Phantom Limbs

With written approval from Chaitea in regards to her 'Phantom Draconic Features' thread. I didn't want to steal her thunder so she approves of this message. <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: -->

How do you, as a therian, experience phantom limbs? Also, is there a dominant phantom limb that's always there or do you get different parts depending on your mood? How do things like chairs, clothing, etc. affect them? Please share your experiences with phantom limbs! (And feel free to comment even if you're not a therian!)

Hmmm. The closest I get to phantom limbs is when I'm shifty, and even then... I don't know if it could be considered phantom limbs. Here's a description:

During a shift, I have the phantom sensation of my upper palate expanding and hollowing, as if into a beak; my tongue "feels" stubby and less mobile, making it occasionally difficult to talk; my arms feel most comfortable angled towards my back, fingers straight, shoulders rotated back, and it generally causes much discomfort verging on pain to bring them forward to type, write, or do anything requiring a lot of manual dexterity, especially in front of my body; my center of balance changes so that I am leaning forward (my friends generally say "Dani, you're perching" when I start doing this without realizing it); I walk on the balls of my toes; my legs feel wrongly proportioned. However, I can still generally keep ahold of human mindset and force myself to type and write and other uncomfortable actions; if I focus enough, I can get the phantom limbs to fade away or at least fade to the point where it isn't painful to do things that require manual dexterity.

My tail and ears - and other things - are always there, but normally i just ignore em - because otherwise i miss them too much.

Ears, claws and teeth are always there, and those are all.. I do very often miss having a tail, keeping balance without one is hard!

No clothes affect them, tho I feel my ears move with my mood and reactions. At times gloves feel uncomfy due to the claws, and sometimes my jaw seems to kind of adjust to my phantomteeth.

I'm not a therian, but I often feel my wings and can picture them in a variety of ways.

Hat makes me happy, feels like ears!
Tail is there, doesn't move a lot except during strooong shifts.
Hands and arms move more like paws and took me work to move them more "humanly" (humans swing their arms when they walk, sigh)
Why do I walk upright? My body says no!
No claws. No stability on ice. Sigh.
Shifts cause hackles on my back and neck. Sadly I can't see them <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s --> I sure can feel them!
I should be closer to the ground! People ask why I would rather sit on the ground with the dogs than in a chair. Hmmm. More comfy? Yup!
Who knows what's wolfie and what's comfort though!

Well, I'm always shifted into my ears. They never go away, but I like them. :3

Second most common would be tail, then paws (including forepaws and hindpaws). Tail really gets in the way a lot. It's difficult to sit in chairs comfortably. But my clothing never seems to bother any of my phantom shifts. I generally wear very tight clothing and it almost becomes my skin, in a way. But I refuse to wear anything on my head. It bothers my ears to no end.

I also shift into teeth, facial structure, and some other bodily structure (back, legs, etc), but these are more rare.

Nousagi Wrote:I also shift into teeth, facial structure,

Wow, that must be quite strange to experience - has that affected the way you've eaten or spoken when you've shifted?


Myself? I'm not a therian, but when I 'switch' to Blake, I feel a lack of weight on my chest (I know a lot of girls look over the weight of their chest anyway, but Blake's is to the point of breasts 'not being there' and it feels pretty strange) and occasionally I've felt phantom genetalia, but it's generally something I overlook unless I'm concentrating on feeling phantom-limb sensations or if I'm wearing tight clothing on my lower-half.

Clothes do affect this a little, yes - as well as the example I gave above, there are a couple of others. Blake generally prefers to wear tighter-fitting, chunkier shoes - Lishie likes to walk on her tip-toes and therefore can wear high-heels, but Blake walks 'flat-footed'. The heavier shoes feel less 'feminine', and Blake's happy with that. He doesn't have any large problems with the body wearing female clothing, but if he fronts in the morning he's more likely to reach for 'masculine/androgynous' baggier clothing.

momo Wrote:

Nousagi Wrote:I also shift into teeth, facial structure,

Wow, that must be quite strange to experience - has that affected the way you've eaten or spoken when you've shifted?

I hestitate sometimes when I'm about to take a bite of something, because I wonder what's the best way to position it. But I actually have permanent retainers on both my top and bottom front teeth, so I actually can't bite most things off with them. (Which is really weird for me, especially when I'm ph-shifted there.)

I tend to stumble over my words more. They just don't seem to come out right at those times. It helps though if I slow down and annunciate my words moreso than normal.

But in both cases, I know at those times that I'm not truly physically different. So it becomes a mind over.. well, mind incident. I mentally need to surpass what I'm feeling to function more normally, because it's just a trick of the mind.

By the way, I think it would feel incredibly strange to phantom shift so wholly into another gender. Awkward.

Well, since my last reply I've had some experience with ph-shifts involving tigers, so let's see. When I'm mad I often get claws and fangs. When I'm feeling like a workout, I feel like my muscle structure changes (obviously it doesnt) and like my shoulderblade should be working differently. Sometimes I randomly get phantom fur and/or stripes, occasionally a tail, and more often paws. More recently I've also felt like I have a muzzle, but whether that's tiger or gargoyle I'm not sure since my gargoyle form is more of a lion-dragon hybrid looking gargoyle.