Some otherkin have kintypes that they consider to also be linked to past lives. Some consider their soul to have been reincarnated into their human body and that’s why they’re otherkin. This means that some otherkin will remember their past life, and sometimes this seemingly happens all once during their ‘awakening’. Many people, when they first discover their past lives, want to seek out others who they knew. They search high and low, dip in and out of otherkin and past life communities, sifting through forum post after forum post, digging up old mail and email lists, encountering one false alarm after another. Many searches end fruitless and the person moves on with their life, while some people find just one or two people they know and continue on with their human life.

Personally, I don’t encourage searching for people you knew in a past life now. It was the past, people change, some people don’t ever remember you, and there’s no point clinging to what was. I’m not going to look for the village elders I once knew, they are gone, dead. I will treasure my memory of them, and I will miss them, but I will not search for them again. Things will never be the same as back then, there’s no point trying to live an old life when that life is gone. I’m here and I’m human, time to live.

Here are some tips if you do want to search around-

1. Don’t hassle the communities
Ask around, find forums, chat groups and such, but don’t start bugging people. There’s curiosity and then there’s obsession. Be respectful, be patient, message people in private, don’t have your ‘confirming conversations’ in full public view. Not everyone’s searching too, not everyone’s from the safe life as you, not everyone cares about you. Don’t be the kind of person that’s entrance makes others leave the group chat, it hurts your chances of finding anyone and also hurts your overall reputation.
Don’t start unrelated conversation or pester unrelated groups. If you were a dragon in a past life and are looking for your rival dragon, don’t go into the daemon community or prehistoric mammal therianthrope community and ask for other dragons. Likewise, don’t ask about draconic past lives in a community for cute cat pictures. There’s a time and a place for everything, people are more likely to engage in active, positive conversation when they aren’t frustrated because of your constant topic derailment.

2. Don’t ask leading questions
One of the easiest ways for someone to lie to you is if you ask leading questions. In other words, questions that have a significant portion of the answer within them. They won’t have to think much about an answer, you do the thinking for them. All they have to do is repeat back what you ask.
When you’re asking around don’t say “I’m from the south corner of Atlantis, I had long white hair tied back in a bob, pointed ears, wore a dark blue tunic with silver highlights, and walked with a limp. Is my wife here? She had short silver hair, yellow eyes, pointed ears, wore flowing blue and purple robes with golden highlights, and loved to sing and arrange the green herbs and flowers. We used to visit the clay gardens together nearly daily”. Instead say “I’m from Atlantis, are there any other Atlantians around to chat about past lives with?”
Withhold your information, withhold your past life. Give people the most basic of information, don’t elaborate unnecessarily. You want them to fill in the hard blanks that you intentionally leave.

3. Watch out for manipulative behaviour
Stranger danger, it should go without saying. People lie, people manipulate, people backstab, and people steal. A person you meet on the internet could claim to know you, but actually is lying through their teeth to take advantage of you. Not everyone is 100% honest.
Don’t succumb to the “I just met you, we were lovers in a past life, I’ve got no cash left in my bank account, can I have a quick buck, I’ll pay you back later.”
Don’t just follow them like a love-struck puppy, make use of hindsight and think about their actions objectively. This person is a stranger you’ve just met and never seen before, be cautious. Don’t be afraid to call them out on bad behaviour. They may actually be someone you were best friends with in your past life, but people can change.
If you’re a minor, don’t just go meeting them in real life without backup (school friends, parents, etc.) or a second opinion/parental guardian permission. If you’re an adult, don’t just sacrifice your job and this life and go hop on a plane to meet them. Have patience, spend a year or two getting to know them first. You have the time.

4. Don’t give out your (human) personal information
Like number 3, it should also go without saying to not give away your full name, home address, phone number, passport details or any identifying pictures (especially if you are a minor). This person may say they know you, but how can you trust a stranger on the internet you just met? Con artists and scammers exist, and they have no qualms in getting their daily bread at your expense.
Meeting someone who may be ‘the one’ is exciting, and things can be swept up in a wild flurry of emotions, when you’re in that state it doesn’t take much to overlook a selfie here and a birthdate there. Remember to count the days you’ve been in contact with them and be aware of how much information you are sharing. Also remember to make sure their information they give is consistent, if they say they’re a cis female one day then they’re agender the next, call them out on it.

5. Don’t feel bad if you can’t find anyone
The chances of actually finding someone are impossibly slim. Imagine the sheer amount of reincarnation going on 24/7, now add in more than one universe. Who’s to say your friend will end up in the same universe let alone in the same lifetime as you while you search? Or even in the same country, speaking the same language, near your age, remembering that life with you, searching as well, and wanting to meet you?
First the chances of finding someone is slim, then the chances of meeting them face to face is also equally slim. If you are a minor, good luck trying to go overseas, or travel anywhere far without a stable income, plus the addition of attending and focusing on school makes things almost impossible. As an adult, do you really want to dish out your hard-earned cash and take precious time off work to go travelling? What if you’re still in university? What if you’re homeless?
If you somehow even manage to find and meet up with someone, what if you don’t like each other now? What if you hate who they are now? Remember, the person you remember is from a past life, they will be different now. And what if you can’t stay together for long? You’ve just found them again, can you deal with leaving them after all that effort?

To conclude; when people first find out they’ve got a past life, they may want to find the people they once knew. Such a challenge can be a long and perilous journey, including monetary costs, travelling physical distances and many days of being strung along by posers, with the only reward being you’ve found a person you once knew. It can be fulfilling, it can be disheartening, you can even give up or never try and still have a happy and satisfying life. If there’s one thing you come away from this; past lives can be complicated so you need to be smart about them.

This can be considered a short essay/rant on the current status of a community topic.
It seems to me that these days otherkin, and those questioning, place such a heavy burden on phantom limbs. “You’re not otherkin unless you have phantom limbs”, “I have phantom wings so my kintype must be winged”, “I’ve never had phantom limbs so I must not really be otherkin”, “If you don’t have phantom limbs you’re just faking it/wishing it” etc. Some people are turned away from communities if they don’t experience phantom limbs, some people are berated and shunned because they don’t experience phantom limbs, and some people convince themselves they are (or are not) otherkin because they do (or do not) experience phantom limbs.
Otherkin is having a nonhuman identity. Nowhere in there is phantom limbs stated to be a prerequisite. Not every otherkin experiences phantom limbs.

Something that otherkin these days seem to ignore when placing phantom limbs on a pedestal is that ‘non-otherkin’ can experience them too. The brain often tricks itself into/by emulating various senses (see: imagination, dreams, hallucination, etc.), phantom limbs can be thought of as simply a more ‘complex’ version of this. By focusing on a limb or kintype, an otherkin can trick themselves into experiencing phantom limbs or other shifts. People can also trick others into feeling extra limbs too (see: rubber hand experiment).

Phantom limbs, and shifts in general can be easily fabricated unconsciously or consciously by the brain under the right circumstances. There’s even a name for it; cameo shifting.

Phantom limbs don’t make you otherkin, how you perceive them and their cause is what ‘makes you otherkin’. Even then, it doesn’t really make you otherkin, it’s just typically effected by your identity. Any old Joe can experience what they think are ‘phantom limbs’ and those that aren’t otherkin can have an ‘altered’ body maps (see: body dysmorphia, trans* communities, clinical lycanthropy etc.). Some people feel wings from slouching or bad posture, some people get weird legs or feet from sitting on them, some people get pointed ears or horns from wearing headphones or tight headgear, and some people self-induce them by obsessing over otherkin and wanting to be otherkin. All of these can be perceived as ‘phantom limbs’ by people.
Anyone can self-induce phantom limbs if they try hard enough. It is highly not recommended as altering your body map and perception can have serious consequences (you are literally altering your perception of reality and how you perceive yourself to interact with it. In other words; you’re willingly self-inducing a delusion. What’s to say self-inducing fangs won’t then lead to speech problems? Things can actually spiral out of control, paranoia about reality being the whale that swallows minds quick. Seriously, changing your ‘reality’ can be a dangerous slippery slope.). I can’t stop people from self-inducing things, just as I can’t stop people from breathing or playing football, and I know I sometimes ‘play pretend’ to make myself feel more comfortable, but be aware of the potential dangers and what you’re actually doing.

Strong, continuous willpower/belief gets you nearly everywhere when it comes to altering perception i.e. self-inducing phantom limbs. Believe it and you’ll feel it. If you truly believe for long and hard enough, your brain will eventually fill in the blanks for you. How you reach that willpower/belief varies from person to person: some use music, some do guided meditation, some just focus on it, some dream, some remember the feeling from a past life, and some just recognise they’re otherkin then “poof” phantom limbs, the list can go on. Making them ‘go away’ is the difficult part since it feels real (try believing you don’t have a mouth or an arm).

Overall; people seem to glorify phantom limbs when they’re actually quite uncomfortable and boring, and, not everyone that experiences them are otherkin and not every otherkin experiences them. Otherkin is a varied experience, focusing on just one aspect only and basing your entire identity around it is dangerous and narrow-minded.


Some further reading, not owned or done by me, on phantom limbs and supernumerary limbs (please read through their sources also for even further reading)-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernumerary_phantom_limb
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3468806/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102884/
https://therian.fandom.com/wiki/Phantom_Shift
https://therian.fandom.com/wiki/Shifter%27s_Disease
http://project-shift.net/on-cameo-shifting/