Knowledge of your diagnosis. Does it help or hurt?

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Yes, my knowledge of having Asperger's has helped me. It has helped make sense to me (and to those close to me) the eccentricities of my life. After years of my life pondering why I was the way I was, I was finally able to relax because there is a reason for my ways.

Yes it helps. At least now I know why I have always been so weird .

Actually, the diagnosis illuminates for me all kinds of things about myself and why thing happened to me the way they did. I understand myself and the world much better now. Now that I have learned that things I was unconsciously doing for self-soothing from handflapping to pacing to talking to myself to watching the same movie over and over again to tripping out to my own world - instead of feeling embarrassed and trying to stop it - I am learning to consciously redirect these self-soothing repetitive behaviors in ways that maximize their tranquilizing effect.

I guess it's helped overall... but it's also made me acutely aware of how seriously screwed up I am in some ways. It's not that I wasn't aware before that I was different, but I guess I was... less painfully... aware of it.

It has helped me (not entirely sure how to mark that on your poll). It doesn't provide me any sort of services and I have only shared it with those closest to me, but knowing that I am Autistic has helped me to identify things that I struggle with. As a result I have been able to come up with some workarounds that help me function a bit better (though I still fail at social interaction and probably always will).

Oh, it's helped enormously. I'm just very glad to find out that there is a reason for my being who I am! I just deleted most of this post: I was starting to write my biography. It would be nice to have found out earlier, but that can't be changed at this point. It's really nice to know that I'm not a "bad person" and don't know how to change it. Now I can be who I am. Glad I lived long enough to find out.

Helped.

I'm surprised to hear not many of you feel that it has hurt. If it was me, I tend to dwell on things that people point out about me. I think if I knew I was autistic, I would dwell on that quite a bit and feel sorry for myself. Wasn't it nice for some of you to be painfully oblivious?

Knowledge of my diagnosis was tremendously helpful to me. Not only did it give me insight into why I am the way I am, it also let me know I wasn't alone in the world - that there's others with challenges just like me. That alone was of immense comfort.