That is a fair question @skippi
I think it just provides a comfort knowing exactly what we are. Humans putting labels to things gives them structure within our current reasoning. I don't think that the intensity of either one matters as much as simply knowing which one it is and why it exists. Yet this is from my perspective, everyone yet has a different perspective on different things.

This is an idea I tried to get at with a previous thread of mine, but you said it in a much more clear and eloquent way. It's also something I've been thinking about myself a lot as I once again question my identity/theriotype.
After reading through this thread though, I have to wonder how much your specific theriotype even matters? I personally gain euphoria from anything that makes me feel less human. Does it matter if I identify more as a dog or a cat or a horse or anything else?

I believe my therianthropy comes from being neurodivergent and traumatic experiences. During most traumatic experiences in my life I've had house hold pets or strays outside that could keep me company and that I learned a ton from. Those animals were my family in a way, and still are by how what I learned from them sticks with me.

When this whole life thing gets really challenging for me I just go outside and learn about animals and plants (nature) through reading and observation. I'm not a huge quads. guy, but if I ever do them it's while I'm outside connecting with myself. Learning and ESP observing is oddly enough an introspective practice of mine that allows me to connect with and understand who I am as a therian/animal.

Probably linked to being autistic and always feeling different from everyone else?
It’s always been a part of me, and I think it always will!

Over the years my personal definition of therianthropy has definitely loosened from what it was when I was 12-14. Having met so many people who are not even close to feeling appealed to therianthropy or wishing to be an animal at all makes me realize that the difference between therian and non-therian is wide enough that questions of voluntary or involuntary become somewhat..meaningless.? The answer is more consistency in the feeling and identity. I think as you grow up (or at least as I grew up), there is a frequent inward checking on whether you're "actually" therian, no matter how different you are from your peers as a baseline. And of course, a lot of young critters growing up therian may phase out as they reach late teen years and adulthood. For any number of reasons. Whether or not they still resonate with the term "therian" or might be considered by some omniscient force as Therian depends on whether or not they want to reconnect with that part of them in adulthood. So in that sense, is it voluntary? It is so hard to know what is voluntary and involuntary unless it is a negative experience, from what I can tell, and so it comes back to consistent connection/tapping into the identity and not getting bogged down by the humannness and exhaustion of daily life.

Similarly to the suspected cause of transgender (Differences in the brain making it more like that of the opposite gender), I feel like it's differences in the brain that connects said person to what they kin.

For us it's the result of trauma, as we have DID/OSDD. We can trace why and when our animal alters split, and it's based on either responses to abuse or places where we felt safe (e.g. our fox alters split in response to physical abuse, out otter alter split due to feeling safe at the beach). But we do wonder if we hadn't been abused, whether we would have felt inherently non human in some way anyway, just not as separate alters, but in a more 'normal' therian/otherkin experience. For example we have a male and female version of our human host, and are fully convinced that had our male and female sides not split due to abuse, we would have been genderfluid in the 'normal' sense. Also many beings with DID have fully human systems, so why do some have non-human alters and others don't? We are neurodiverse (ADHD) which may have a factor in it. It's ultimately impossible to say. We do also like the idea of a spiritual connection to non-humanness, particularly since two of our alters are spiritual beings.

Well speaking as a spiritual and psychological therian, I believe most of my Theriotypes are caused by some past life that has left me confused in my current given one.
Yet, I have always felt a strange connection, even as a kid the wanting to be a wolf so much so that I imitated behaviors of the like. I had believed with little understanding of who I was (of course young and knew little about the literal) and had thought there was the ability to transform into one. It had faded throughout a certain amount of years and then came back to my understanding of what therianthropy is.
Some say its caused by nuerodivergency, others just simply a part of themselves. But in the end, it is a personal experience through everyone. No snowflake is exactly the same.

As a therian I don't personally identify with the alterhuman community. I don't think therians need to be grouped in this way and I don't think anyone who identifies purley as alterhuman actually understands what therianthropy, otherkinnity or other of the "sub-group's" experiences actually are, or what makes a therian a therian.


However if you're asking what I think my therianthropy is caused by, and just worded it poorly...

I believe therianthropy is an example of convergent evolution. I think our human biological traits and learned (aka environmentally introduced) behaviours come together to make us more similar to the animal of our theriotype(s) than other humans and that this is therianthropy.

We are biologically (genetically) human and we live human lives. These are the things that affect who we become. Because we live in the same environment as certain animals, we are inclined to come up with the same solutions as them to life's challenges. This can make us so similar to them, that living life in accordance with how they do might feel much more natural to us than forcing ourselves to do things as other humans do.

I believe this effect has been present throughout history, but it's been only recently that humanity has felt a need to classify and label every aspect of our identity, that we've given it a name: "therianthropy".

LP,
Dusty

I’m not even entirely certain myself. I guess if I had to call myself something, I’d say I’m a psychological therian. I don’t really believe in past lives or anything like that. But I’ve always wondered if there isn’t some kind of quantum/cosmic reasoning behind it. I’m open to entertaining the idea of something bigger than myself, but I’m not going to lie and say I have it all figured out.