive the relationship between our animality and humanity from different perspectives. Some of us feel themselves to be animals who have been humanized by living in a human body, some feel they are still just animal just living in a human body, others feel their being is a mix of animal and human, and some feel something other than those three perspectives. Whatever the case, this animality-humanity state of being nonhuman is what we refer to when we talk about our personal therianthropy and phytanthropy.
Our life is one of existing in a liminal state. Existing in two worlds at the same time on many different levels. There is the liminality of the humanity and animality within each of us. There is fact we are plural and yet we are also one. There is the fact we live in both the world around us and the world within us (our innerworld). There is the fact we experience both the physical world and the spirit world as a regular part of life. There is the fact so many of us walk a gray line when it comes to gender due our own individual genders, our gender expression, and the nature of our physical body. For these reasons and more, we straddle the boundaries of many worlds. That is our state of being in a nutshell. This liminal state of being has made navigating life challenging. We exist in the human world, but not with both feet. We can neither fully embrace the human world nor fully leave the other one. We are in-between. Half-human and half-animal. Half in the physical world and half in the spiritual one. A we and an I. We have had to accept our in-between nature in all its many layers. This too is an integral part of our personal therianthropy and phytanthropy. We might not physically be a shapeshifter, but we are one non-physically as we are constantly sliding between all these aspects of our life.
Being nonhuman in a human body is about having the knowledge of being something impossible, and yet being unable to deny that it is so. We know what we see ourselves as nonhuman, know what we experience, and what we are intrinsically. No amount of critical thinking over the years has been able to explain away this deep understanding of ourselves. We know all of this is "all in our head," but that does not take away from the stark reality we are faced with in relation to our identities and the experiences we relate to such.
Disclaimers About This Document
Unless stated otherwise, usage of the terms "we" and "us" should not be taken to mean anyone other than those within the House of Chimeras. Unless otherwise cited or stated, our writings reflect only our own understanding and interpretation of our own plurality.
Due to being a large multiple system with so many nonhumans it is not really feasible for each of us to write our own individual essays on our personal multiplistic therianthropy. Some members of our multiple system have written personal essays, but most of either don’t have the time, energy or driving interest to do so. Also, some of us don’t front enough to work on an essay. Others feel they would be beating a dead horse due to most of us have such similar experiences (how we come to know we are nonhuman in identity, our constant phantom bodies, constant nonhuman mindset, out-of-body experiences, etc.) minus the species-specific details. So, we have decided to write a series of overview essays over the nature of the nonhumanity within our system. So, these essays will be an overview on our experiences as a whole.
Now, being as we are isn't something that we can easily put into words. It is hard to sum-up all of our state of being into a few words. It is impossible. It is hoped that this will at least give the reader some idea into our lives. What we describe within our essays on our personal multiplistic therianthropy is a general look into our state of being. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce our personal state of being into only a few words and even begin to touch the edges of the heart of our state of being. Everything we talk about is like a single hair on a pelt or feather on a wing - alone they do not mean much, but when noted together the function can come into more perspective. So too are our experiences: only when seen as a whole made of many does their full gravitas really come into focus.
These are our personal experiences, but perhaps some might relate to some of it in their own experiences. What we say across not only this entire site, but also in conversation to others are only what we have experienced and what we found to be true to the best of our abilities. This is our state of being many nonhuman animals non-physically in one human body. Other people’s mileage may vary to some extent or another on how relatable our personal experiences are. We want folks to read our words and understand our personal nonhumanity. We cannot claim to be what to expect from others. We are no guru of absolute knowledge of any aspect of therianthropy save of our own personal multiplistic therianthropy. There is so much diversity within both therianthropy and multiplicity, and this site is simply a reflection on our personal multiplistic therianthropy, not a statement on therianthropy as a whole. We do not speak for all therianthropes or phytanthropes.
One thing to note, we have a learning disability and are on the autistic spectrum. We are cursed with a love of the contents of the written word yet have extreme difficulty in reading and writing perfectly. Our higher education in writing and the use of autocorrect help but they cannot cure a brain that jumbles words. We take great care to try to catch any grammatical errors or words that were mistakenly autocorrected into the wrong word, plus what we write has often been prove read many times. However, we cannot always catch our mistakes though we try to avoid them. For this flaw we give apologies; however, we do not and will not take kindly to ridicule for our disabilities. Jeering at our difficulties and using it as a means of dismissing our thoughts and experiences outright does nothing but prove those committing such acts are, to put in crude terms, dickweeds.
Finally, before anyone decide to play "armchair psychologist" understand that:
(1) We have, at present, talked with five separate psychologists over the span of over a decade. Each have separately concluded:
(a) Our existence (as far as our multiplicity and nonhumanity) as it stands today does not meet criteria for any disorder,
(b) That our state as it is today does not constitute any clinically significant dysfunction to us socially, occupationally, or any other important areas of functioning,
(c) That just because our experience is deviant from the norm does not constitute concern on its own, and
(d) Any attempts to put an end to this state of ours would likely cause (or has caused) a great deal of distress or impairment in our ability to function.
(2) You (the reader) are not one of the various mental health professionals we have talked to one-on-one at various points in our life. Thereby,
(a) You do not know all the details of our state of being as it currently stand, and
(b) Do you know the details of history related our state of being, nor
(c) Are you in a position to accurately “diagnosis us” over the internet.
All of this means: Your internet opinion does not trump what real-life mental health professionals have said to us in a mental healthcare provider-to-patient capacity. We will not take kindly to anyone trying to undermine our mental healthcare because random people online don’t like their conclusions.
We are known as House of Chimeras in both the alterhuman, otherkin, therianthrope, multiple, and related communities.
We were born on the 21st of March in 1989 in the Arkansas River Valley at the foot of the Ozark Mountains, and still live there today. We have a bachelor’s degree with a major in History and a minor in Writing & Rhetoric. We currently work full time at a library.
Our general hobbies include reading (both nonfiction and fiction), writing (essays and stories), arts related stuff (mostly drawing and crafting) participating in various outdoor activities (hiking, amateur-level caving, wild-life watching, and learning wilderness survival skills), and collecting (namely books and animal bones). We read or listen to, on average, 60 books every year.
We label our body and thus ourselves as a whole as being both transgender and non-binary. We have also made several alterations to our body to appear more androgynous. Collectively our pronouns are they/them and individually our pronouns are she/her for the female members in our system, he/his for the male members of our system, and hie/hem anyone not strictly male or female.
Our overall spiritual beliefs can best be described as pagan. There is an undercurrent of pantheism, hard polytheism, and animism running through the members of our system. However, what is focused on, how much reverence is given, how regularly practices are preformed, and so on varies greatly among us. A major part of our spiritual practice is heavily inspired historical accounts and academic insights into groups like the Benandanti and Neuri as well as cases like that of Old Thiess. Another major part of our practice is heavily focused on local nature spirits and to an extent aiding the nonhuman dead.
Our Multiplistic Therianthropy
We have been aware of our multiplistic therianthropy since childhood (at least age 7 or 8). During our early adulthood our first therapist noted our multiplicity but only diagnosed us Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS) rather than Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) under the DSM-IV-TR because we stopped having issues with dissociative amnesia before we started therapy with her and she could not diagnosis us on past symptoms. (Though she did note we would have been diagnosed with DID if we had come in before we managed to deal with blackout on our own.) A little over a year later, around the time the DSM-5 came out we got a new therapist due to an insurance change. Our second therapist also affirmed our multiplicity but found we didn't meet the DSM-5’s criteria for DID or Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) due to our symptoms by that time no longer showing distress thanks to years of self-work and therapy and that being a new criterion. So, she did not re-diagnose us with anything. This accepting our multiplicity but not being (re)diagnose us with DID or OSDD has occurred again and again thus far with two more therapists over the years due to our current symptoms verses the current criteria in the DSM-5. So while we are a multiple system we do not have DID or OSDD anymore.
We are specifically a mixed-origin multiple system of nonhumans. A multiple system meaning we are a group of individuals sharing one single body together. (That is very simple definition of our living conditions anyway.) Mixed-origin meaning that the reasons for existing within same body vary among us. As for the nonhuman part, means that all of the members who are part of our multiple system are nonhuman personally even if our body is physically human. A majority of our system are pretty cut and dry nonhuman animals known to exist or had once existed on Earth. Smaller portion of our nonhuman members are of individuals whose species blurs the line between Earth animals and mythical or fictional creatures. Finally, there are people in our system who are plants.
Our multiplistic therianthropy is a state of being for us. A state of being where we are intrinsically nonhuman on a nonphysical involuntary, and profound level. We experience ourselves as nonhumans though our body is physically human. To whittle it down, we could say we “identify as” nonhuman but while useful to describe it that way to non-kin or people only just discovering the concept, such a phrase barely begins to describe the depth of our experiences.
Our state of nonhumanity is about awareness (or awereness as the joke used to be). Awareness of the world around us and the world inside us. Our multiplistic therianthropy is alive in our daily life and it has always been that way since we can recall anything from memory. It presents itself in how we live and approach the world around us. We are animal beings that have been changed by a life in a human body. For each of us in our body we perceive the relationship between our animality and humanity from different perspectives. Some of us feel themselves to be animals who have been humanized by living in a human body, some feel they are still just animal just living in a human body, others feel their being is a mix of animal and human, and some feel something other than those three perspectives. Whatever the case, this animality-humanity state of being nonhuman is what we refer to when we talk about our personal therianthropy and phytanthropy.
Our life is one of existing in a liminal state. Existing in two worlds at the same time on many different levels. There is the liminality of the humanity and animality within each of us. There is fact we are plural and yet we are also one. There is the fact we live in both the world around us and the world within us (our innerworld). There is the fact we experience both the physical world and the spirit world as a regular part of life. There is the fact so many of us walk a gray line when it comes to gender due our own individual genders, our gender expression, and the nature of our physical body. For these reasons and more, we straddle the boundaries of many worlds. That is our state of being in a nutshell. This liminal state of being has made navigating life challenging. We exist in the human world, but not with both feet. We can neither fully embrace the human world nor fully leave the other one. We are in-between. Half-human and half-animal. Half in the physical world and half in the spiritual one. A we and an I. We have had to accept our in-between nature in all its many layers. This too is an integral part of our personal therianthropy and phytanthropy. We might not physically be a shapeshifter, but we are one non-physically as we are constantly sliding between all these aspects of our life.
Being nonhuman in a human body is about having the knowledge of being something impossible, and yet being unable to deny that it is so. We know what we see ourselves as nonhuman, know what we experience, and what we are intrinsically. No amount of critical thinking over the years has been able to explain away this deep understanding of ourselves. We know all of this is "all in our head," but that does not take away from the stark reality we are faced with in relation to our identities and the experiences we relate to such.
Disclaimers About This Document
Unless stated otherwise, usage of the terms "we" and "us" should not be taken to mean anyone other than those within the House of Chimeras. Unless otherwise cited or stated, our writings reflect only our own understanding and interpretation of our own plurality.
Due to being a large multiple system with so many nonhumans it is not really feasible for each of us to write our own individual essays on our personal multiplistic therianthropy. Some members of our multiple system have written personal essays, but most of either don’t have the time, energy or driving interest to do so. Also, some of us don’t front enough to work on an essay. Others feel they would be beating a dead horse due to most of us have such similar experiences (how we come to know we are nonhuman in identity, our constant phantom bodies, constant nonhuman mindset, out-of-body experiences, etc.) minus the species-specific details. So, we have decided to write a series of overview essays over the nature of the nonhumanity within our system. So, these essays will be an overview on our experiences as a whole.
Now, being as we are isn't something that we can easily put into words. It is hard to sum-up all of our state of being into a few words. It is impossible. It is hoped that this will at least give the reader some idea into our lives. What we describe within our essays on our personal multiplistic therianthropy is a general look into our state of being. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce our personal state of being into only a few words and even begin to touch the edges of the heart of our state of being. Everything we talk about is like a single hair on a pelt or feather on a wing - alone they do not mean much, but when noted together the function can come into more perspective. So too are our experiences: only when seen as a whole made of many does their full gravitas really come into focus.
These are our personal experiences, but perhaps some might relate to some of it in their own experiences. What we say across not only this entire site, but also in conversation to others are only what we have experienced and what we found to be true to the best of our abilities. This is our state of being many nonhuman animals non-physically in one human body. Other people’s mileage may vary to some extent or another on how relatable our personal experiences are. We want folks to read our words and understand our personal nonhumanity. We cannot claim to be what to expect from others. We are no guru of absolute knowledge of any aspect of therianthropy save of our own personal multiplistic therianthropy. There is so much diversity within both therianthropy and multiplicity, and this site is simply a reflection on our personal multiplistic therianthropy, not a statement on therianthropy as a whole. We do not speak for all therianthropes or phytanthropes.
One thing to note, we have a learning disability and are on the autistic spectrum. We are cursed with a love of the contents of the written word yet have extreme difficulty in reading and writing perfectly. Our higher education in writing and the use of autocorrect help but they cannot cure a brain that jumbles words. We take great care to try to catch any grammatical errors or words that were mistakenly autocorrected into the wrong word, plus what we write has often been prove read many times. However, we cannot always catch our mistakes though we try to avoid them. For this flaw we give apologies; however, we do not and will not take kindly to ridicule for our disabilities. Jeering at our difficulties and using it as a means of dismissing our thoughts and experiences outright does nothing but prove those committing such acts are, to put in crude terms, dickweeds.
Finally, before anyone decide to play "armchair psychologist" understand that:
(1) We have, at present, talked with five separate psychologists over the span of over a decade. Each have separately concluded:
(a) Our existence (as far as our multiplicity and nonhumanity) as it stands today does not meet criteria for any disorder,
(b) That our state as it is today does not constitute any clinically significant dysfunction to us socially, occupationally, or any other important areas of functioning,
(c) That just because our experience is deviant from the norm does not constitute concern on its own, and
(d) Any attempts to put an end to this state of ours would likely cause (or has caused) a great deal of distress or impairment in our ability to function.
(2) You (the reader) are not one of the various mental health professionals we have talked to one-on-one at various points in our life. Thereby,
(a) You do not know all the details of our state of being as it currently stand, and
(b) Do you know the details of history related our state of being, nor
(c) Are you in a position to accurately “diagnosis us” over the internet.
All of this means: Your internet opinion does not trump what real-life mental health professionals have said to us in a mental healthcare provider-to-patient capacity. We will not take kindly to anyone trying to undermine our mental healthcare because random people online don’t like their conclusions.