About wanting a diagnosis without requiring real assistance

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I read many times on here that if one doesn't require anything practical from it, one should't seek a diagnosis.
I don't quite understand why. If one meets the diagnostic criteria for an ASD and it does cause problems in their lives, it should mean they have it, even if they don't require assistance, but if they don't get tested properly it makes everithing so arbitrary...
I don't believe in self-diagnosis, especially regarding psychiatric/psychological conditions, but I need to know if I have an ASD, or anything else for that matter. It's true it wouldn't help with my social life - because I'm quite comfortable with it as it is at the moment - and other issues, and I wouldn't even get any more self-awareness because I've analyzed myself a lot in order to establish the concrete possibility of having something "wrong" with me, but I know that knowing would definitely improve my self-esteem. Other than that, I have issues with my parents telling me that I don't care about them, that I'm very self-centered and that I'm weak, and that is really mining my emotional stability right now because I can't explain why I don't work in the same way as them and saying "You're hurting me" apparently just makes things worse.
So I think I'm going to seek a diagnosis, more in order to avoid falling into depression than for getting concrete help. I'm just curious as to why some people think it's wrong

Possibly they are thinking something along the lines of- Why do you need to define yourself with a label? (I am not saying I agree with that)

I'm going to tell you my opinion by quoting myself:

Tuttle's right: You do have to have some sort of impairment, if only because it takes you a lot more cognitive work or because you have to do things a different way.

However, for some people who don't have that significant impairment, they are still very close to the spectrum, so much so that they have more in common with autistic people than with NTs. They can't be diagnosed, but there are terms for that group of people--"Subclinical autistic traits", "Broader autistic phenotype", or more colloquially, "Spectrum cousin". There are quite a few of them here on WP, and I think we need them because of how they can help as interpreters between full-blown autistics and full-blown NTs, and because even if they don't have any particular disability, they do have a lot of traits that are similar to ours and probably identify more with autistics than with the social-butterfly NT ideal. It's a lot like how you can have Deaf family members or friends, and speak ASL fluently, and be part of the Deaf community even though your hearing is unaffected. We certainly shouldn't isolate ourselves from people who don't have significant impairment.

I've been trying to popularize the term "Culturally autistic", which refers to those who are part of the autistic community and identify with the autistic way of thinking and relating to others--a group that includes diagnosable autistic people as well as those with similar disorders and those with no diagnosis at all. There's more to autism than the significant impairment that can get you a diagnosis--there's more to it than the medical perspective. There's also the autism community and the culture we've built up for ourselves. Having a way to say that would be handy.

There is also the issue of funding for diagnosis. In the UK, diagnosis via the NHS is usually only offered if the person experiences significant difficulties in their day to day life and needs access to additional support or services.

A couple things I've seen people say as far as reasons not to get a diagnosis. One is that there are possible negatives to an official diagnosis. With a diagnosis, in certain situations you are required to reveal it, whereas if you aren't undiagnosed but think you have it, you don't. Also the difficulty and expense of getting a diagnosis is for many people a reason not to.

Yeah, my original point even if all confused was that I don't think that to have significant impairment you have to require assistance (like, someone following you around and telling you what the expression on the face of the people you're talking with means ). I know people who are on disability and don't really get any assistance or accomodation for their problems (apart from the money they get, which they don't really use for anything related to the disability since they like quite independently).
I think you can struggle with some things in which having an ASD diagnosis can help without having to have continuous assistance (even though I probably wouldn't have minded talking with a psychologist at some points of my life).

Ah, thank you for clearing that up for me. And I agree with what you are saying.

Tuttle wrote:

Yeah, definitely. I've never needed an aide and probably never will, but I get some pretty intensive assistance sometimes. It all depends on how much change and stress I've had to deal with lately.

I find the idea that needing assistance is crucial to the decision to be diagnosed to be unfair to those of us who learned to seriously cope at a time in their lives when diagnosis was not a possibility. I don't think (short of future, serious college grad/post grad work I may need extra time for) that I will ever need more real assistance than my wife can provide. However, an official diagnosis could help me a sometimes. For one, people would believe me and understand when stress and social issues do arise, when people refuse to accept how draining a normal day at work can be, etc. My parents might be convinced that I'm not just a lazy idiot (no promises there, though >_>). Also, I hope to become an established and popular writer. I'm going to need a diagnoses to have a public image that isn't just a creeper.