And I suppose that you are also fundamentally misunderstanding me as well. So let's try one more time to clear this up once and for all.
"What I am actually warning against is that there is a very real specific group of predatory people on this website who are actively seeking out people who are primed to believe that physical shapeshifting might be possible, and abusing and exploiting those people because they hold that belief.
I am telling you that it is dangerous to listen to anyone who is entertaining the possibility of physical shapeshifting for the same reason your parents told you not to get into a stranger's car no matter what they offered you. Because while some people who do that may not mean you harm, I know for a fact that some of them do mean you harm.
And I am telling you that you shouldn't encourage that belief for the same reason you shouldn't park outside of a school and offer to give children candy if they get in your car. Because it gives them a false sense of security when you didn't hurt them, and it makes you look like a predator parked in a community which has had and continues to have kids hurt by that behavior."
Nobody should have to dull down or hide their identities or beliefs just because predatory people can and have used those identities or beliefs to exploit vulnerable individuals. Full stop.
Again, if somebody is promising something like "everyone who is a real nonhuman can physically shapeshift" or "i can teach you how to physically shapeshift," that's a problem - just like if somebody is promising something like "everyone who is a real therian/nonhuman can have phantom shifts" or "i can teach you how to have phantom shifts" (though I'm sure that second one will be controversial because it is incredibly prevalent in our community, and I strongly believe that it shouldn't be. but that's a different conversation lol). THAT is similar to the allegory of a stranger offering you something to lure you into their car.
What is NOT similar to that allegory is individuals literally just existing publicly in their personal beliefs/identities, nor is the case of somebody letting individuals who already experience those differing realities know that their realities are no less valid than the commonly experienced reality. Those who experience these things are allowed to hold community with one another, and anyone else is allowed to accept and acknowledge that those who experience these things exist as perfectly valid members of our community. The real danger there comes when they make promises about other individuals outside of themselves/outside of others who are already like them that cannot be kept.
"Less importantly (because it's more rare and less urgent), there's also a subset of people whose delusions go way further than you know about and they actually do need help because their beliefs actually are dangerous to themselves or others, but when you validated the one belief you knew about, you also validated all the other beliefs you don't know about and convinced them that they don't need therapy, they just need to get a gun and kill the government agents (their neighbors) who are spying on them because they're part of a secret project."
First of all, that is I would say that is extremely important and incredibly urgent. You're talking about people who are experiencing very dangerous delusions that genuinely have full capacity to cause extraordinarily serious harm. It doesn't matter how common or uncommon it is, it is always important and always urgent.
As I said in my own post, though:
"It's when those differing perceptions of reality start causing distress, paranoia, self destructive or violent behaviors that they actually become legitimately harmful. If someone's perception of reality starts becoming harmful after they came to accept an otherwise harmless perception of reality, then yes, that needs to be treated with care just like any other harmful delusion."
We do not suppress or deny one person's otherwise harmless beliefs just because someone somewhere might use those beliefs to justify or validate their own harmful beliefs; we take action (wherever/however possible) when a harmful belief arises regardless of how or why it arose.
That does NOT mean these instances are any less important or urgent, nor does it mean they should not be considered as we continue having these conversations - in fact, I would argue they actually become more important as we advocate more for people to have the option to live in their own benign realities.
Chances for these situations to arise do increase, even just incrementally, by taking the route of acknowledging and respecting otherwise harmless differing perceptions of reality. What that means, though, is that everyone needs to be more aware of how to handle situations where someone is experiencing harmful perceptions that may cause them to act violently toward themselves or others. We need stronger awareness of how to utilize techniques such as approaching their perceptions with curiosity and understanding rather than outright denial, techniques such as redirection, and whatever else other individuals may find helpful when it comes to combating their harmful delusions. (Frankly, I believe this should be the case anyways - more people need to be aware of how to handle these things, because the belief that the best way to treat harmful delusions [or delusions in general] is to combat them or reality check them is still incredibly pervasive.)
Otherwise, beyond that, it just means that we cannot let the fact that things like this might happen dictate how anyone else gets to express their benign experience of existing in their body, whatever that body might look like or feel like to them, nor does it mean that anyone who acknowledges that these experiences exist at all should stay silent about it in the face of those who try to deny that they exist.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the very real stress and (correct me if I am wrong) trauma you have around the experience that you mentioned - that is a truly terrifying situation to be put in. I understand that this is strongly informing your feelings and beliefs about this topic, and I absolutely don't want to invalidate your personal experiences. The problem is that you are also in part using your own experiences to stigmatize and invalidate the experiences of others in a way that is also causing very real harm, especially to psychotic individuals/those who experience psychosis who just want to exist for once without being associated with predatory or malicious behavior. I don't think either of us is intentionally, as you said, "playing with other peoples' mental health," but ultimately when we have difficult conversations like these, various peoples' mental health will be inadvertently affected no matter how sensitive we try to be.
Back to the matter at hand, though-
The more likely (and likely enough to be a serious concern) scenario is that they jump off a roof because you encouraged them to think they're a bird.
You're absolutely right - this is where things get really tricky and significantly more nuanced. If someone who holds the belief that they are physically a bird expresses that they feel the need and fully intend to literally jump off the roof and fly, I think that's where it starts to veer more toward a harmful belief rather than a harmless one. Whether the intention of the thought or feeling is to cause harm to the individual themself, if they act on that thought/feeling, we know that it will almost certainly cause them harm. This is where tools like redirection might come in handy.
There are also those, however, who experience extremely strong, lucid visions, memories, or feelings that they have or currently are, for example, flying, though, without actually putting themselves in physical danger. It could come in the form of a lucid dream in which they, as their flying theriform identity, climbed up onto a roof, jumped, and flew around for a while - while those in commonly recognized reality might recognize it as a lucid dream, the one who experienced it might recognize it as something that genuinely happened. That same belief could come in the form of a memory, even if it never "actually happened" in commonly recognized reality. Sometimes, they might even feel like it is literally happening at that exact moment even if those existing in commonly recognized reality aren't perceiving the same thing. In these cases, while it would be harmful to insist that yeah sure they should be able to just go jump off a roof and fly any time they want, it could also be harmful to deny or try to disprove whatever experience they are describing.
Whether or not those experiences should be discussed openly in public is a question I can't fully answer. Even if those experiences were not harmful to that individual, do they have a significantly higher chance of inadvertently causing a different more vulnerable individual (especially children) to do something that could be dangerous? Definitely. Without a doubt. Should these individuals also have the right to speak to their experience however they experience it so long as they are not actively encouraging others to do things that would almost certainly cause themselves harm or could almost certainly kill them? That's where I have some more difficult ethical thoughts and questions. There has to be some kind of a middle ground between these two things, one that isn't restrictive but also avoids causing harm as much as possible.
...unconventional beliefs that some people may or may not interpret as delusions, which does not include physical shapeshifting...
Re: Unconventional Beliefs Do Not Include Physical Shapeshifting - I want to bring up a point that someone who reblogged one of my comments on this post brought up in the tags. There are various cultures in the world that believe/have believed in literal physical shapeshifting, or the existence of literal physical shapeshifters. Physical shapeshifting absolutely does fall under the category of "unconventional beliefs" ("conventional beliefs" being beliefs held by modern western colonialist society/societies who have been dramatically altered by 'western' colonialism). To automatically disqualify it as such is a culturally insensitive statement rooted in colonialist mindsets and ideals (assuming that what you meant by this was not "this is a legitimate belief in various cultures now and throughout history" instead meant "this is always a harmful delusion.") (Huge thank you to lightinlimbo for bringing this up - this is a genuinely extremely important aspect of this conversation and it's one that I'll admit even I had not initially considered)
By all means, if you have actual friends who you know well who have delusions like like these (or unconventional beliefs that some people may or may not interpret as delusions, which does not include physical shapeshifting), be supportive of them when talking to them directly and (please don't actively encourage their delusions either) don't invalidate their beliefs. But don't get up on a platform and pretend you know what's right and what's safe for random strangers on social media.
Rounding all of this out, what's right and what's safe truly will differ for every single person. We've already acknowledged this. But using that fact to insist that acknowledging, accepting, and destigmatizing the existence of benign delusions/differing perceptions of reality is automatically intrinsically harmful just is not the right call. I know of so many individuals who feel that this movement toward acceptance and destigmatization has been extremely beneficial if not even deeply healing for them. It has always been less about actively encouraging the belief and more about just letting it be, more about saying "oh, that's an interesting perception of reality" and moving on if it's not a perception you share.
That's what the original post was saying all along. There are those who hold different perceptions of their physical body than what others might perceive. Those individuals are no less valid about their beliefs than anyone else, no matter if those beliefs stem from delusions or not. We cannot and should not speak for all nonhuman identifying folks by saying "but they know they're physically human" or anything else of the sort. Some do not know that, some do not believe that, and those who don't know it or don't believe it should never be told what they should or should not believe, nor should they be barred from/hidden from the broader community simply because some bad actors have utilized/continue to utilize similar beliefs for ill-intentioned purposes.
