Is Therianthropy the source of our experiences or a descriptor of them?

I wasn't sure whether this was agreed on in the community and I just wanted to ask for some clarity as I've seen the term 'Therianthropy' used in both contexts!

Basically, do you think that:

- "Therianthropy is a term which describes my set of experiences as my theriotype (such as shifts)"

or

- "Therianthropy is an innate quality that I have which is the source of my therian experiences (such as shifts)"

It's a bit of a "chicken and the egg" scenario. Do therian experiences make a therian? Or does therianthropy cause therian experiences? The way we discover our own theriotypes suggests the former - i.e. "I am a wolf therian because I experience wolf like qualities in shifts", but I've also heard it talked about as something innate too, as the mechanisms by which our experiences occur.

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quick edit because apparently i didn't proofread lmao-

I personally see it as a descriptor. I am not spiritual, so i do not believe in an innate soul or something similar to this. I call myself a roadrunner because it is the closest animal that matches my experiences, and i did not start this journey even knowing i was specifically a bird.
To me, my experiences are what define me as a therianthrope. If i stopped completely having those experiences, i would most likely just start calling my theriotype a heart-type. This makes it hard to differenciate from cameos, but my cameos have always kinda been spurred by something in my environment while my therianthropic experiences just happens on their own.

@Hemlock I completely agree with you here; I feel the same about my being a crow. I think there's some interesting introspection to be done on if our experiences as a roadrunner and a crow have a definable source but, while we're unsure of that, therianthropy is in my view a useful term to say "I'm not sure what we're experiencing but its the same thing as this whole community is experiencing".

I lean a bit more towards my therianthropy being something more innate because it's very integrated in my life. My therianthropy has no traceable cause; not as the result of trauma, not imprinting, etc. My parents have videos of me acting animalistic before I could even form memories. I'm constantly shifted to some degree, and the way I see and understand the world is very much through a wolf lens and always has been. If you were to take my therianthropy away, I would lose the core of who I am.