There are young people who will tell you, quite seriously, that a part of them is a wolf, a dragon, or a creature that does not even exist in this world. They call themselves Otherkin, and on TikTok they already total millions of posts.
Carolina Cáceres, an academic at the Faculty of Psychology at UNIACC University, explains it without dramatizing: imagination, the search for identity, and the desire to belong to something can lead someone to see themselves reflected in a non-human being. It is not a disorder; it is a way of understanding oneself.
There is a nuance that few people know: Therians connect with real animals, Otherkin go further and include mythological creatures and fantasy characters. Two different ways of answering the same question we all ask ourselves at some point: who am I, really?