Does an official diagnosis help

I debated responding here as I will be the odd one out compared to most responses. Please don't anyone come at me (this is an experience; it doesn't invalidate yours, but people often come back at me to invalidate mine, and there is very little room currently for experiences that don't match the current narrative of diagnosis = happiness), but I do think it is important that more varied narratives are heard, so I'll share mine.

But NO, it made absolutely no difference or improvement to my existence at all, it may have made it worse. Initially, for about the first 6 months, I was happy (with the diagnosis). I thought I had an answer, but that feeling disappeared very quickly, and I realised it had given me no information about me at all.

I had no better sense of my strengths or weaknesses; people who knew would pretend to be 'neuro-affirming' but judged my 'autistic' characteristics that weren't 'useful' just as poorly, and were just as unforgiving (including people identifying/diagnosed autistic), there were lots of platitudes but, the moment I really needed support or even suggested basic adjustments there was nothing. Other, 'autistic' individuals turned out to be rather two-faced, I felt entirely out of place in the 'community', and I very quickly ended up in a worse mental state.

Since moving away from the diagnosis, I've been much better, much healthier and found other, much more enriched ways to gain self-understanding, awareness of my personality style and abilities, and to hold by my boundaries. I do not disclose if I can help it, and am highly ambivalent about whether I am 'autistic' or not. I actually requested that it be removed from my medical records - they can't, but they did write a note advising that it wasn't relevant. I paid for mine, so I don't feel I wasted NHS time by doing this, just my own money.

I think it's a diagnosis that can help people when it is applied appropriately, but I do worry that people place way too much value/investment/hope in it as the primary explanation of their sense of self these days or as some kind of panacea. I also dislike that people seem increasingly to be incapable of treating people well or with a bit of understanding and empathy for being a bit different (well, until they hear the person has a diagnosis, and even then, my experience has been that this is quite a superficial response, unless the person matches their version of 'autism').

Please, nobody shoot me, I'm glad for you if having a diagnosis made your day, but it may not work out that way for everybody.

I'm not going to shoot you and neither should anyone else.  I'm definitely here to here views from all sides and find it helpful as I'm still awaiting diagnosis, so thanks for posting up how it affected you.

Just reading others comments on being tested, people have said getting tested is a personal choice and I'm sorry it didn't work out well for you.  Personally, a confirmation will be a bit of a shield for me (I hope).  If I had a pound for everyone that told me I wasn't thinking in the right way.......  At 66, I now tell them I think how I like.

While banging on.....  I used to work for a computer company and we had breakfast meetings to discuss what's happening.  After one of the meetings, the sales guy came up to my desk and said 'you know I don't understand a word you say'  To be fair, he was a bit of a nob, but that's always stuck with me.  My thoughts were that I just use normal words and speak.  I do think in very lateral ways and can generate a solution to a problem almost instantly, without the sequential step by step approach of most people.

When you don't 'show your working out' people don't understand because they don't understand your thinking, and so they don't understand the solution as can't see how you got there.  Dunno why I spurted all that out

I'm not going to shoot you and neither should anyone else.  I'm definitely here to here views from all sides and find it helpful as I'm still awaiting diagnosis, so thanks for posting up how it affected you.

Just reading others comments on being tested, people have said getting tested is a personal choice and I'm sorry it didn't work out well for you.  Personally, a confirmation will be a bit of a shield for me (I hope).  If I had a pound for everyone that told me I wasn't thinking in the right way.......  At 66, I now tell them I think how I like.

While banging on.....  I used to work for a computer company and we had breakfast meetings to discuss what's happening.  After one of the meetings, the sales guy came up to my desk and said 'you know I don't understand a word you say'  To be fair, he was a bit of a nob, but that's always stuck with me.  My thoughts were that I just use normal words and speak.  I do think in very lateral ways and can generate a solution to a problem almost instantly, without the sequential step by step approach of most people.

When you don't 'show your working out' people don't understand because they don't understand your thinking, and so they don't understand the solution as can't see how you got there.  Dunno why I spurted all that out