I Don’t Know If It Has To Do With The Neurodivergence Or The Nonhumanity But My Relationship With Pets

On a purely physical level, I love our jaws. Snakes have incredibly flexible jaws which we use to consume prey that’s too large for the average mouth. I just think that’s neat.

I love that so many of us (changelings) are capable of shapeshifting. I find it a very interesting phenomenon. The ways in which we are (and aren’t) able to blend in with humans is fascinating too.

Physical nonhumans, holotheres, supernaturals and any other physical nonhumans, tell me your favorite thing about your biological species that you might think is underrated by others.

So many aspects of your biology feel so special to the self that others might overlook, especially if your kind is generally underrated. Few think about rabbits and hares with the same sense of importance as a hare or a rabbit itself.

Each creature has its own therocentric beliefs and thoughts, the same way humans are very anthropocentric in their view of the value of humanity. Tell me about what you find beautiful about your kind, regardless of if you're elf, alien, zombie, animal or shifter.

It is actually completely valid to feel saddened and frustrated by how nonhumanity and therianthropy have been reduced to masks, quadrobics, and tails. It’s an extremely personal experience, and now all we get is this same type of content over and over again that feels like roleplaying and dress up. It feels so synthetic and strictly made for others, and it’s fine if you’re mad at the lack of actual experiences and talk of actual nonhuman feelings that aren’t just “I wanna go home to the forest” “look at my mask/paws/tail” “managed to do this quads jump today”. I don’t believe that that’s the only time you feel shifty. I don’t. And I want to hear more about your daily experiences about your nonhumanity, how it affects you, what makes you euphoric. I want back originality and actually talking about your experiences that aren’t conventional and the same with everyone (as much as they might be similar in the general nonhumanity aspect).

Hiya :) you're valid if you still partially identify as human. You can like drinking a perfect coffee while also like running free through an open field. Human things are enjoyable just as animal things are enjoyable! :)

Made a meme about my experience with autism, and it seemed to resonate with people on Reddit so... here ya go.

Raise your hand (or reblog) if your life would be easier as your kintype/theriotype ✋

Holothere

Holothere

a nonhuman label that describes individuals who are physically nonhuman

HOLOTHERE

[hol-oh-thyr / hɒləʊðɪr] from greek: "holo-"=entirely ; "ther"=animal,beast noun

1. A self-identifier term for individuals who are physically and fundamentally nonhuman in every way.

"I am holothere, i am and was born a selkie" "I am a bear holothere, but i also have a theriotyope so i identify as a therian when it comes to my non-physical animal aspects."

Holothere was created in the lack for an actual term for physical nonhumans, regardless of whether they consider their physical species a result of delusion(s) or don't experience them at all. It is meant to help those who are physically other find each-other and unite, in a way, under a term. _____________________________________________ NOTE that holothery does not inherently describe transformations, or the ability to transform. Some might, some don't and simply exist as they are; the term holothere only describes individuals who are nonhuman in every sense, not the ability to teach becoming nonhuman.

"Holothere" was made to be distinct from therian, otherkin and alterhuman communities and terms, although one might also have non-physical identities and view themselves as both therian/otherkin and holothere.

FAQ

affirmations

i am so good at pretending to be human

my human disguise looks basically just like the real thing

i can withstand the feeling of my wings and tail being cramped for several hours in a row

it's really normal or even cute when i growl

i can easily partake in human conversations

people don’t talk about vocal stimming enough, in my opinion. haha like vocal stimming is the best. i always have to do it alone cause it usually annoys my family, but still i just love to just go and “aaaaaaaaAAAAaaAaAaaAaa” it’s somehow so refreshing

Psychosis is 3x more common in autistic people than in the general population. Why?

This is a question that scientists are trying to answer. There’s not enough research on the comorbidity of autism and psychosis to be sure exactly what all of the reasons are for this overlap, but there are some interesting facts about it that I’ll outline here.

Psychosis is a symptom, which is composed of a constellation of smaller symptoms. Psychosis can be caused by schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but it can also be caused by mood disorders, stress, illness, and substance abuse. And research seems to be showing that autism might be a factor in developing psychosis as well.

...

I have always been interested in the connection between psychosis and autism. One of my uncles has a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, which was diagnosed after he went to a psychiatrist to be evaluated for autism- the reason he went in being that he saw himself in me, and wondered if he might be autistic, too. Turns out, he has psychosis.

Within the past few years, I have also been experiencing symptoms associated with psychosis. It would be very difficult for me to accurately identify any “negative” symptoms of psychosis, given that I already experience executive dysfunction, fatigue, sleep & appetite changes, etc. due to my ADHD and physical health problems. However, what I have been noticing are “positive” symptoms of psychosis. Namely: hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia.

My most frequent auditory hallucinations are of my alarm clock, and the cricket alarm on my iPhone. I hear them clearly, as if they’re coming from outside my head, at random periods throughout the day and in different locations, when the actual alarms aren’t going off. Around two years ago, I hallucinated a stranger’s voice calling me into another room. I was extremely confused and disoriented by this, as I got up to look around but nobody was there. I haven’t heard any voices since then, which is good.

I often hallucinate scents associated with significant people, places, and memories, even when those people aren’t present and I’m not in a location where the smell would naturally occur. At first I thought this could be chalked up to migraine aura or something like that, but I don’t get migraines.

I’ve also had extreme “sensed presence” hallucinations where I feel like someone is watching me even though there’s nobody else in the room. At times, this hallucination has fed into paranoid thoughts that there are cameras in my shower drain, etc.

My main delusion in episodes I’ve had in the past has involved the extreme significance of certain numbers and symbols. At the time, I didn’t think anything was wrong. In fact, I was convinced that I was on track to uncover the pattern that organizes everything in the universe, and all of my interpersonal relationships. As part of this delusion I would vocally repeat certain numbers (as a strategy to figure out what they meant), and spend copious amounts of time writing down all of my “findings” in Google documents and notebooks. At one point, I ended up writing down a bunch of dates in a row and adding up all of the digits to discover how they were connected to the numbers 4, 5, and 7, which I had decided were the most important numbers in my life. Looking back on the Google document I stored the data in, I have absolutely no clue what my thought process was at the time.

...

So, I’ve been wondering what all of this means.

When I start putting the pieces together to examine my own life, things start to make some sense.

First, as I mentioned earlier, autistic people are 3x more likely to develop psychosis than the general population. Obviously, that statistic is relevant to my situation, since I’m autistic.

But I’m not just autistic. I also have a decent handful of mental illnesses, each of which overlap and carry their own risk factors for psychosis. The main ones I’ll be talking about here are severe generalized anxiety/panic disorder, OCD, and BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). I consider my OCD and BPD to be ~spicy spinoffs~ of anxiety, because they have the same root cause: my anxious, socially traumatized brain. We’ll get to that in a bit.

For now, here are some statistics:

A study conducted in 2012 found that psychotic symptoms were present in 27% of people with anxiety and/or depression.

A study conducted in 2014 found that people with OCD are around 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia than the general population.

A study conducted in 2017 found that 43% of people with BPD experience hallucinations, and stated that other studies have found prevalence rates of hallucinations in BPD ranging from 26% to 54%.

...

So alright, great, I’ve got a lot of risk factors. But what caused me to have those risk factors/mental illnesses in the first place? Let’s look at this specifically from an autistic lens. I’ve already talked about a lot of this in my “Autism and Mental Health” post on our Instagram, but these statistics are worth repeating in this context:

Around 40% of autistic people meet criteria for one or more anxiety disorders at any given time, compared to only 15% of the general population.

Autistic people are 4x more likely than neurotypicals to be clinically depressed at some point in their lives.

Autistic people are 4x more likely than the general population to experience severe loneliness.

Autistic people are 3x more likely than the general population to experience maltreatment (a catch-all term for various forms of abuse).

A study conducted in 2012 found that 63% of autistic children had been bullied, and were 3x more likely to be bullied than their neurotypical siblings.

And what does the research say about the long-term effects of bullying and abuse?

According to a 2012 study, children who are bullied by their peers are at an increased risk of developing Borderline Personality Disorder. And BPD is, as previously established, a risk factor for developing psychosis.

According to a 2014 study, people who were bullied in childhood are 11x more likely to develop anxiety disorders in adulthood, but especially OCD. And, as previously mentioned, people with OCD are 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia.

But the link between bullying and psychosis gets even more explicit than that.

A 2013 study found that children who had been bullied were 2x more likely to experience psychosis symptoms than typical controls, and that children experiencing first-time psychotic episodes were 2x more likely than typical controls to report having been bullied in the past.

...

This is not to say that being bullied and abused is the only reason why autistic people sometimes develop psychosis. There are obviously a great deal of different factors, some genetic & biological, that lead to the development of mental illness. But the role of trauma and other social/environmental factors can’t be discounted.

If two people are exposed to the same negative experience, it’s possible that one will become traumatized and one won’t. That’s because one person may have been genetically/biologically predisposed to have heightened fear responses to environmental stimuli, while the other person didn’t have the same predisposition. Yet, the genetically predisposed person would not have been traumatized if they had not experienced the negative event.

I was bullied as a child. I was also abused. Both of those things deeply affected me, because I’m autistic and therefore hypersensitive. The trauma caused me to develop BPD and severe abandonment anxiety, which often feeds into paranoia. My generalized anxiety also morphed into OCD, which caused me to have disturbing intrusive thoughts, and compulsions. All of this predisposed me to develop psychosis. And in the past few years, *surprise*, I’ve started having psychotic symptoms.

When I look back on my life experiences and how they interacted with my autistic brain & positive family history of psychosis, none of this is surprising. It actually makes perfect sense. And because it makes perfect sense, in a way I’m reassured. My hallucinations and delusions fit the pattern, so there’s no need for me to be scared. I know why this is happening. The trajectory is predictable. And if I keep taking care of myself and monitoring symptoms, I know I’ll be alright.

~Eden🐢

you ever just get super thirsty, guzzle half a water bottle, and think “aa yes this will sustain me for the next month”